South African unions declare wage dispute with gold producers

The largest unions in South Africa's gold mining sector declared disputes with producers on Thursday after wage talks deadlocked, sending the negotiations to a government mediator, a necessary regulatory step before their members can go on strike.
The two sides have been poles apart: the industry squeezed by falling prices and rising costs versus labour demands for big wage hikes to close what it says is the "apartheid wage gap" - the disparities that persist between the black workforce and white management two decades after white rule ended.
A spokesman for the National Union of Mineworkers, the biggest union in the gold sector, said it did not hold out much hope that the parties could reach a deal under mediation and that a strike against AngloGold Ashanti, Harmony Gold and Sibanye was "unavoidable." "The talks have completely collapsed, it as if we had never negotiated at all," spokesman Livhuwani Mammburu told Reuters.