Burgess COMMENTARY
I have followed the Lonmin miners' story since it first got into world news, not only for the story itself but because of the much bigger world issue that this story represents.

The pay and working conditions for workers around the world are unacceptably bad ... they are material that would fill hundreds of books writtten by Charles Dickens in the 19th century. Raw market economics gets the wrong answer if human dignity is to be respected at all.

The 'market' construct is a useful way of looking at economic behavior ... including business decision making ... but it should be done carefully. The main decision making market is the one that relates to the value of the business as it relates to investors ... a complex relation ship with money profit at the center. There are other markets that are in the value chain ... firstly, the market for the product and therefore the price, the margin and the profit. And then there is the market for labot, and in the modern world labor is abundant and its market price low and getting lower. Productivity makes the labor market even worse for workers, and better for employers, the executives and the investors. Lower labot costs increase margines and increases profits ... all of which is good for investors.

In a TureValueMetrics environment, low wages and poor working conditions and poor living conditions are liabilitiesa in the state of the community and the state of the nation. Companies that deliver these liabilities should be held as accountable for poor performance in delivering quality of life to the community as they are when they fail to deliver money profit and value to their investors.

The events in recent weeks in South Africa highlight the efforts that have been made over the past 18 years or so to stabilize the economy of South Africa so that investor profits are protected and the executive class in business and politics are also protected. Working class people in South Africa remain an underclass even though the apartheid dimension of working class oppression has gone.
Peter Burgess

South African miners begin returning to work ... Striking workers at Lonmin mine start to return to work after pay deal, as unrest spreads to nearby mines.

Miners at the Marikana platinum mine in South Africa have begun returning to work after agreeing a pay deal.

Strikers workers went back to work on Thursday at the Lonmin plant, the scene of violent protests in which dozens of miners were shot by police.

The return to work came as the final day of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) conference took place in Midland, Johannesburg.

Cosatu is expected to decide whether it will open its own inquiry into the Marikana shooting and the state of the country’s mining industry.

Many striking miners have left the unions that represented them.

Mike Hannah, reporting from Johannesburg, have said:'The government has put a police in place with regard to the mine companies,the governments position is that some ofmining companies like Lonmin who own the Marinkarna have not met their full agreement as they have agreed with the government as a whole.

'Now you are going to see pressure from the company ramping up to carry through things like renivating the hospitals where which workers stay and better living conditions in and around the mines.'

Tear gas

On Wednesday, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters near a mine run by the world's biggest platinum producer Anglo American Platinum, as unrest spreads after strikers at rival Lonmin won big pay rises.

Within hours of Lonmin agreeing pay rises of up to 22 per cent, workers at nearby mines called for similar pay increases on Wednesday, spelling more trouble after six weeks of industrial action that claimed more than 40 lives and rocked South Africa's economy.

Police clashed with a crowd of men carrying traditional weapons such as spears and machetes in a township at a nearby Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) mine outside the city of Rustenburg.

Officers fired tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets to disperse an 'illegal gathering', police spokesman Dennis Adriao said. He had no information on any injuries.

Anglo American later issued an ultimatum to their striking workers to end the illegal strike.

'Anglo American Platinum has communicated to its employees the requirement to return to work by the night shift on Thursday 20 September, failing which legal avenues will be pursued,' the firm said in a statement.

The ultimatum by the world's top platinum producer came after police arrested 22 people in protests after it had urged workers to return to five mines that were shut down over safety fears last week.

The number of dead from the unrest rose to 46 when a woman was struck by a rubber bullet on Wednesday as police dispersed mine protesters, Central Methodist Church Bishop Paul Verryn, who has been counseling striking miners, told the Reuters news agency.

'We want management to meet us as well now,' an organiser for the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) at Impala Platinum, the second biggest platinum producer, told Reuters.

'We want 9,000 rand ($1,100) a month as a basic wage instead of the roughly 5,000 rand we are getting,' said the organiser, who declined to be named fearing recriminations from the firm.

Lonmin deal

A labour activist said workers who had stayed off the job at Amplats, which accounts for 40 per cent of global supplies of the metal used for catalytic converters in cars and jewellery, were inspired by Lonmin and would press on with their demands.

'The mood here is upbeat, very celebratory,' Mametlwe Sebei, a community representative near Rustenburg, said. 'Victory is in sight. The workers are celebrating Lonmin as a victory.'

President Jacob Zuma expressed relief at the pay deal after criticism from the opposition and media of the government's handling of the crisis - not least in the aftermath of the police killing of 34 Marikana miners on August 16.

Further fuelling union rivalry, jubilant workers at Lonmin's Marikana mine, 100km northwest of Johannesburg, painted the wage deal as a victory for AMCU over the dominant National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), an ally of the ruling African National Congress.

Lonmin shares rose more than nine per cent in early trade on news of the pay deal, but gave up most of those gains as the reality of the extra costs to a company struggling with a shaky balance sheet and unprofitable mine shafts sunk in.

Platinum prices rose a little on Wednesday after falling 2.6 per cent a day earlier on news of the Lonmin deal.

In Depth

• In pictures: Marikana miners
• Legal implications for S African miners
• Can Zuma survive?
• Mine Shooting: Who is to blame?
• Sordid tale of miners' strife
• Will Marikana resurrect Julius Malema?
• Has the post-Apartheid bubble burst?
• South Africans react to mining 'massacre
• S Africa miners complain of 'living hell'