Court to Determine Fate of Over 1000 Goldfields Staff March 2

Labour High Court Presided over by Justice Laurenda Owusu will on the 2nd of March 2018, deliver its ruling on a suit instituted against Goldfields Ghana Limited (GGL) by the Ghana Mineworkers Union (GMU) seeking to stop the GGL from executing its redundancy exercise.

According to the Mineworkers Union, the GGL plan, if allowed will render over 1700 workers jobless.

The court Tuesday February 20 indicated to the parties that in line with relevant provisions in civil procedure rules, CI 47, it will rely on all the processes filed to deliver its ruling on the 2nd of March 2018.

After the court sitting, lead counsel for the applicants, Charles Bawaduah, expressed satisfaction at the decision and directions of the court.

Per the writ he filed on behalf of his clients Mr. Bawaduah, a former Executive Secretary of the National Labour Commission (NLC), explained that workers are praying the court to restrain Goldfields from going ahead with the intended redundancy exercise until all the stakeholders involved “have concluded or negotiated on whether the exercise can be averted, and if not, the category of workers to be affected and measures to minimise the impact on workers.’’

They are also seeking a declaration from the court that the redundancy exercise is “unlawful” because the reasons given by the mining giant to lay them off do not meet the “requirements, conditions or grounds for redundancy, as provided by Section 65 of the Labour Act, 2013, Act 651.”

The workers further want the court to declare that the purported authorisation of the redundancy exercise by the Chief Labour Officer as “illegal, unlawful and null and void.’’

Parly petition

The Mine Workers Union December last year petitioned Parliament to intervene and stop Goldfields Ghana Limited from sacking about 1,500 of its members.
The retrenchment is expected to affect most of its miners at the Tarkwa mine.

Confirming the exercise in an interview, Goldfields Ghana’s Vice president and Head of Corporate Affairs David Johnson explained that the move is part of measures to change its business model and make the company profitable due to the relatively short lifespan of the mine.

This is the second time in three years that the mining firm has embarked on such a massive retrenchment exercise. In 2014, it laid off about 400 of its workforce over similar concerns.

According to him, the company’s mining fleet has changed and “will need to be replaced now looking at the types of mines that we have which is five to six years of active mining, if we were to pump that money into fleet replacement we will not actually be able to recruit that money back because we are talking of a huge capital investment here.”

Source: Starrfmonline