101 jobs at stake at Skorpion

A HUNDRED jobs at the Skorpion Zinc mine are at stake following Namzinc’s termination of Grinaker LTA’s maintenance contract with effect from February 28.

According to Skorpion the termination of the contract is as a result of changes to the Labour Law, outlawing labour hire.Grinaker LTA, a South African-based construction company to which Namzinc – which manages Skorpion Zinc – outsources all its maintenance work, was last month notified of the termination of its contract with Skorpion from the end of this month.But Grinaker LTA is not a labour-hire company, says Morris Pluker, Site Manager for Grinaker LTA at Skorpion. He says the company has been conducting maintenance work at Skorpion Zinc since 2002, and that the maintenance function at the mine is ‘huge’, with several years of work still necessary.Pluker added that he could understand why labour hire has been banned given the conditions that workers have been subjected to with no sick leave or overtime pay, and insisted that Grinaker’s employees were well paid in addition to other benefits. ‘We are waiting for a response on a new service-level agreement with Skorpion Zinc, but if that agreement doesn’t go through, I would have to let go of all 101 of my staff,’ Pluker says. About 89 per cent of these staff are Namibian citizens.Asked what the difference between the previous and the new agreement would be, Pluker said that the new agreement would be ‘a fixed-term contract for Skorpion to deal with Grinaker supervisors directly, and not with our workers.’A worker at the mine, who brought the matter to the attention of The Namibian, said that a meeting had been called last week at which Pluker informed all employees hired at the site about the new labour law, ‘saying that our current contract will be terminated … and that we will soon sign a services contract with Grinaker, but the conditions stay the same’.The worker, who spoke to The Namibian on condition of anonymity, questioned why workers had to remain under the employ of Grinaker instead of being employed directly by Skorpion Zinc.’Some of us are working in dangerous areas. We have no medical aid or bonus. Let me say we have no benefits,’ he said.The latest developments following the ban of labour hire show that there is a very thin line between labour hire and outsourcing, and a lack of clarity on what differentiates the two, as Grinaker could essentially be hiring labour on the one day, and providing an outsourced service on the next.The entire maintenance function at Skorpion Zinc is outsourced to Grinaker LTA, a company with its own expertise in construction, civil engineering, mechanical engineering and the manufacture of products relating to the construction industry, which does not hire labour to the mine, but rather conducts services outside the scope of the mine’s own core functions. The acting Human Resources Manager at Skorpion Zinc, Michael Cloete, was unable to provide comment at this stage as the company is still in the process of deciding its next course of action. He however said that ‘if one looks at the (new) labour law, one can’t act as a labour broker. So a firm using labour hire is not allowed to do so.’The Namibian is awaiting additional information from Cloete on questions directed at Skorpion Zinc. nangula@namibian.com.na