HR Pulse

Change law to enable secret balloting, says Amplats

The Labour Relations Act (LRA) should be amended to allow for secret balloting of employees to embark on strikes, said Chris Griffith, CEO of the world's largest platinum producer, Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), on Thursday as a strike in the sector entered its 16th week, reports Business Day.

The wage strike, called by the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), is the longest in South Africa's mining history and has cost employees over R7.5 billion in lost wages.

According to Business Day, Amplats would soon start discussions with labour to begin cutting jobs as there were costs at the suspended mines that were not being offset by revenue, Mr Griffith said.

"It will be a completely separate issue from the strike, which is protected. We need to have a separate conversation that there's no likelihood this mine or that is going to make money and we need to shut it down or reconfigure it," he said.

"We are not far from starting that process. We are trying to find an end to this strike. We are not trying to find something to fire all of our people."

Amcu said on Monday its members would not accept the offer to take the cash component of workers' salaries to R12,500 a month by 2017, reports Business Day.

Amcu's demand remains for R12,500 in cash‚ excluding allowances, within four years.

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