More output, fewer workers

Mineral production is increasing as mining employment steadily declines, according to a report produced by the United Nations’ International Labour Office (ILO) in Geneva. The report points out that more than 3 million miners have lost their jobs in the past five years.

The study, titled The Evolution of Employment, Working Time and Training in the Mining Industry, was the focus of a recent meeting of industry experts in Geneva. These experts consisted of 70 representatives of 43 countries, including eight of the world’s largest mineral-producers.

Although employment in mining has stabilized in some regions and may even increase in a few others, the overall trend is toward job losses, and this trend is expected to continue over the next 5-10 years.

“The overall industry trend is one where increasingly skilled miners are working longer hours in a much more capital-intensive industry,” says mining expert Norman Jennings, who authored the report.

Although this once-labour-intensive industry now employs well under 1% of the world’s workforce, producers continue to satisfy a mineral-hungry market by opening new and highly efficient mines (usually in developing countries) and by achieving extraordinary productivity gains at existing mines by making highly skilled workers work even harder.

For example, in recent years, productivity in coal mining has increased by more than 100% in Canada, India and the U.S., and by more than 200% in Australia. In Poland, where coal production fell by about 60% over five years, employment fell by more than 70%. In South Africa, the value of mine production increased by more than 250% between 1985 and 2000, whereas employment fell by 50%.

Global competition and better technology are generating economies of scale, thereby increasing the pressure on older mines in traditional mining centres, such as Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. As a result, mining companies active in these areas are having to reorganize their workforces or else close down operations.

Miners and industry operators face numerous challenges, including an aging workforce, occupational safety and health hazards, fatigue and human error caused by longer work shifts, and HIV/AIDS, which is spreading in regions such as Africa.

“Mineworkers, their families, their communities and their mining companies, notably in sub-Saharan Africa, are particularly affected by HIV/AIDS,” the report states. “In some countries, the proportion of the mining workforce that is HIV-positive is considerably above that of the population as a whole — for example, 20-30% of the mining workforce versus 12% of the general population in South Africa.”

Depending on the degree of labour intensity, HIV/AIDS adds 4-5% to a mining company’s labour costs. In spite of the costs and the complexity of coping with such a problem, the report finds that the mining industry in southern Africa has been increasingly successful at recognizing HIV/AIDS and providing treatment to infected workers and their dependants.

For many miners, fatigue and the consequences of human error are shaping up as one of the major occupational risks, reflecting increased shift work and longer hours on the job. Work in mines is increasingly organized around continuous operations, with miners spending more time on the job followed by longer periods off work.

But the consequences of these practices are not yet clear. According to the ILO report, “the combined effects of shift work and workplace environment in mines, such as noise, heat, dust, hard physical work, ergonomic issues and the effect of each, appear to require further study. This would seem to be particularly relevant where long shifts or many shifts in a row are worked.”

The report warns that fatigue and human error are primarily the consequences of inappropriate practices. Current work patterns may have seriously debilitating effects on judgment and skills, especially in an inherently dangerous activity such as mining.

The report warns that fatigue can be as debilitating as drug or alcohol abuse on work performance. Employees who exceed alcohol limits are generally prohibited from working, whereas a worker who has been awake for 18 hours or more may show the same symptoms but often faces no such barriers. With blasting, drilling and boring going on, sometimes more than 2 km underground and involving large, expensive machines, the intensive work practices currently followed “may turn out to be a poisoned chalice for workers, their families, the mining industry and society at large some years in the future,” the report says.