3,000 S. Africans Sacrifice Jobs to Strike

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa —  About 3,000 black gold miners decided Wednesday to sacrifice their jobs rather than break their union’s 10-day-old nationwide walkout, union officials said.

Anglo American Corp., the nation’s biggest gold producer, gave striking miners until Wednesday night to return to work at the No. 6 shaft of its Vaal Reefs gold mine in western Transvaal province or the low-profit operation would be shut down.

“The workers have decided to go home,” said National Union of Mineworkers spokesman Marcel Golding. “They’ve seen Anglo’s activity as a subterfuge . . . to force them to accept terms and conditions which they find unacceptable.”

The company had even extended the deadline from Wednesday afternoon to give union officials time to explain the implications to the workers, Golding said.

He said the affected miners, whom he numbered at 3,000, would pack and leave in the next few days after receiving final pay-outs, with subtractions for the days they have been on strike and charges for room and board.

Most Live in Hostels

Most black miners support large families that live in poor, remote rural areas often hundreds of miles away. The workers live in hostels on mine property and see their families about once a year.

The miners are striking about two-thirds of the nation’s major gold and coal mines for 30% wage increases, danger pay, increased death benefits and a paid holiday on the June 16 anniversary of the 1976 Soweto riots.

James Duncan, spokesman for Anglo American, said Vaal Reefs miners who go home “will be resigning their jobs by their actions, and the union will be responsible for the loss of these jobs.”

At Anglo’s Landau coal mine about 70 miles east of Pretoria, the company said about 700 miners returned to work Wednesday after it threatened to close the colliery.

Golding said the union lets local members decide whether to return to work when they are faced with losing their jobs in shutdowns.

“There is no way the strike has been broken,” he said. “Where workers have gone back to work, it has been on advice of the union.”

Union Charges

The union said Wednesday that mine security officers used attack dogs and fired tear gas into a hostel at Gencor’s Bracken gold mine on Tuesday in an attempt to force striking miners back to work.

Tshidiso Mothupi, a union spokesman, said that 2,000 miners then staged a six-hour sit-in a half mile underground and that all 6,000 black workers at the mine were back on strike Wednesday.

Harry Hill, Gencor’s chief spokesman, said 90% of miners at Bracken, southeast of Johannesburg, were on the job and added, “We do not use force to get people to work.”

The union says more than 300 of its members have been injured and another 300 arrested during the strike. About 300,000 workers--or about half the nation’s black miners--are on strike.

Food Workers Strike

Another major strike has been launched by at least 4,500 black food workers at 20 mills and food plants across the country, company officials said Wednesday. They said the Food and Allied Workers Union, which wants the minimum wage raised from $60 to $100 a week, has rejected an offer of pay raises averaging 27%.

The Chamber of Mines, which represents South Africa’s largest mining companies, has refused to negotiate on the black miners’ union’s pay demand.

It implemented increases of 15% to 23.4% at its gold and coal mines July 1. The chamber says miners averaged 500 rand ($250) monthly before the unilateral increases, while the union says the average was 340 rand.

Mineral exports earn 70% of South Africa’s foreign exchange, with gold accounting for 40.3%, but independent analysts say the mines stockpiled gold in anticipation of the strike.