No new-year resolution for Amcu, Sibanye

● Workers affiliated to the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) remain on strike at Sibanye-Stillwater’s South African gold mines as a process to verify the membership of four unions at the company is still underway.

On Thursday Amcu and Sibanye embarked on a process at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) but the dispute remains unresolved.

Joseph Mathunjwa, president of Amcu, said this week that talks at the CCMA were adjourned due to a disagreement between the two parties. “The company came with their senior counsel and tried to interpret the judgment to their advantage, to which we disagreed. The commissioner has to write to the judge to clarify certain sections of the judgment,” Mathunjwa said.

This is in reference to a ruling in late December. Sibanye had sought to have the strike by Amcu declared unprotected and illegal after it said 51% of unionised workers — represented by the National Union of Mineworkers, Solidarity and UASA — had accepted the wage offer, enabling it to extend the offer to all workers. But a December 21 Labour Court judgment ruled in favour of Amcu and ordered the CCMA to facilitate a union membership verification process and report back to the court by tomorrow.

“With the first day back at work being January 3 2019, employees at the gold operations have started to report for work,” James Wellsted, head of investor relations at Sibanye, said this week.

The strike by almost 15,000 Amcu workers has “affected the gold operations to varying extents”, said Wellsted. He said an update would be released “in due course”.

Amcu demands a basic monthly salary of R12,500 and an increase of R1,000 a month every year for the next three years. The other unions agreed to a R700 monthly increase for the first two years of the wage agreement and an R825 a month increase in the third year.