Lonmin, AMCU break ground on reducing job losses

Last year, Lonmin announced it was planning to downsize its workforce as part of its strategy to become more financially viable. At the time the plan was to retrench 4,500 of its full-time employees and 1,500 contractors.

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“We are delighted to announce that of the 6,000 employees who were at risk of being retrenched, we were able to reduce the figure to 87 employees,” AMCU said in a statement.

It started with freezing general recruitment and natural attrition to reduce the number of workers. In addition, over 1,550 employees left the company through voluntary severance packages (VSP) and early retirement by 16 October 2015. The total number of employees who have taken VSPs to date are 2,979, while other workers have been reskilled and redeployed.

The procedure - which was expected to take two months, ran over to seven months.