Gold workers down tools
DRDGold Limited announced on October 8, some 600 employees at its Ergo operation downed tools at the start of the day shift.
This followed management’s refusal of the union’s 11th-hour demands in wage negotiations that all entry-level employees be ‘rolled up’ from job category four to job category six, and that a skills retention increase for engineering foremen be extended to all foremen.
“Management and union representatives continue to engage to find a constructive solution,” says Memory Johnstone from Russell and Associates, PR company of DRGGold. The company’s offer, for the two-year period, is a basic wage increase of 8% for employees in job categories four and five and of 7.5% for employees in categories six to 15, together with 10% increases in the living out allowances for 2013 and 2014.
The effect of the implementation of the company’s offer would be an 8.1% increase in the company’s yearly wage bill, amounting to R19 million a year. Implementation of the union’s 11th-hour demands would increase this by a further 18.2% or R43 million a year.
“DRDGold operates three plants on the Eastern Witwatersrand, namely Brakpan, Knights and City Deep. Operations are managed from the company’s Brakpan plant,” says Johnstone.
