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De Beers, Workers Meet to Avoid Strike
Jul 31, 2007 4:05 AM
By Avi Krawitz
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RAPAPORT... De Beers is scheduled to meet with South Africa's National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) late Tuesday afternoon (July 31, 2007) in a last ditch effort to avoid a strike of some 3,500 De Beers workers.
De Beers spokesperson Tom Tweedy told Rapaport News that the diamond mining giant will have a clearler understanding of the extent of the strike action by Wednesday morning following the meeting.
“It all depends if NUM is prepared to compromise on their demands,” Tweedy said. “But they haven’t done so in the last two meetings we had with them.”
NUM is seeking an 11 percent pay rise for base wage workers. Earlier De Beers raised its offer from a 7 percent increase to an 8 percent rise for both 2007 and 2008 (to ZAR 3,910 and ZAR 4,223 respectively,) and raised the number of “family responsibility” leave days from four to five. NUM rejected the offer at the July 18 meeting.
Wage negotiations started in June between the two parties and a dispute was declared three weeks ago.
De Beers employs 6,000 workers in South Africa, of which 3,500 are affected by the talks.
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Tags:
De Beers, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), South Africa
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