Continuous mining a win for workers, investors, govt – ex Anglo exec
The acceptance of the global practice of continuous operations by South Africa’s beleaguered mining industry has the potential to create additional wealth that can be shared by all stakeholders, says former Anglo American executive and current Business Leadership South Africa executive member Michael Spicer in a Chamber of Mines- (CoM-) sponsored mass-media article.
In the last of a five-day CoM print campaign on how the mining industry can be positively restructured, Spicer draws attention to South African mines working 90 fewer days than their international counterparts – 230 to 260 days compared with 330 to 360 days.
Spicer says that the 25% to 30 % increase in working time that continuous operations can bring about in South Africa provides the opportunity for higher wages and better conditions for workers, greater profitability for investors, and more taxes and royalties for government, which, in turn, can be translated into better services for mine communities as well as more funds for the general fiscus.
“Such restructuring of the industry requires very close collaboration between the industry, unions and government,” he says in the final broadsheet no-holds-barred advertorial series that has typified the week-long CoM campaign, which was aimed at convincing civil society that the multi-trillion-rand South African mining sector is worth fighting for.
To reduce the hated migratory labour system and to mitigate its destructive features in the short term, higher wages are required, which will be impossible without the gains that continuous mining can bring.
The South African mining industry is the only mining industry where continuous mining is vehemently resisted by unions.
“Management, which seems to have given up on the struggle for productivity bargaining in the face of union obduracy, must share the blame for the untenable outcome,” says Spicer.
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