SA gold miners return to work

According to South Africa’s Chamber of Mines, the 100,000 member National Union of Mineworkers has accepted an improved wage offer and will send its members back to work beginning on Thursday night.

The new offer gives miners a wage increase of between 6 and 7 percent. The strike began on Sunday night when the primarily black NUM began a work stoppage. They were joined on Monday by the predominantly white Solidarity union, with about 10,000 members.

It is expected that the Solidarity workers will also return to work. A spokesman for Solidarity said that it had also accepted the terms of the settlement and that their workers would be asked to return to work beginning on Friday morning.

The strike was called after the Chamber of Mines had offered a wage increase of between 4 and 5 percent; the miners originally asked for a raise of between 10 and 12 percent. The strike stopped work at the South African mines belonging to the second, fourth, and sixth-largest gold producers in the world.

The strike had little impact on spot gold prices around the world, but shares in the affected companies had fallen during the strike. As soon as the end of the strike was announced, those shares began to rise again.