Mines can replace people with automation far more easily than the labour unions believe, but there is no substitute for such jobs in the jobs market, director of consultancy To The Point and former Harmony CEO Bernard Swanepoel said on Wednesday. Between 2012 and 2015, SA’s mining sector shed 60,000 jobs. Last week, AngloGold Ashanti warned it was considering retrenching 850 people. Swanepoel said at a Deloitte panel discussion on Africa in 2017 that to unskilled and unemployed people, jobs in mining were relatively more attractive than in any other sector. Mining companies paid double the minimum wage and provided a career path.
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