Johannesburg – South Africa’s platinum industry is in “severe financial distress” and high wage settlements to get wildcat strikers back to work will lead to job cuts, Anglo Platinum [JSE:AMS] said.

The world’s top platinum producer said it was losing production averaging 3,694 ounces of platinum per day due to a strike at its South African operations that is in its seventh week. To date 141,640 ounces of the precious metal have been lost. 

“This is completely the wrong time to be offering unsustainable wage increases that the moment people are back at work you just have to (lay off) a whole lot of people,” the firm’s chief executive Chris Griffith told Talk Radio 702 On Thursday. 

“There will be implications for jobs,” he said adding that Amplats could not “negotiate in a climate of anarchy”. 

Amplats parent company Anglo American [JSE:AGL] has already placed its four Rustenburg mines “under review” – management-speak for their possible closure.

Layoffs in the mining industry were a prime factor behind a rise in unemployment in the third quarter that left more than one in four of the labour force out of work. 

Months of unrest in the mines have hit platinum and gold output, threatened growth and drawn criticism of President Jacob Zuma for his handling of the most damaging strikes since the end of apartheid in 1994. 

But the number of strikes has dropped in the last two weeks amid management threats of mass dismissals and some payment sweeteners. 

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