Expatica news

Amplats makes offer to end S.Africa strike as earnings hit

Top platinum producer Anglo American Platinum eyed an end to months of strikes on Wednesday, tabling a fresh offer to South African workers as it warned earnings will sink 20 percent this year.

“Indications are that the strike committee members are happy with the revised offer,” Amplats spokeswoman Mpumi Sithole said.

It appeared the strike-weary miners were considering the improved wage offer and that most would accept it and start returning to work on Thursday.

They are being offered a 600 rand ($68, 53 euro) monthly allowance on top of regular salary and a 4,500 rand ($510, 400 euro) one-off payment to each worker to entice them back under ground.

“The majority have accepted, I can say 80 percent have accepted the offer,” one of the strike leaders Siphamandla Makhanya told AFP.

“Finally we are going back to work,” he said as he and other strike leaders readied for a night meeting to convince the still defiant minority to take on the offer.

But the impact of the strikes on Amplats has been fierce.

The company on Wednesday forecasted a 20 percent plunge in earnings this year.

“Anglo American Platinum is now reasonably certain that basic and headline earnings for the year ending 31 December 2012 will decrease by more than 20 percent from that reported in the year ended 31 December 2011,” it said in a statement.

The company reported 3.566 billion rands in headline earnings for 2011.

“The expected decrease in earnings is primarily as a result of lower sales volumes, the impact of the illegal industrial action on production and cost, higher mining inflation and lower metal prices achieved compared to the comparative period.”

A week ago, the company had put its losses at more than 167,681 ounces of production since the start of September.

The company has repeatedly shifted deadlines and issued threats to definitively sack the wildcat strikers, with little impact.

Even if successful in its latest gambit the company will face a fresh round of wage reviews next year.

Workers have been gunning for hefty pay rises after a deadly strike at nearby Lonmin mine yielded an unprecedented up to 22 percent wage hike.

Amplats is the last big mining company still hit by a wave of illegal strikes which led to more than 50 deaths, including 34 people shot dead by police at platinum miner Lonmin in August.