* Talks resume to get workers back next week
* Mines minister says unrest could hit investment
By Ed Stoddard
JOHANNESBURG, Aug 30 (Reuters) – Fewer than 7 percent of
Lonmin’s 28,000-strong South African workforce reported
for duty on Thursday, as the platinum producer held talks with
warring unions aimed at cooling tensions and bringing people
back to work.
The world’s third-largest platinum producer has had its
mining operations shut for almost three weeks because of a
violent turf war between the established National Union of
Mineworkers (NUM) and militant Association of Mineworkers and
Construction Union (AMCU) that has killed 44 people this month.
That total includes 34 striking workers killed at once in a
hail of police bullets, stiffening the resolve of surviving
comrades to hold out until their demands are met.
“We have a 6.6 percent average attendance across all shafts
this morning,” Lonmin said in a statement on Thursday.
The talks to end the impasse in the platinum mining city of
Rustenburg northwest of Johannesburg resumed on Thursday after
dragging into the night on Wednesday.
Gideon du Plessis, deputy secretary general of trade union
Solidarity, said discussions are to secure “a return to
work agreement – with the aim of getting workers back to work on
Monday after most funerals have been concluded.”
Continued…
