Harmony warns 5 000 workers may lose jobs in ‘rest
Harmony warns 5 000 workers may lose jobs in ‘restructuring’
John Fraser
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HARMONY said yesterday that it had launched consultations with unions this week at five of its Free State operations which could affect almost 5000 workers.
Although the aim was to preserve jobs rather than to destroy them, CE Bernard Swanepoel said yesterday more than 10% of the company’s 46000 workforce was to be affected.
Harmony said on Monday that 1899 workers at Bambanani would be covered by the consultations with the unions. Yesterday, the process extended to 526 workers at Welkom, 1817 at St Helena, 1003 at Nyala and 699 at Masimong.
Swanepoel said that at the start of consultations “you have to state the number of people affected — it’s not the number of people likely to lose their jobs. The purpose of the law is to minimise the number through consultations.”
Swanepoel said that it was possible that a few smaller shafts might be closed as a result of the consultation, but he said this week’s developments were part of a continuing restructuring process that was launched last April.
He said that Harmony had made good progress in overall restructuring of its operations to cope with the low rand-gold price “with the exception of Free State, where there has been limited progress”.
Swanepoel said there had also been no support for the redeployment of workers to more sustainable work areas, nor had there been much enthusiasm for voluntary redundancies.
“The low gold price is driving this, as we need to align our operations to the low gold price,” said Swanepoel.
“We have made progress in most of our operations, but in Free State we have a grouping of shafts that make losses. This is mainly a downsizing exercise, but maybe one or two smaller shafts would be closed down, and maybe it would affect the numbers doing maintenance work at already closed shafts.
“But I can’t take decisions on this before I have started consultations.”
The Solidarity trade union said yesterday that it would aim to minimise job losses.
It said that in recommending the approval of the Harmony bid for Gold Fields, the Competition Commission said that there should be no more than 1500 job losses in the combined company, and that ordinary mineworkers should be excluded from this process.
However, Harmony will be able to argue that this week’s consultations are part of an existing process, and that they result from the low rand gold price and are not linked to the takeover bid.
“The rand is killing jobs and we are concerned at this process,” said Solidarity spokesman Dirk Hermann. “If these retrenchments were to go ahead, the economies of several communities may be destroyed and 5000 families will have to suffer the consequences.”
Gold Fields will today lodge an appeal with the Securities Regulation Panel in a bid to halt the Harmony bid.
In another development, I-Net Bridge reported yesterday that a legal representative of Harmony Gold was likely to appear at the insolvency inquiry of former mining contractor MID Mining, brought by trade union Solidarity.
Swanepoel has been subpoenaed to appear as a witness at the hearing.
Solidarity is representing 198 former MID Mining employees in the insolvency case. The former employees are claiming R5m in unpaid salaries
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