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About 250 members of the National Union of Mineworkers are staging an illegal sit-in underground at Wesizwe Platinum, with the company saying they have refused to return to the surface at the company's Bakubung Platinum Mine outside Rustenburg.
The company did not state the number of employees, but said they refused to surface at the end of their shift on Wednesday. NUM confirmed the number and the strike to News24.
"They are demanding the company begin the wage negotiations [that] should have happened long time ago, before there was any need for a Section 189 process," said NUM spokesman Livhuwani Mammburu.
"They are also demanding the company stop the recruitment for top management positions, which it has advertised," he said.
"That means they have got a lot of money. They have got money to pay top management while they are retrenching workers. How can they be recruiting top management and retrench the workers?"
Wesizwe said earlier that management together with local union representatives are engaging with the purpose of returning all employees to surface.
Last week, the company said it had started a Section 189 process that could result in the retrenchment of about three-quarters of its employees at the mine.
Valued at about R732 million on the JSE, and majority owned by the Jinchuan Group International Resources, Wesizwe seeks to cut about 571 of the people it employs at Bakubung. That is roughly 75% of the staff.
The company blamed the low price of platinum group metals and three previous work stoppages, including another unprotected one, by the workers as the reasons for the job cuts.
Update: This article has been updated with the additional information provided by NUM.
