Mineral Council’s conditional revised offer an insult to skilled employees

21 August 2018

The Mineral Council made a conditional revised offer today, subject to trade unions removing the other so-called high cost claims from the table.

The conditional revised salary increase offer to artisans and other senior employees is between 4% (Sibanye-Stillwater and Village Main Reef) and 5% (AngloGold Ashanti and Harmony) against a much higher offer of between 6,8% and 8,2% for Category 4-8 employees.

“Although the offers are conditional, Solidarity rejects the offer in principle because of its discriminatory nature. The artisans and more senior employees cannot accept that they are to receive smaller salary increases in order to subsidise other post levels’ increases,” Gideon du Plessis, General Secretary of Solidarity, said.

“Solidarity welcomes the offers to the Category 4-8 employees, but the lower offer to the skilled employees is a practice from the past to close the wage gap between the categories. The gap is now so small that the categories’ remuneration packages are very close to each other. Furthermore, artisans and senior employee categories are already approximately 70% transformed and therefore the race argument does not hold water anymore. The difference in the wage offers between the two categories have never been so large in the past,” Du Plessis said.

Although the National Union of Mineworkers declared a dispute, Solidarity will proceed with negotiations.  

Issued by Gideon du Plessis, General Secretary: Solidarity, 21 August 2018