I was just reading the story about the striking mine workers. It came to me after reading the comments that we have some heartless people out here. While I agree that R9000 a month seems a bit on the high side of the scale I certainly believe that they do deserve more than R4000 a month.
Mind you the person who said they were earning that R4000 said this was after 10 years of being in the employ of the mine. I am not sure how the annual increases work at this mine but what would this person’s initial salary have been if after 10 years this is what they are taking home? Certainly we should not act like exploitation is a thing of the past because I can’t help but feel these guys are getting exploited.
I did some EXTREMELY rough math and before anyone goes off on a tangent about the costs of this and that that I have not included and the price that the mine sells vs the price per ounce that we see on the telly every night I will say off the bat I am making many assumptions. Off the scant info from the article I have seen we can safely assume that 22 000 people have been fired since 27 Jan 2012. The mine has lost 60 000 troy ounces of what I assume is platinum; Implats being the mining company’s name and all.
At $1600 an ounce that is about $99 600 000 which would translate to about R769 000 000. This is in under a month the amount of money that has been lost by the mine. Now don’t forget that I am making gross assumptions here but assuming that the miners were getting R4000 take-home the mine is at minimum or maximum spending R88 000 000 on these guys. Obviously I am talking net and not gross salary here as well but if we look at the numbers something is very very wrong. If you are clearing over R750m a month and you can’t have your employees taking home more than R5500 someone is pocketing truckloads of cash somewhere.
I don’t know the full complement of staff at the mine and I don’t know what their electricity and water bill is and all that other stuff but generally we like to think of mining as a lucrative trade. This is certainly not the case for these miners who incidentally happen to be the ones who do the most back breaking work of the lot.
Comments like “Pay them less and employ more people. If this is done all over S.A. more people can be employed. Use bonuses as well to employ more people and produce more so that the economy can grow.” By Ben S show a distinct lack of caring and maybe a lack of thinking too. Maybe he was trying to be smart and funny but he failed at both. PointBlank said: “ask a miner if he has a degree in mining.”
Irene had this to say: “Maybe if they spent their time at school studying instead of protesting, they might have been able to study and wouldn't be labourers. If a labourer expects R9k a month, what about those who have spent years studying!” I think she kinda missed the part in SA’s history when people were deliberately given inferior education so that they could get trapped in these kinds of jobs.
Johan asked a simple question: “And how much is the mine's profit? FFS!! Greed!!” And he was met with more thumbs down than thumbs up???
Mervin said: “I for sure won't work under ground for R4000. Than being said, no one force them to work there, with our level of unemployment, I'll say fire them. There's thousands that will fill their positions in no time.”
This type of thing goes on and on and as I said I get the distinct impression that people out here don’t care. When we are sitting at our desks commenting on News24 articles during work hours in our air conditioned offices we have no idea what these people go through.
So when the miners finally decide that they ARE being exploited morons like some of the people here arrive at conclusions like Mervin's. Which is basically: Fire them we can find other people to exploit.
We seem not to understand that the mines are also wrong in paying people such ridiculously low wages and we are gaaning aan about the miners this and that without saying anything about the actions of the mine owners.
Like I said my little calculation further up is probably grossly incorrect but it should shed some kind of light as to the amounts of money these mines make. I would go so far as to say that an ounce of platinum is worth about 3 peoples salaries a month. One ounce for 3 people when you can clear over 60 000 ounces in under a month?
Maybe I’m just overly sympathetic but I think we should be on the miner’s side instead of sitting on our high horses talking about how the miners should be thankful. We can’t expect people to be thankful when they are getting exploited. It none the less warms my heart to see that there are some people who also agree that the wages these guys are getting are disgusting.
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