JOHANNESBURG – Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), under pressure from South Africa's government, could announce a restructuring plan as early as Thursday that will sharply scale back job losses as it tries to balance out cost cuts and the threat of labour unrest.

Amplats had planned to slash 14 000 jobs and mothball two mines to pull back to profit, but industry sources had told Reuters that the final plan would be pared back, with as few as 5 000 jobs cut.

Militant workers had signalled they will launch protest strikes even if the job cuts fell far short of the initial target. Social tensions were running high after violence rooted in a labour turf war killed over 50 people last year and sparked illegal strikes that hammered production.

For Amplats, reining in costs and cutting production to such an extent that it lifted the price of platinum, used for emissions-capping catalytic converters in automobiles, was absolutely crucial after it fell into a loss last year.

"From the point of view of Amplats itself, both numbers will be critical, how many ounces will you produce, but also how many people, because that impacts on the cost base," said Alison Turner, an analyst at Panmure Gordon.

It was also vital to the fortunes of Anglo American as it tried to turn around at a time when commodity prices were starting to slump.

Militant labour leaders, who closed mines in protest around the platinum belt city of Rustenburg for a day in January when the plans were first unveiled, had said even a scaled back proposal to cut 5 000 or so jobs would be seen as too many.

"Obviously, we will not allow this to happen. If they close one operation, we have vowed among ourselves that all of these operations must stop," Evans Ramokga, an Amplats miner and activist associated with the militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), told Reuters by phone.

AMCU emerged as the dominant union in the platinum shafts last year after a bloody tussle that saw it poach tens of thousands of members from the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), a key political ally of the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

This explained why the ANC and the government had taken such a hard line on the proposed cuts, a striking contrast to past positions when the gold industry was allowed, over the course of a decade, to cut tens of thousands of jobs to remain sustainable.

When Amplats announced the plan in January, the mining minister furiously accused the company of betrayal. Amplats had been in talks with the South African government for months to hammer out the agreed restructuring plan expected this week.

General elections were due next year, and, for the ANC, the union war meant it has lost tens of thousands of potential voters and their many dependents as the NUM was a vehicle for campaigning and getting out the working class vote.