Organised South African labour, in concert with Chamber of Mines gold mining companies, have distinguished between capital- intensive mining and labour-intensive-mining in this year’s wage negotiations. Gold Field’s fully mechanised, deep-level, 3 500-employee South Deep gold mine has been allowed to clinch an early deal with its registered trade unions, outside of the chamber’s traditional collective bargaining framework. Labour-intensive AngloGold Ashanti, Evander Gold Mines, Harmony Gold, Sibanye Gold and Village Main Reef, which collectively employ 94 000 mineworkers, acknowledged Gold Fields’ contrasting capital-intensive position, in announcing on the same day as the Gold Fields’ announcement, that their own pay discussions would take place separately in May/June, ahead of the expiry on June 31 of the current centralised collective wage deal. The standalone Gold Fields wage agreement of a 10% a year increase for the next three years at South Deep – which has yet to make a profit – acknowledges the scarce skills problem that mechanised mining faces in South Africa. Gold Fields has struck its three-year agreement with the National Union of Mineworkers and Uasa. The other five labour-intensive gold mining members of the chamber will also have the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union and Solidarity in the mix, in negotiations that Solidarity warns will be South Africa’s toughest yet.

Interestingly, trade union Solidarity, which wants a 12% increase, has also called for the lifting of the mineworker retirement age from 60 to 63, and in some cases to 65, in order to promote the retention of critical skills. Solidarity general secretary Gideon du Plessis also appealed to all parties at this year’s negotiations to balance the needs of employees with the survival of the mining industry. “We are standing at a crossroads and it is in the best interests of everyone for this year’s negotiations to be peaceful and constructive,” Du Plessis commented.

In Australia, meanwhile, there is severe tension between the mining giants and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) over the use of Singapore as a tax haven. While BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto have made no offers to relocate from Singapore, Glencore has been quick off the mark in preparing to close its Singapore hub and run its coal trading out of Australia, which could put pressure on Australia’s treasurer Joe Hockey to retract his statement that he would block a Glencore merger with Rio Tinto, ironically over concerns about losing tax revenue. BHP Billiton’s stonewalling at the Senate inquiry has been incredibly intense, with the world’s biggest mining company refusing to answer repeated questions on whether it has received a position paper from the ATO in setting out how much tax is owed as a result of marketing out of Singapore. Looking more hollow now is also Rio Tinto chief executive Sam Walsh’s claim that the “people who collect tax” will never allow Glencore to merge with Rio, against the background of his company’s disclosure to the Senate inquiry that it paid a mere 5% tax on the $790-million profit that it made in Singapore. BHP refused point plank to reveal how much profit it generated in Singapore and the tax rate there, in spite of the potential risk to its reputation as a good corporate citizen.