Gold Fields workers have refused to be redeployed from South Deep to the Kloof and Beatrix mines, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said on Monday.
The NUM said it wished to rectify claims attributed to Gold Fields that the mine intended to sack 2 050 workers at South Deep mine.
”The reality of the matter is Gold Fields wished to move the 2 050 workers from South Deep to some other operations such as Kloof and Beatrix,” the union said.
However, the workers refused the offer and opted for voluntary separation, citing lack of safety at Gold Fields’ operations at both Kloof and Beatrix mines.
”It is therefore inaccurate to argue that Gold Fields intends dismissing employees — the NUM has repeatedly fought and will continue to fight against any form of retrenchment.”
Gold Fields spokesperson Daniel Thole, however, said the argument that South Deep workers were opting for retrenchment because of safety concerns at other mines was ”opportunistic and completely untrue”.
”All the retrenchments at South Deep are completely voluntary — 1 885 workers need to be made redundant because the area of the mine at which they are working has been depleted,” he said.
He added that no workers at South Deep have been forced to move to other Gold Fields mines.
”Gold Fields came to an agreement with the unions on July 22 to create a monitoring committee to oversee retrenchments and review each and every application for retrenchment.”
Meanwhile the NUM said that Gold Fields’ safety record has been a serious concern for workers in the first half of the year.
This came after nine employees died at South Deep mine on Workers’ Day and an additional six died at Gold Field’s other operations — this brought the total to 15 in one week, the union said.
”Gold Fields is at the moment the leading company in terms of the number of mineworkers who lost their lives in the six months leading to June,” it added. — Sapa