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South Africa: De Beers Workers Could Strike July 31
Jul 26, 2007 5:16 AM
By Avi Krawitz
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RAPAPORT... South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) voted in favor of a strike against De Beers after the diamond miner failed to meet their wage demands.
De Beers offered an 8 percent pay rise, short of the 11 percent hike NUM requested. NUM was required to give De Beers 48 hours notice for the strike and said it is scheduled to start on Tuesday (July 31, 2007.)
NUM stated it was still open to meaningful discussion should De Beers be prepared to raise its offer.
NUM’s negotiator at De Beers, Peter Bailey, explained that wage negotiations started in June and that a dispute was declared three weeks ago.
"Workers have told us in no uncertain terms that double-digits is the route. They reiterated that this afternoon by calling for strike action to force De Beers to accede to the demands put on the table," said Peter Bailey, NUM`s negotiator at De Beers.
"If the status quo remains, there is nothing stopping us to pursue the strike action," he said.
De Beers explained it had raised its offer from a 7 percent to 8 percent base wage for both 2007 and 2008 (to ZAR 3910 and ZAR 4,223 respectively,) and raised the number of “family responsibility” leave days from four to five. NUM rejected the offer at a July 18 meeting.
“The company seeks to avoid disruption to operations as this will have a negative effect, both to the company and to employees,” a De Beers statement concluded. “In the event of a strike contingency plans are in place to operate the mines however the company would prefer to settle this without disruption to its normal operations or to employees.”
The company added that it was confident the most recent offer was fair and attractive.
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Tags:
De Beers, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), South Africa
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