South African Gold Miners Set for Strike Later Today…(Buy While Still Cheap!!)
By Andre Janse van Vuuren
Bloomberg.com
Sep 3, 2013
South African gold producers are braced for a strike later today when 90,000 National Union of Mineworkers members are due to join 120,000 workers who have downed tools in other parts of the continent’s largest economy.
“Talks have continued with the unions, but we’re still anticipating a strike by the NUM,” Charmane Russell, an external spokeswoman for the country’s Chamber of Mines at Russell & Associates, said today by phone from Johannesburg.
The strike is expected to start at 6 p.m., as night shifts commence, Lesiba Seshoka, an NUM spokesman, said by mobile phone.
Members of the NUM, which represents 64 percent of employees, will stop working after the chamber failed to meet demands for wage increases of as much as 60 percent for entry level workers. The chamber, which represents members including AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (ANG) and Sibanye Gold Ltd. (SGL), has made a final offer to boost pay by 6 percent to 6.5 percent for about 142,000 workers.
Strikes cut 0.5 percentage point off gross domestic product last year, when at least 44 people, including 34 killed by police in one day, died near the operations of Lonmin Plc (LMI), the third-largest platinum producer. Stoppages have already shaved 30 basis points, or 0.3 percentage point, off GDP this year, President Jacob Zuma said on June 13.
Police ‘Prepared’
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