emerges
Fay Davids
IN the mining industry, the proof of the pudding is in productivity. And in an industry where production hit a 40-year low last year, the story of a newly qualified miner at Gengold’s Beatrix mine is inspiring.
In a 24-shift month he achieved a face advance – the rate at which a mine develops – of 30m when the industry average for the same period is just 10m.
Half South Africa’s gold reserves have been mined since gold was discovered in 1886, and much of the rest requires deep mining to retrieve.
“The strength of hard-rock mining is in the people and they are the key to increasing productivity,” says Gengold’s managing director Tom Dale.
Gengold is spending between R50-million and R60-million a year on a programme to train a new generation of miners. Apartheid job reservation on the mines meant that black miners could not get blasting certificates.
Gengold’s education project is open to all miners and offers them adult basic education up to standard seven, from where they are offered the chance to study full- time towards a blasting certificate. The adult basic education requirement is essential as a study by the mining house conducted three years ago found that 95% of its black employees were functionally illiterate.
To ensure commitment from workers, attendance at the adult basic education programme is voluntary and must be taken after hours. But the programme is free.
“We think we can double labour productivity with this programme,” says Dale.
Every four months, 80 qualified new miners hit the rock-face on Gengold’s mines. The group estimated that it needs 1 000 miners to meet its productivity targets and that the entire project will be completed in two years’ time.
Not all miners who enter the literacy project will end up as qualified miners with blasting certificates. But their standard seven certificates do fit into the National Qualifications Framework, which makes for greater portability across other industries.
Dale says the “higher density of educated, trained miners” will also reduce the number of accidents on mines.
JCI’s Randfontein mine is pioneering a similar change in labour practices. Joint decision-making underground has seen face advance treble. In a survey of workers at Randfontein, 83 of the 93 sampled said they preferred the new underground method of work; 92 out of 98 said they felt they were involved in decision-making. Workers said better bonuses, team-work and multi- skilling were all important pluses to the new ways of work.
Analyst Dennis Tucker of the firm Fleming Martin Securities says JCI is “altering management and working practices that are more than 100 years old – and that’s something special”.
Anglogold is also looking to its workforce to keep its mines profitable. Together with new deep-mining technology and mineral- rights swaps, improved production is vital to the country’s richest gold-mining company. For the first time, Anglogold has set productivity targets for miners. On average, the company wants a 16% hike in production for this year. The targets have been set by the National Union of Mineworkers and management.
Anglogold’s chief executive Bobby Godsell says: “We have for the very first time set public labour productivity improvement targets. It’s probably the most vital aspect of our business. We can’t determine the gold price, we can’t determine the grade of gold in the ground but we can manage the efficiency with which we get it out of the ground.”
Productivity targets carry bonuses when workers meet or exceed them. Mining houses say that many miners take home anything between double and five times their wages. The union was not available to confirm or comment on productivity bonuses or changed work methods on gold mines.
But researcher Pete Lewis, who works for the Industrial Health and Research Group, warns that there is a “direct conflict between productivity bonuses and health and safety”. Most productivity bonus agreements have built-in safety clauses that penalise unsafe work practices. Lewis says this may lead to underground accidents being concealed.
Randgold’s results for the last quarter outshone other mining houses. The mining house was not available for comment on its new work practices, though an analysis of the company’s results suggests it is opting for flattened management structures.
The group is also reaping the benefits of a project to reduce the number of lost blasts – unproductive blasting practices. Buffels mine, for example, has reduced lost blasts by 98%.
Fleming’s Tucker has been tracking the changing work practices across the gold- mining industry and calls them “brilliant”.
He says: “At last miners are being offered some dignity by multi-skilling and training.”