Carat1,214 jobs on the table: the union answers Venetia's pause
South Africa's National Union of Mineworkers says De Beers' two-year halt puts 1,134 mine workers and 80 sales staff into Section 189A retrenchment consultation — and demands executive costs share the pain.
§1The payroll gets a number.
The two-year pause at Venetia now has a payroll attached. The National Union of Mineworkers said this weekend that De Beers' decision to halt production at South Africa's largest diamond mine places 1,214 workers into formal retrenchment consultation — 1,134 permanent employees at the Limpopo operation itself and a further 80 at De Beers Sightholder Sales South Africa, the company's Kimberley-based sales arm. The process runs under Section 189A of the Labour Relations Act, the statutory large-scale consultation that obliges the company to consider alternatives before any dismissal.
§2The union's terms.
The union's language was not conciliatory. "Workers cannot be treated as disposable tools," said Masibulele Naki, the NUM's chief negotiator for the diamond sector, arguing that De Beers has understood the diamond market's deterioration for years and should have planned for its people accordingly. The union wants the consultation to examine executive and management costs, retraining and upskilling programs, and cuts to non-essential spending before a single underground job is shed.
De Beers announced the Venetia pause this month as a cash-preservation measure — Bloomberg reported the plan on July 13 — after cutting rough prices at its July sight for a shrinking roster of buyers. Venetia, which transitioned from open pit to underground mining at a cost of roughly $2 billion, was designed to anchor South African production into the 2040s. Idling it for two years mothballs the country's flagship diamond asset while the rough market works through its worst stretch in a generation.
Whoever ends up owning the company inherits the outcome of the Section 189A process — and the labor relationships it either preserves or burns.
§3A sale in the background.
The consultation lands at the most awkward possible moment for the seller. Anglo American has named the Gareth Penny-led consortium its preferred bidder for De Beers, and Botswana is still weighing how to exercise the freedom it says it has over its own 15%. Whoever ends up owning the company inherits the outcome of the Section 189A process — and the labor relationships it either preserves or burns.
A two-year pause is a forecast wearing overalls — it says management believes rough prices will not recover before 2028.
If the union extracts real alternatives to dismissal, the new owners will be glad someone did the fighting before they arrived.
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