SIBANYE-Stillwater will open its gates to employee members of the Solidarity and UASA after the unions today unconditionally accepted the firm’s gold wage offer.
The two unions account for about 1,550 people of the 34,000 employed at the firm’s gold mines Kloof and Driefontein, west of Johannesburg, and Beatrix in the Free State.
Their acceptance signals the end of the coalition which negotiated with Sibanye-Stillwater for about half a year. Other members of the coalition, the Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union (AMCU) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) remain on strike called on March 8.
The last time AMCU took members out on strike over wages for gold miners was in 2018/19. All in all, some five months of work was lost. AMCU eventually accepted Sibanye-Stillwater’s offer.
“This is positive progress in the wage negotiation process, and we are hopeful that both AMCU and the NUM will soon follow suit to avoid further consequences for employees and other stakeholders from strike action that we know is not popular amongst the workforce,” said Neal Froneman, CEO of Sibanye-Stillwater today.
Union members at the group’s Beatrix gold mine in the Free State voted against a strike whilst AMCU’s decision to move for a new strike was based on a show of hands at Sibanye-Stillwater’s west Rand operations.
Sibanye-Stillwater’s revised pay offer of February 4 includes a 7% improvement for entry level miners. This compares to the 11% increase demanded by NUM and AMCU. Sibanye-Stillwater said accepting this demand would imply an additional R1bn in annual costs for the gold mines which couldn’t be afforded.
The company said AMCU and the NUM members would continue to be locked out of the workplace “until such time as they accept the offer”. The firm’s final offer was “fair and in the interests of all stakeholders,” said Froneman.
The firm’s gold mines represented about 7% of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation in its 2021 financial year and were cash negative.
The group reported record headline earnings of R36.9bn for the 12 months to December representing a year-on-year increase of 27%. A final dividend of R5.3bn or R1,83 a share, was declared taking the total dividend to R4,79/share or R13.8bn.
The financial performance was driven by its production of platinum group metals from the South African and US mines.
UBS the Swiss bank, said it did not envisage a protracted strike given the “… limited success of previous strike action [and] cumulative strike fatigue”. The principle of ‘no work, no pay’ against the backdrop of the weak economic environment in South Africa would also weaken the resolve of unions, it said.
Sibanye-Stillwater guided to gold production of between 813,000 and 873,000 ounces for the 2022 financial year at an all in sustaining cost of between $1,810 and 1,920/oz.
