World number six gold-miner Harmony Gold on Friday said it intends to serve its unions and staff associations with notices of compulsory restructuring over the next two weeks.
Harmony said it will be issuing Section 189 notifications, which will result in the start of the legally required 60-day review period.
The move to issue the notices follows the decision by National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) representatives in early January at Harmony’s Free State operations that they will not support an application to the Department of Minerals and Energy for Sunday labour.
The NUM’s decision resulted in the termination of continuous operations at Harmony’s FreeGold mines.
Continuous operations agreements allow Harmony to increase the number of days worked at its mines from 273 days to 353 days, excluding public holidays.
As a result of the NUM’s decision, Harmony has initiated a process of negotiation with the NUM to find ways of dealing with surplus mine workers at its FreeGold mines, Harmony said.
Harmony stated on Friday that 1Â 830 jobs have been created over the past year from the partial introduction of its continuous operations programme, and that it continues to seek the reinstatement of continuous operations at its FreeGold mines.
“It is irresponsible and immature to speculate on the outcome of the process at this stage, but negotiations to resolve the current impasse are continuing,” said Harmony Gold chief executive Bernard Swanepoel. — I-Net Bridge