The mining industry has failed to implement seven-day working on a broad basis, reports Fay Davids
CONTINUOUS mining operations, long mooted as a lifeline for the mining industry, have proved less successful than hoped.
The principle that mines would move to seven-day operations – or full calender operations (Fulco) – was finally agreed between management and unions last year, after years of negotiations.
Management had argued that fulco would lift output (a 25% jump was one figure bandied about), extend the life of mines, and narrow the gap between local mining costs and the far lower costs of mines abroad.
Other observers were more sceptical. Such scepticism, at least for now, seems to have been vindicated. The take up by the mining industry has been limited.
So far this year the government mining engineer has granted 15 mines exemptions under the Mine and Works Act to work on Sundays. Last year there were 20 approvals. “These have been fewer than expected,” one official says.
Those that have taken the plunge include shafts at Anglo American’s Vaal Reefs and Freegold gold operations, Anglovaal’s Loraine and Hartebeesfontein mines, Gold Fields of South Africa’s Black Mountain and O’Okiep base metal mines, copper mine Palabora and Johannesburg Consolidated Investment’s (JCI) resurgent gold mine HJ Joel.
JCI is leading the push toward Fulco, also tabling the system at its Western Areas mine. Others are more cautious. Anglo introduced a new shift system at its Freegold mine earlier this year, after warning that 10 000 job were on the line. Most were saved, but much of the credit went to the rand’s fall which lifted the gains from the dollar gold price.
“It’s definitely a tool to help us cope,” representative James Duncan says. “It’s not been a blanket success, but we never considered it a panacea for the industry.”
Gengold says it hasn’t thrown Fulco out of the window, but it has no plans to introduce it (though the government mining engineer lists Gengold’s developing mine Oryx as an applicant for Sunday working).
“It’s just not delivering the output,” says Peter Lewis, researcher for Industrial Health Research Group at University of Cape Town.
Many mine managers he has surveyed are returning to voluntary overtime work as an option over Fulco. Others are employing new management strategies to investigate lost productivity, such as tracking lost blasts (shifts worked with no blasting recorded).
In many cases, workers have simply not climbed aboard the Fulco bus, often failing to arrive to work the additional shifts the system creates. “The premiums are just not high enough to warrant the long hours,” Lewis says.
National Union of Mineworkers secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe says the union wants a summit of all industry representatives to discuss the implications of Sunday working. “It raises social questions; everything from church to soccer happens on Sunday.”
But Lewis says fulco merely forms part of a fundamental change in working patterns. The industry is also making greater use of casual labour, and bonus payments – a major incentive to the workforce to work harder – are now common across the industry.
Privately within the industry, and publicly for its analysts, the other argument has been that Fulco can never achieve its potential unless management is prepared to look at where it’s gone wrong in labour relations.
This is clearly a more difficult demand than merely applying to the government mining engineer to blast on a Sunday.