JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Multinational mining company Glencore on Monday rejected the National Union of Mineworker’s (NUM’s) allegations that the company had failed to comply with its social and labour plan regarding severance packages, as baseless, saying it was up to the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) to "enforce compliance".

NUM was considering taking legal action against government if Glencore cut over 600 jobs at its Optimum Coal unit.

“We have continually engaged with all parties relating to the consultation process, including NUM and the DMR, to determine whether measures were available to avoid the closure of a number of Optimum’s operations and the resultant job losses.

“It was demonstrated during these sessions that these operations are financially not viable in the current market conditions and that there are no measures available to avoid the retrenchments,” the Switzerland-based miner said in a statement.

Glencore agreed to provide funding to Optimum to enable the mine to pay the full retrenchment costs as tabled at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) and would offer assistance to affected employees through retraining programmes, which would enable them to plan for the future.

This included training in portable skills and financial management. “The retrenchment packages offered are above the industry standard,” Glencore added.

Optimum would also consider redeploying some of the employees to other parts of the business should vacancies become available.

Meanwhile, NUM accused Glencore of “[getting] away with murder”.

“…when we met with the company on June 30 at the CCMA, in Witbank, and, [on]the same day, at the DMR, in Pretoria, the agreement in principle was that after the DMR issued Optimum with [a] Section 93 [notice], the company [needed to] study the document [after which it  would] come back to officially chart a way forward with stakeholders.

“…we are still waiting for a meeting at DMR with Glencore,” NUM advised.

Further, it noted that should Glencore succeed in retrenching the 600 employees, the DMR would have a “big question to answer”, as it was “aware” that the miner failed to comply with Section 52 of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act. “Glencore has also failed to comply with their social and labour plan [within their] severance package, among others,” NUM stated.

The union would now be “watching the space” from now until July 31 to see what the DMR would do to enforce compliance. NUM was consulting its lawyers as to the recourse it would take against the DMR should it fail and Glencore suceeded to implement the retrenchments.

“If Optimum doesn’t comply, the [Mineral Resources] Minister [Ngoako Ramatlhodi] must take the mining licence," said NUM deputy secretary-general William Mabapa, noting that this will be a “testing case” to see whether government would wake up and do its work.

"We are aware that Glencore is still operating with contractors like Coalcore with 1 100 employees and other subcontractors. The Ministers of Labour and Mineral Resources must explain why the company can retrench its employees but continue [to use] subcontractors. This is a foreign approach by Glencore," he added.