Platinum Pay Talks Not as ‘Hostile’ as 2013, Biggest Union Says
- South Africa’s AMCU union says lessons learned from strike
- Union demands ‘living wage’ of 12,500 rand for lowest-paid
This article is for subscribers only.
The biggest labor union at the world’s largest platinum mines said current wage talks aren’t as “hostile” as they were three years ago, which resulted in a five-month strike, South Africa’s longest.
The stoppage in 2014 “has indeed taught many of us how the wage negotiation should be conducted,” Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union President Joseph Mathunjwa, who led the strike by 70,000 miners, told reporters in Johannesburg Thursday. The situation isn’t as “hostile as it was in 2013. There’s a sense of understanding where the unions are coming from and also there’s a realization in terms of the price of platinum.”