Labour union the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has strongly decried the plans announced by multinational diamond company De Beers and De Beers Sightholder Sales South Africa (DBSSSA) to pause production at the Venetia mine, in Limpopo, for two years and to issue a Section 189A notice to employees.
The NUM says this decision threatens the livelihoods of 1 134 permanent employees at the Ventia mine and a further 80 employees at DBSSSA.
The union says it is deeply disturbed by how the management at De Beers communicated this decision, adding that the company attempted to portray it as a sudden and unavoidable crisis when, NUM argues, the company had long been aware of the challenges facing the diamond industry.
“Workers cannot be treated as disposable tools that are discarded whenever companies face economic pressures. De Beers has known about the challenges confronting the diamond market for a long time.
“It is therefore disingenuous to present this announcement as a sudden crisis. Workers and their trade union should have been engaged honestly and transparently long before a Section 189A notice was issued,” says NUM national health and safety secretary and diamond sector chief negotiator Masibulele Naki.
He added that workers should not be the first to face wage cuts or layoffs, especially given that staff salaries are not the reason for the company’s financial struggles.
The NUM has demanded that De Beers and DBSSSA urgently consider viable alternatives such as retraining and skilling programmes, temporary job preservation measures, a reduction in non-essential expenditure and a comprehensive review of executive and management costs.
The NUM also calls on South Africa‘s departments of Mineral and Petroleum Resources and Employment and Labour, organised labour and all key stakeholders to intervene urgently to protect jobs at Venetia and DBSSSA.