This was published in Business Report supplement today (for example in Sunday Independent).
Pay the workers and stop promising too much, Mr Cutifani.
Dick Forslund
The strike in the platinum mines might go on for a month or more without any resolution. The workers are determined to hold on. Many of the workers have a home that produces incomes in kind, as well as support and sympathy from families and friends. Indeed, the workers have the sympathy of the broad public. Half of the employees in South Africa are paid R3300 or less per month (StatsSA). They and their families have a life to gain from the mine workers being successful in leading a wage revolution.
But this is a misdirected sympathy howl the corporate cry-babies. The 9% offer from Angloplats, Implats and Lonmin is the rational, neigh even the scientific, solution to the conflict. The “ignorant” R12500 demand is a working class pipe dream that will crush platinum mining in SA. “Amcu is demanding too much”, even now when the union agreed to phase in the R12500 in basic salary over 4 years, whilst limit increases of all other benefits, allowances and bonuses at the rate of inflation.
Read full document The bosses’ demand for 33.9% increase in mining profits
