The Labour Court has approved an interdict brought by dual-listed Sibanye-Stillwater against the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU).

This interdict prevents the unions and their members from, among other things, committing acts of violence, harassment and/or intimidation, stopping any other employees from going to work and interfering with service providers, suppliers, customers and/or the business of Sibanye and its associated companies and operations.

The interdict will ensure that nonstriking employees must be allowed to exercise their right to work, in the same way as we have respected AMCU’s right to strike, CEO Neal Froneman commented.

“The safety of our employees is our primary concern and we are hopeful that the levels of intimidation and violence affecting our operations since the strike began will reduce and we can avoid further tragic incidents,” he added.

As previously announced, the statement on Friday noted that night shifts have been suspended for the duration of the strike in order to ensure the safety of employees. Day shifts will, meanwhile, start a few hours later, so that employees who wish to report for work, do not travel in the dark, the company added.

On Friday, Sibanye reported that, apart from isolated incidents at its Beatrix operations, in the Free State, the strike action at its gold operations over the last 12 hours have been more peaceful, with less violence.

BACKGROUND
Earlier this month, on November 14, a three-year wage agreement was signed between Sibanye-Stillwater and the the NUM, Solidarity and Uasa.

However, despite AMCU having participated in the construct of the final offer, the union declined to accept the offer.

The average basic wages for category 4 to category 8 employees have increased by more than 65% since Sibanye-Stillwater was unbundled from Gold Fields in 2013.

This, the miner said, is “significantly above inflation and represents a very real improvement in the standard of living of our employees”.

“The current wage agreement reached with the NUM, Solidarity and UASA is well in excess of inflation, but takes the longer term sustainability of the gold operations into consideration.”