SPECIAL REPORT: Platinum strike — an industry teetering on the precipice
PLATINUM companies face difficult choices as they balance wage increases increasing workers’ salaries to end a nearly five-month wage strike against their need to invest in their mines to ensure future production and to preserve jobs.The mines owned by the world’s three biggest platinum companies, Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), Impala Platinum (Implats) and Lonmin, in the Rustenburg area have been idled since January 23, when the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) called more than 70,000 workers out on strike to back its demands.The demand for a R12,500 basic monthly salary would have represented a 127% salary increase if paid immediately. Amcu’s relaxed demand, to reach that over four years, amounts to a 23% increase a year between 2013 and 2017."The platinum producers simply cannot give in to Amcu’s current wage demands as the business would not be economic at today’s platinum group metal basket price," says Liberum analyst Ben Davis. "Even the current wa...
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