BUSINESS DAY vom 22.5.2004
Harmony, unions in restructuring talks
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World number five gold miner Harmony (HAR) has made significant progress in follow up negotiations with the respective unions following discussions on restructuring some of its loss-making operations, the company said in a statement.
At a meeting held between the company, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), United Association of South Africa (UASA) and Solidarity, the parties agreed to a number of principles, namely, to strongly focus on the re-skilling and redeployment of employees affected by the restructuring initiatives; to identify both areas of growth and possible downscaling within the company; continuous operations (CONOPS) to create opportunities for both growth and marginal operations; to accelerate discussions on the actual implementation of CONOPS at the individual mines; and voluntary retrenchments at all mines.
The abovementioned principles have been agreed to on national level and negotiations will now be moved to the individual operations.
"We are extremely pleased with the outcome of the negotiations which have taken place over the past few weeks. All parties should be congratulated for their positive approach to dealing with operations within Harmony which have come to the end of their economical life," commented Harmony chief executive Bernard Swanepoel.
"With the introduction of CONOPS throughout the company, we anticipate that the loss of employment opportunities will be minimised. All stakeholders in Harmony stand to benefit from this important agreement," he concluded.
NUM said that parties had agreed on a process to manage surplus workers, who may not be absorbed after redeployments have been completed.
"Although we have come out with some framework, today's meeting was not as successful as we had hoped it would be. We managed to rescue it from being derailed. What is important, however, is that we have not agreed on any retrenchment, but rather a process of allowing those workers who wish to take a voluntary package to do so", Gwede Mantashe, NUM General
Secretary.
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Es tut sich was bei Harmony, siehe auch Posting vom 19.5.2004!
Kuddel
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