World number six gold-miner Harmony Gold has issued Section 189 notices of restructuring at four more shafts, a Solidarity spokesperson said on Tuesday.
The Welkom 1, which employs 526 people; St Helena, which employs 817 people; Nyala (1 003 people); and the Masimong 4 (669 people) have all received notices of restructuring, Solidarity said.
Harmony marketing director Ferdi Dippenaar confirmed that Section 189 notices had been issued at Welkom 1, St Helena and Nyala.
However, he said that he wasn’t aware that Masimong 4 had received notice of restructuring.
On Monday, Harmony issued Section 189 notices of restructuring to representative trade unions at its Bambanani gold mine near Welkom, where 1 899 workers are employed.
Including Masimong 4, notices of restructuring affect 4 914 miners.
“Harmony is restructuring as we have excess labour at the current rand environment. A rand gold price of above R90 000 per kilogram would see Harmony being able to accommodate the current excess labour,” Dippenaar said.
At 5pm on Tuesday, the rand gold price was quoted at R85 993 per kilogram from Monday’s closing level of R83 977 per kilogram.
Solidarity said it has held discussions with Harmony chief executive Bernard Swanepoel as well as Dippenaar.
“Both parties agreed that structural changes in the economy would be needed to halt the current wave of retrenchments. Swanepoel maintained that Harmony had gone the extra mile to keep its non-profitable shafts in production,” Solidarity said.
“Many of the workers will have difficulty finding other employment opportunities in the mining industry — the industry in which they have training and experience — since several other mines are also considering retrenchments and are under the same pressure from the strong rand.
“Production processes used at the various mines also differ radically, which further hampers re- employment. Unemployment in terms of the broad definition currently stands at 41,2%. The only way in which many of these workers will ever manage to re-enter the labour market is by retraining,” the union added. — I-Net Bridge