Diamond miner De Beers Consolidated Mines (DBCM) could cut 1 400 jobs in its South African operations, the Mail & Guardian has learnt from senior industry sources.
Sources at De Beers have also indicated a strong possibility of closure
of some of De Beers’s unprofitable mines as the company faces difficulty brought about by the strong rand.
The retrenchments represent a 17% reduction in De Beers’s workforce of
8Â 000. It is believed that the cuts will mostly affect managers, engineers and those working on new developments.
In a statement to the M&G, De Beers spokesperson Nicola Wilson alluded to radical changes within the organisation without confirming job cuts.
The statement acknowledged that De Beers “is operating under difficult circumstances accentuated by the strength of the rand against the weaker dollar”.
At current exchange rate levels, five of the company’s seven operations are unprofitable, she said.
Wilson added that only the Venetia mine in Limpopo and the Finsch mine in the Northern Cape are currently making a profit.
Sources at De Beers say Koffiefontein mine in the Free State is the worst performing of the mines.
This has led to a review of De Beers’s business model “which entails developing plans that could change how DBCM operates and is structured”. Management wants to make the mines viable at R5 to the dollar.
National Union of Mineworkers official Parks Modise said the intention to retrench had not been formally communicated to the union, but that he would not rule it out.
Modise said that the union is in talks with De Beers to implement continuous operations (conops) across its mines.
Conops is an operational system that keeps certain mines open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, thereby optimising the use of the workforce.
All of which goes to show that while diamonds are forever, jobs are not.
Additional reporting by Motlatsi Lebea