Jobs of 1 200 M&R workers at risk

THE JOBS of 1 200 Murray & Roberts (M&R) workers at Lonmin’s K4 shaft in Marikana have been placed at serious risk following Lonmin’s decision to move the shaft to care and maintenance and give M&R notice of termination of its contract.

Ed Jardim, an M&R spokesman, confirmed yesterday that the termination of the R65 million contract meant the jobs of the 1 200 workers were at risk. The termination is effective from October 17. “The future of the 1 200 affected employees is our biggest concern. Murray & Roberts Cementation will be able to offer limited opportunities to these affected employees in its existing operations and will be following a section 189A process of the Labour Relations Act with employee representatives on the way forward. It’s very difficult to provide details of this process at this stage,” he said.

A letter would go out to employee representatives today to start the process, which could take up to 60 days to conclude “depending on how the discussions go”.

Lonmin said the termination of the contract was part of its ongoing expenditure review and referred to its July 26 announcement that in light of the weak pricing environment, some capital expenditure at the K4, Hossy and Saffy shafts was being deferred to reduce annual capital expenditure in the 2013 and 2014 financial years to $250 million (R2.1 billion) a year.

Jardim said M&R did not regard the termination of the K4 shaft contract as material or a hindrance to returning the group to profitability.

Underground mining projects for Lonmin included in M&R’s order book in June were valued at R230m, of which R65m was related to the K4 shaft.

“This value represents approximately 2 percent of the Murray & Roberts Cementation order book or 0.1 percent of the Murray & Roberts group order book,” he said.

Jardim said it had other platinum sector contracts, with specifically Northern Platinum. M&R closed 1.1 percent higher at R23.74. – Roy Cokayne