South Africa’s Solidarity union members have accepted an offer for a 9% wage increase from the world’s third ranked platinum producer Lonmin, the union said on Wednesday.
The agreement will cover one year and is effective from October 1 2007, the union said in a statement.
The acceptance diffused any risk of a strike. The union had said may consider asking for a permit to strike as one of the options if its members had rejected Lonmin’s wage offer.
Solidarity had demanded a 10% wage increase, but agreed to the offer after its members voted to accept it.
Lonmin’s spokesperson Alex Shorland-Ball confirmed the deal.
”We are signing with them today and we are happy that we have reached a satisfactory result,” she told Reuters, but declined further comment.
The traditionally white trade union also won certain allowances ranging from R1 800 to R2 500 with the highest amounts paid to Solidarity members working underground, but criticised the company for not meeting their demands for housing allowances.
”The negotiations produced no winner,” Reint Dykema, a spokesperson for Solidarity said.
”The Mooinooi area, in which Lonmin’s operations are located, suffers a severe housing crisis. This matter was not resolved. The company also failed to come up with an acceptable proposal to tackle skills shortages and skills retention. This failure is likely to have a negative effect on the company’s production figures in the months to come.”
Dykema had told Reuters on Monday that Lonmin had said it would implement its wage offer unilaterally, if Solidarity members failed to accept the terms.
”The company threatened to implement the salary increase unilaterally. This demonstrates short-term greed, since it did not deal with the problems affecting Lonmin,” he said.
Shorland-Ball declined to comment on whether the company had made the threat to impose the wage increase unilaterally.
Dykema had said on Monday that December was not an ideal month to stage a strike as the union’s members were unlikely to agree to such action, which could be under ”no work, no pay” terms.
With Christmas and New Year’s festivities approaching, workers also wanted to meet their targets to win bonuses tied to output, he added.
Lonmin has already agreed a two year wage settlement with the country’s biggest miners’ union, the National Union of Mineworkers. – Reuters