Amplats backs workers stake in mines
The mining industry had no choice but to modernise by, among other things, bringing employees in as shareholders and making them privy to business decisions to achieve stability and calm investors’ fears about the future of mining in SA, Anglo American Platinum (Amplats, AMS) chairman Valli Moosa said on Wednesday.
The five-month strike in the platinum sector in the first half of the year sent a clear message to mining bosses and investors that the status quo could not continue, Mr Moosa said at the second Joburg Indaba to discuss the mining sector.
“If poor workers go on strike for five months and don’t get close to what they were demanding, and if it took that to send the message, we should be ashamed of ourselves that workers had to sacrifice so much,” he told more than 400 delegates from companies, investment funds, law firms, the government and the ruling African National Congress.
“The system does not work,” he said, and Amplats would start driving fundamental change in the company to make sure such labour action did not happen again.
Nothing “spooked” investors more than an “irrational, wild” labour force. Modernising mining operations would restore investor confidence, Mr Moosa said.
When asked what fund managers expected from mining companies, Sandy McGregor, a portfolio manager at Allan Gray, said: “Until companies make profits, none of the other agendas in the mining industry can be addressed, and shareholders must get some of those profits.
“What we want is profit. We want mining companies to make money. If they don’t make money, why should we invest in them?”
Mr Moosa said: “The returns this industry is producing for shareholders are pathetic. It’s a wonder shareholders are still with us.”
Article taken from http://business.iafrica.com/