Gold Fields Wage Strike Settled at an Average of 6.5%
August 12 2005 - 11:06AM
PR Newswire (US)
JOHANNESBURG, August 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Gold Fields
Limited (JSE:GFIJSE:NYSE:JSE:GFI) is pleased to announce that it
yesterday finalised a two-year wage agreement with Unions and
Associations, effectively bringing to an end the strike that
commenced with the evening shift on Sunday, 7 August 2005. This
settlement was reached as part of the industry-wide negotiations
coordinated by the South African Chamber of Mines. All employees
are expected to return to work today, Friday, 12 August 2005. While
the settlement for different categories of employees range between
6% and 7%, the weighted impact will be a 6.5% increase in the
salary bill of the Group's South African operations for F2006, and
for F2007 CPIX plus 1%, or a minimum of 6%, for the lowest paid
employees and CPIX plus 1%, or a minimum of 5,5% for the rest. Ian
Cockerill, Chief Executive Officer of Gold Fields said: "I am
pleased that a mutually acceptable wage increase has been agreed
for Gold Fields. However, moving forward it will be essential for
all parties to recognise that we will have to think creatively such
that we can ameliorate the impact of these above inflation
increases and not jeopardise the long term sustainability of our
operations." Gold Fields has a range of cost savings and
productivity improvement initiatives in place across all of its
operations, through which to mitigate upward cost pressures.
Because labour costs account for approximately 50% of total costs
on the South African operations, the impact of this salary increase
on total production costs will be approximately 3%.
http://www.goldfields.co.za/ DATASOURCE: Gold Fields Limited
CONTACT: Enquires: South Africa, Willie Jacobsz, Tel
+27-11-644-2630, Fax +27-11-484-0639; Nerina Bodasing, Tel
+27-11-644-2460, Fax +27-11-484-0639; North America, Cheryl A
Martin, Tel +1-303-796-8683, Fax +1-303-796-8293
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