South Africa’s miners’ union says it will try to block the sale uranium mines sucked into billion euro losses by a marathon pay strike earlier this year.
The country’s Labour Ministry says the three-week strike by metalworkers, the largest union, could be settled by week’s end.
The National Union of Mineworkers was not the majority syndicate in the five-month outage by 80 000 workers at three pits that produce 80 percent of the world’s platinum.
Impala Platinum, Lonmin and Anglo American Platinum say the strike cut their production by 40 percent and cost them 1.76 billion euros.
Angloplats says it will sell two mines it owns in Rustenburg northwest of Johannesburg and another it owns jointly with Lonmin.
It reported eleven million euros in headline earnings for the first six months of this year, compared with 93.3 million euros in the same period last year.
The NUM head Frans Baleni says selling mines will cost 20 000 jobs and it will try to stop this.
The 220 000-member National Union of Metalworkers and representatives of 12 000 engineering and car making firms met at the weekend to try to end their three-week strike.
The Labour Ministry says discussions went well and they’re confident there will be a settlement by the end of the week.