PRECIOUS METALS

Another wage deal reached in SA gold sector

Unions reach agreement with Village Reef

Staff reporter
 Unions NUM, UASA and Solidarity sign a wage agreement with Village Main Reef in South Africa

Unions NUM, UASA and Solidarity sign a wage agreement with Village Main Reef in South Africa

The National Union of Mineworkers, Solidarity and UASA have signed a two-year agreement with Village Main Reef.

The NUM said its members were excited the wage agreement was concluded without a strike.

"The NUM wishes to express its sincere gratitude to its members at the Village Main Reef for how they behaved during the negotiation period until they gave us the mandate to sign this wage agreement," NUM acting general secretary William Mabapa said yesterday.

Village Main Reef is owned by Hong Kong's Heaven-Sent Gold Group, which acquired the Kopanang mine and West gold plant from AngloGold Ashanti in 2018.

Under the deal, workers in categories 4-8 surface and underground would receive an increase of R800 while miners and artisans would get a 5% increase, the NUM said.

Lower level officials would get R800 or 5% and officials 5% and the living out allowance would be increased to a maximum of R2,500.

Unprecedented action

Gold Fields' South Deep mine had reached a wage deal in June with both the NUM and UASA, the first agreement after the NUM submitted demands and noted it was the first time it would be negotiating with companies on an individual basis outside the traditional centralised collective bargaining council.

Earlier this month, NUM, UASA and Solidarity united with the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union in an unprecedented move to call on Sibanye-Stillwater to meet their wage demands. 

They said the miner should benchmark its offer on the agreement struck in September between Harmony Gold Mining and five unions - the AMCU, NUM, Solidarity, UASA and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA).

At the time, NUMSA said the lowest paid workers at Harmony were "much closer to a living wage than they have ever been before" and would finally earn more than R12,000 (US$820) per month by the third year of the agreement.

"Mineworkers at Marikana declared R12,500 to be a living wage and they died fighting for it. It is long overdue that mineworkers in SA earn a living wage," NUMSA tweeted last month.

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