* Striking workers face a Monday deadline
* Ruling ANC blames Lonmin for labour strife
* Lonmin has lost output worth about $95 million
By Jon Herskovitz
JOHANNESBURG, Sept 7 (Reuters) – Striking workers at
Lonmin’s South African platinum mines where 44 died last month
in labour strife will stay off the job until their demands for
hefty pay hikes are met, a union leader said on Friday.
Workers are facing a Monday deadline to return to the Lonmin
Plc mines paralysed by a four-week strike that
has sent company shares plummeting, raised world platinum prices
and stoked worries of labour unrest spreading through the mining
sector of Africa’s largest economy.
“When the employer is prepared to make an offer on the
table, we shall make ourselves available,” Joseph Mathunjwa,
president at the militant Association of Mineworkers and
Construction Union (AMCU), told a news conference.
On Friday, Lonmin said 2 percent of shift workers reported
to their posts. Miners have said they have been threatened by
striking miners with death if they go back into the shafts.
The strike was sparked by a turf war between the established
N ational Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and AMCU at the Marikana
mine and has led to about 3,000 — mostly rock drill operators
— of Lonmin’s 28,000-strong South Africa workforce to walk out.
Continued…
