Sibanye-Stillwater yesterday said it has laid off 11 500 employees from its southern Africa operations in the past one-and-a-half years.
This comes as 422 more workers currently employed at the company’s Beatrix 1 gold shaft could also be retrenched should the mine fail to turn into profitability.
With the Beatrix 4 shaft, Kloof 2 plant, Kloof 4 shaft, Simunye shaft and 4 Belt reaching end of life, in addition to the restructuring of loss-making shafts: the platinum group metals (PGM) shafts at Siphumelele, Rustenburg, and Rowland at Marikana since the beginning of last year, the company’s employee numbers have reduced drastically.
Together with the right-sizing of Sibanye-Stillwater’s regional head office services, the total number of employees and contractors in the southern Africa region had reduced from 81 500 at the end of 2022 to about 70 000 currently.
This constitutes a workforce reduction of about 14% for the region.
However, Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman said through cooperation and constructive engagement with affected stakeholders and through implementation of retrenchment avoidance measures, Sibanye had reduced the number of forced retrenchments to 966 employees.
“We have restructured the SA region to align with the reduced operating footprint following the necessary operational restructuring for greater regional sustainability and profitability,” Froneman said.
“The restructuring efforts undertaken have not only successfully and proactively addressed loss-making operations, thereby securing the benefits and value they continue to bring to multiple stakeholders, but we have limited forced retrenchments to just 8% of total employees impacted since January, 2023.”
Over the past few months, Sibanye-Stillwater has undertaken negotiations with workers unions and agreed to the continuation of mining operations at the Beatrix 1 shaft “on condition of there being no net losses on an average trailing three-month basis” from the beginning of last month.
“Should this not be sustained, and subject to certain conditions the shaft will be closed,” said the company.
The Beatrix 1 shaft currently employs 422 workers and 100 contractors.
About 629 employees from the company’s gold mining operations had opted for voluntary separation packages or early retirement packages, while 448 employees accepted transfers to the group’s other operations.
A further 111 employees could not be accommodated through the agreed retrenchment avoidance measures and have now been retrenched, with an additional 1 130 contractor employees impacted.
Sibanye-Stillwater's alignment of its regional and shared-services structures to an optimised operational footprint will reduce services and regional overhead costs that are allocated to the operations, “positively impacting the sustainability” of the SA region.
The company is now consolidating its gold and PGM operations under a single operating structure.
“To optimise the SA region for sustained, safe production, the SA gold and PGM operations will be consolidated into a single regional operational structure with functional support from a streamlined services structure.
“The revised operating model and structure will enable operational teams to focus on core operational outputs, with services support geared towards operational delivery and creating an enabling environment for innovation and sustainability,” the company said.
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