(20 Aug 2012) Striking miners remained defiant on Monday, four days after police shot dead 34 of their compatriots, with at least two thirds of them staying off the job.
The Lonmin PLC platinum mine has extended its ultimatum by a day, saying strikers have until Tuesday to return to work or get fired.
Mark Munroe, executive vice president of Lonmin, said 30 percent of the 28,000 workforce reported for duty at the mine on Monday.
The figure included a mere seventeen percent of the 3,800 rock drill operators, called RDOs, who were striking for higher wages amid a dispute pitting the country's oldest and biggest trade union against a start-up.
Munroe said he thought the focus now "should be on restoring normality to both Lonmin, the environment and the communities around us."
A representative of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), South Africa's biggest mining union urged the strikers to return to work.
"Workers must report to work and the police must make sure that it is safe for the workers to return back to work," said NUM representative Eric Gcilitshana at a news conference on Monday.
The NUM has never supported the strike led by a rival union.
Ten people, including police officers and mine workers, had died in violence at the mines in the days before the shootings.
Last year, Lonmin fired all 9,000 workers when a similar dispute over union representation stopped work at its nearby Karee mine, then asked them all to reapply and rehired all but a few considered responsible for the strike.
Lonmin has lost 18.5 percent of its share value since the strike began on 10 August. Since violence broke out shares have fallen by as much as 20 percent, at one time wiping some 390 million pounds (610 million US dollars) off the company's market value.
President Jacob Zuma announced a week of national mourning starting Monday and urged the country to "reflect on the sanctity of human life" and "unite against violence from whatever quarter."
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