Union still at loggerheads with mine
"With the DMR being the custodian of compliance in terms of health and safety issues and the department conducting audits on the mine's set standards, if ASA fails to comply with its own set of standards like health and safety of workers, the DMR will issue a Section 54 and those exposed employees are our members."
DRIEKOP – Two weeks after Dilokong ASA Metals issued a press release declaring its intention to retrench hundreds of employees, the National Union of Mine Workers (NUM) also released a statement defending itself.
According to the mine, the retrenchments are due to the continuous drop in the ore and the depleted chrome price, as well as the recent community unrest that occurred in the Driekop area.
“The mine is forced into a restructuring process which will cause a significant reduction in its operations, including the number of employees. This is the result of continued work stoppages because of community unrest, general militant union behaviour by NUM, which resulted in an unprotected strike since October 29, 2015 to date, and numerous Section 54 instructions issued by the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) which caused more than 15 per cent production losses for 2015,” the statement said.
NUM this week refuted the claims made by the mine saying, “The community unrest only happened once on January 29, 2015. We believe one day cannot cause a retrenchment-contributing impact.”
According to the statement, the Section 54s that were issued by the department were less than five.
“With the DMR being the custodian of compliance in terms of health and safety issues and the department conducting audits on the mine’s set standards, if ASA fails to comply with its own set of standards like health and safety of workers, the DMR will issue a Section 54 and those exposed employees are our members.”
The union said it finds it difficult to believe that the illegal sit-in at the mine from October 23 to 27 last year could have contributed to production loss.
“The shaft’s mining production only runs during weekdays (Monday to Friday), so two days of production loss cannot bring the company down. There are only two shifts that were missed by the workers, October 23 and October 27, the rest of the days were weekend.”
The union argued that previously there had been numerous monthly targets made by the mine and were helpful to resurrect the mine when business was bad.
“We strongly believe that the company failed to manage their business efficiently, particularly the top management.”
NUM also accused the human-resource manager at the mine of contributing to its downfall. “His arrival has resulted into sour relationships between the union and ASA metals.” NUM also dismissed the allegations that it was on strike and claimed it will do anything as a union to ensure things get back to normal.
