JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Diamond giant De Beers has “illegally” retrenched more than a thousand workers at its South African mines, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said on Wednesday.

The union said that the retrenchments were “premature”.

The Labour Court declared the termination of employees’ contracts of no force and effect, and ordered De Beers to pay the cost.

De Beers responded that it would consider the reasons for the order from acting Justice Bhoola, and then decide on the way forward. It would either take the matter up on appeal, or it would issue new notices of termination effecting the retrenchments.

“This order does not mean employees retrenched are to be reinstated,” the company said in a statement.

The NUM had approached the Labour Court for relief after De Beers served employees with Section 189 notices, but dismissed workers before it had reached an agreement with the union on severance packages.

De Beers undertook a retrenchment process involving several steps, including the issuing of Section 189 notices, and consultation with employees, and the issuing of termination notices, as part of several deep cost cutting steps to counter the effects of the global economic down turn.

“De Beers Consolidated Mines had a total of 659 employees affected. Of this number of retrenchees, 286 employees had their application for voluntary retrenchment accepted, and 373 retrenchments were involuntary. There was at the start of the process about 1 400 positions at risk, of which several hundred posts were vacant,” the company reported.

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