Over 4 900 Free State miners should be reinstated because the National Union of Mineworkers’ consultation process with Harmony Gold was not exhausted, the Labour Court heard on Tuesday.
”The dismissals were effected prematurely, the consultation was not properly exhausted and fair procedure was not followed,” said Hans van der Riet, lawyer for the NUM.
NUM was seeking an order to have the miners reinstated until Harmony had complied with fair procedure and the requirements of the Labour Relations Act.
Harmony did not engage in further bona fide consultations after March 14 — when workers were given notice of the intention to retrench them — and had already decided that the workers would be retrenched at this date, Van der Riet submitted.
This was underlined by the fact that the union was only informed of the existence of 3 362 vacancies at Harmony’s other mines less than a day before the workers’ dismissal on April 19.
”…on this basis alone, it is clear that a fair retrenchment procedure had not been followed before the decision to retrench had been taken,” he said.
The decision to dismiss employees was only taken after a comprehensive consultation process and several attempts to minimise retrenchments, lawyer for Harmony Gold, Gerrit Pretorius countered.
The NUM had repeatedly frustrated the consultation process, by striking and refusing to be relocated to other mines, he added.
”Harmony [bent] over backwards and backwards again not to lose jobs with the NUM frustrating the process.”
If the company continued to fund its loss-making mines in the Free State, an even greater number of jobs were at risk.
”If immediate action is not taken, there may be losses of up to 7 000 employees at other Free State operations,” Pretorius argued.
Four of Harmony’s five affected shafts had been closed, making it impossible to retain NUM members. It would cost the company an additional R35-million a month to retain them.
Harmony could more effectively spend this money to develop and open up new ore bodies at its other viable operations, said Pretorius.
On April 19 more than 4 900 workers were dismissed at five Harmony shafts in the Free State following losses of R300-million over the previous 12 months.
Judgement was reserved for Wednesday next week. – Sapa