S.Africa platinum giant says strike could hit profits

A long-drawn strike due to a rivalry between unions at South Africa’s Impala Platinum could affect profits, the company warned on Wednesday.

The world’s second platinum producer said while confident the work stoppage would end soon, the company was meantime losing 3,000 ounces daily.

“Implats will lose approximately 3,000 platinum ounces per day during the work stoppage, which, if protracted will impact our near term profitability as well as the number of jobs we can sustain in the future,” it said.

Impala said it would take legal action to end the stoppage, and not pay wages for missed work days.

“We remain confident that we will secure a return to work soon and are applying for a court interdict.”

The company’s Rustenburg operation, the world’s largest platinum mine, has been dogged by work outages this year.

The latest work stoppage which officials blame of union rivalry, with one trying to strip members from another, was sparked by the arrest by police of two suspects in clashes between unions at the mine last week and violence that occured earlier in the year.

“This action has resulted in the majority of the mining workforce embarking on an unprotected work stoppage in support of their colleagues and a refusal to return to work until they have been released,” it said.

Production at the mine hobbled between January and February this year, when a group of workers began a strike that was declared illegal by a court.

The company sacked more than 17,000 strikers and later re-hired most of them.