On Feb. 24, Lonmin, a British mining company and the world’s third-largest platinum producer, announced they would be slashing 5,500 jobs in South Africa. The company has asserted that the unions were in full agreement with the job cuts. However, this assertion has been strongly denied by the unions.
Anglo American, another mining company, had just recently announced it will be cutting up to 19,000 jobs, including 10,000 in South Africa.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions has stated, “No trade union movement worth its salt would just fold arms at the time when its members and workers in general are paying the price … for a crisis they did not create; a crisis, in fact, caused by inequities in the global economic system.”
African workers have produced tremendous wealth for foreign mining companies. Many of those workers are now at risk of losing everything they have. The official unemployment rate in South Africa is 23.1 percent, but the real figure is believed to be as high as 40 percent.
