The more than 300,000 gold and coal miners in South Africa who went on strike this summer for three weeks returned to work without the 30% increase in wages the National Union of Mineworkers was demanding.
Perhaps because of its short duration, the strike’s impact on financial markets and in particular the price of gold was negligible. Individual mines in the country reportedly had large stockpiles of ore available for processing. Almost 40,000 miners were said to have been fired during the strike.
Pay raises of 15%-to-23% introduced in July of this year by the Chamber of Mines remain. Negotiated by the union were an improvement in death benefits and an increase in vacation pay.
South Africa mined half of the non-Communist world’s gold output in 1986.
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