Union to ask big banks to help save mine jobs

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) plans to approach the four largest banks in a bid to save jobs at the Oakbay group’s mining operations after the company and its associates failed to secure a stay of execution in the High Court in Pretoria on Thursday.

The union, in a statement after a meeting of its national executive committee on Tuesday, said workers at Shiva Uranium, Optimum Coal, Koornfontein mine and other companies owned by Oakbay were told not to come to work because Oakbay would be unable to pay them at the end of the pay cycle.

This came after Judge Hans Fabricius on Thursday declined to interdict the Bank of Baroda from closing the Oakbay group’s accounts ahead of another hearing on the matter in December.

“The [Bank of Baroda] is subject to a number of statutory provisions which in the main seek to uphold the integrity of the financial system in the country,” said Fabricius.

“On the other hand, there is the well-founded suspicion … that the [Oakbay group of companies] had subverted the integrity of the financial system, to put it gently.”

Fabricius said the bank needed only “a reasonable suspicion” to exercise its rights including closing the Oakbay accounts.

“We have written to the CEOs of the four big banks – First National Bank, Absa, Standard Bank and Nedbank – requesting a meeting with them,” said NUM general secretary David Sipunzi.

“Although we cannot divulge what we intend to discuss with the banks, we can definitely assure everybody that we do not intend to go there and plead for Oakbay,” he said.

The union expressed its disappointment with the manner in which the ANC and partner in the governing alliance, the South African Communist Party, had handled the matter, which the union said would result in “thousands of job losses”.