Sibanye-Stillwater, one of the world’s leading producers of precious metals, is expecting the 231 workers it fired after an illegal underground sit-in to embark on an appeals process this week.
The disgruntled employees staged an underground protest at the miner’s Kroondal mine last week over employee share option schemes. The company said they did not yet qualify for the schemes.
The protest ended last Wednesday with all workers returning to the surface. Sibanye-Stillwater spokesperson James Wellsted said: “There were 231 employees involved in the sit-in. What we did, as required by labour regulations, [is that] we asked them to come up, [we] gave them three ultimatums, they did not respond, then we gave them dismissal notices. We also obtained a court interdict [which said the] strike [was] illegal.”
Wellsted said the company expected the dismissed employees to embark on an “appeals process”.
The company has said it will not condone illegal actions by any stakeholders that could “compromise the safety and wellbeing of employees or the sustainability of our operations”.
It called on employees to use the established grievance mechanisms or their union representatives to address any issues or concerns.
National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) president Dan Balepile said the dismissed were members of both NUM and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu).
He said NUM would represent all the dismissed workers during their appeals hearing on Tuesday. “We are going to conduct a joint representation of the workers, led by the NUM,” Balepile said.
The Amcu leadership could not immediately be reached for comment.
In April, Sibanye-Stillwater said it would enter into section 189 consultations (dealing with retrenchments) with organised labour, regarding the proposed restructuring at its SA gold operations and its Southern African region services functions. The proposed restructuring of the operations and services could potentially affect 3,107 employees and 915 contractors.
The miner said the objective of the consultation process was to “consider alternative measures to minimise job losses while ensuring the long-term sustainability of the SA operations”, among other things.
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