Sibanye-Stillwater opens retrenchment talks at Beatrix and Kloof gold mines
The company has begun a formal consultation that could cut jobs at two of its oldest South African gold operations, with no number yet given.
Sibanye-Stillwater has begun a formal consultation over possible job cuts at its Beatrix and Kloof gold mines, the company said in an announcement to the JSE on 1 November 2022. The statement gives no number of jobs at risk and no date by which the process will be concluded.
The two operations are among the group’s older South African gold assets. Beatrix sits in the Free State, near Welkom, and Kloof in Gauteng, on the West Rand. Both are deep-level, labour-intensive shafts of the kind that have carried the country’s gold industry for decades and that now sit at the centre of the industry’s cost problem.
A section 189 notice under the Labour Relations Act is the legal step a South African employer must take before it can dismiss workers for operational reasons. It obliges the company to consult the unions and any workplace forum on the reasons for the proposed cuts, the alternatives, and the selection criteria. It does not commit the company to a specific number, and it does not by itself end anyone’s employment.
What the announcement does not say
The announcement does not say how many employees could be affected, what the cost saving is expected to be, which shafts are involved, or when the consultation will close. It does not give a production figure for either mine. Readers who want the detail will have to wait for the next step in the process, which is the consultation itself.
That gap matters in a mining town. At Beatrix, the mine is one of the largest employers in the Matjhabeng area, and a retrenchment there is felt by households that depend on a single wage. At Kloof, the workforce is drawn from townships across the West Rand. The consultation is where the unions will put their case, and where any alternative to dismissal has to be tabled.
Where the company sits
The announcement arrives against a gold price that has moved sharply over the past two years and a rand cost base that has risen with electricity, labour and logistics. South African gold producers have been squeezed from both sides: the metal is priced in dollars, most of the cost is in rands, and the shafts that remain are deeper and more expensive to keep open than the ones that have already closed.
That is the arithmetic in which a section 189 notice becomes the instrument of choice. It is also the arithmetic that a buffer reserve would address, if the industry had one. South Africa’s mining houses pay tax and dividends when the cycle is good and come to the state when it turns. A stabilisation fund, funded from super profits in the good years and drawn down in the bad, would give a company a third option between carrying a loss and cutting the workforce. No such fund exists for gold.
The company’s own account of the decision is what the announcement states, and no more. Sibanye-Stillwater has not said the mines are unviable. It has said it is consulting on possible cuts. Those are different claims and the record should not be asked to carry more than the first one.
What happens next
What follows is the consultation. The unions will be entitled to the company’s reasons, its financial information and its proposals for avoiding or minimising the dismissals, and they will be entitled to respond. If the parties cannot agree, the dispute can go to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration. Only after that process is exhausted can notices of termination be issued.
The announcement was made through the JSE’s Stock Exchange News Service and reported by Moneyweb. The next dated step is the consultation itself, and the company has not yet said when it will begin.
