{"id":836652,"date":"2025-09-02T14:32:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T12:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=836652"},"modified":"2025-09-02T14:33:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T12:33:07","slug":"jobs-bloodbath-in-south-africa-with-over-250000-people-at-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/836652\/jobs-bloodbath-in-south-africa-with-over-250000-people-at-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"Jobs bloodbath in South Africa with over 250,000 people at risk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Department of Employment and Labour has raised concerns about a spate of retrenchment notices that have gone out at major companies in South Africa, which could impact over 250,000 people down the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minister of Employment and Labour, Nomakhosazana Meth, said she was “gravely concerned” about the retrenchments affecting Ford South Africa, ArcellorMittal South Africa (AMSA) and Goodyear SA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At AMSA, the winding down of the Longs Steel operation by the end of this month will directly impact over 3,500 jobs, but could lead to a loss of over 100,000 jobs downstream<\/strong>, the department said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The department said it has been part of ongoing efforts by key stakeholders including the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC) and the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) to intervene and mitigate job losses at the steel giant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A significant funding allocation of R417 million from the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) under the Temporary Employer\/Employee Relief Scheme (TERS) to support 2,982 employees was secured in May 2025 for AMSA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“However, the company is adamant about proceeding with the wind-down,” it said. AMSA had hoped to secure further funding, which it was unable to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In the absence of securing the funding, the UIF funding did not materialise as our agreement is conditional upon a company providing a guarantee that they would not effect any retrenchments,” the DEL said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because the company could not guarantee to a hold on retrenchments, the deal collapsed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It is unfortunate that we have reached this point with AMSA, but we remain committed to the intervention strategy,” it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, there have been even more job losses in the automotive sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two recent announcements are Ford Motor Company South Africa’s plans to cut 474 jobs at two of its plants which comes after Goodyear SA’s announcement of the loss of 900 jobs at its operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The department said there were “many other similar retrenchments announced in the vehicle and mining sectors in the recent past”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another 155,000 lives being hit by job losses<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Not mentioned by the department, but also a bleak reality, are the retrenchment notices being sent out by mining giant Glencore, which\u00a0could impact over 155,000 lives.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trade union Solidarity confirmed that it has received even more retrenchment notices from the mining group, spelling disaster for workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Glencore, the proposed retrenchments are directly related to the continued non-viability of the smelters to which Glencore supplies its production. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rising electricity costs, Eskom\u2019s tariff structure, the collapse of Transnet\u2019s railway system, and the government\u2019s inability to create competitive conditions in a timely manner have made the situation untenable, it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Glencore has already been hit hard, with 10 of its 22 furnaces permanently or temporarily closed. Solidarity said that if the remaining furnaces are also forced to shut down, it will have a disastrous impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some 2,425 direct jobs, more than 17,000 indirect jobs, and an estimated 155, 000 dependents will then be directly affected, the union said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More positively, the DEL said that it has successfully intervened at the South African Post Office (SAPO), and secured R381 million through the same UIF programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has provided immediate financial relief to 5,956 employees, while enabling SAPO to implement a sustainable turnaround strategy over a six-month period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We are pleased to announce that we were able to intervene decisively with the SAPO turnaround strategy, which is proceeding smoothly,” the department said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, despite the small successes, Meth said it is not enough to counter the jobs bleeding across various sectors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“These are not just numbers, but people with families and children to support and put through school,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We will continue to do everything possible within our mandate to provide the requisite support to struggling companies and contribute to unemployment reduction.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Miners, smelters and auto makers are in crisis, with thousands of workers getting retrenched and hundreds of thousands of lives being directly impacted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":798548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[19235,23525,9693,4921,23526],"class_list":["post-836652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-amsa","tag-fod","tag-glencore","tag-goodyear","tag-meth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=836652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":836654,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836652\/revisions\/836654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}