2,000 More S. Africa Miners Fired
A gold mining company dismissed about 2,000 black miners Saturday when they refused to break a 13-day-old national strike.
Johannesburg Consolidated Investments fired miners who missed a Friday night deadline to return to work at the Randfontein Estates Gold Mine, southwest of Johannesburg.
The company is one of six major mining firms targeted in the strike by the National Union of Mineworkers. The union says 340,000 miners are striking at 45 major gold and coal mines in the biggest legal strike ever in South Africa.
It is also legal for mining houses to dismiss miners who do not show up for work, and three firms have sacked 9,000 so far.
The first dismissals were employees at unprofitable or marginal shafts where jobs had been in jeopardy before the strike. But an additional 41,000 strikers were threatened with dismissal or disciplinary hearings last week.
Cyril Ramaphosa, general secretary of the union, said it would take the industry six months to train replacements if it tried to dismiss all strikers.
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