GENEVA (ILO News) - Mineral production is increasing as mining employment steadily declines, according to an International Labour Office (ILO) report 1 which says that well over 3 million miners' jobs have been lost in the last five years alone.
The report, prepared for a tripartite meeting of industry experts (7-11 October 2002, ILO Geneva), says that while employment in mining has stabilized in some regions and may even increase in a few others, the downward job trend will continue: "There are likely to be further reductions in the mining workforce over the next five to ten years", it warns.
According to Mr. Norman Jennings, the report's author and a mining industry expert, "the overall industry trend is one where increasingly skilled miners are working longer hours in a much more capital-intensive industry".
Although this once labour-intensive industry now employs well under one per cent of the world's workforce, producers continue to satisfy a mineral-hungry market, largely on the basis of opening new and highly efficient mines (usually in developing countries) and achieving extraordinary gains in productivity at existing mines through flexible and intensive working shifts with highly skilled workers.
For example, in coal mining, productivity increased by more than 100 per cent in Canada, India, the United States, and by more than 200 per cent in Australia, during recent years. In Poland, where coal production fell by about 60 per cent over a five-year period, employment fell more, by over 70 per cent. In South Africa, the value of mine production increased by over 250 per cent between 1985 and 2000, whereas employment fell by 50 per cent.
Global competition and increased technology are generating economies of scale which are further increasing the pressure on older mines in traditional mining centres, such as central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, obliging them to rationalize or close down.
The issue of providing appropriate skills to the existing workforce and new recruits, so that the industry can meet its new challenges is likely to figure high on the agenda of the tripartite meeting, as is the need for training and finding new employment for retrenched miners, whose job prospects can often determine the fate of entire communities in mining regions. The Meeting is expected to draw upwards of 70 delegates from 43 different countries, including representatives from 8 of the world's 10 largest mineral producing countries.
Miners and industry operators face a number of other challenges including an ageing workforce, occupational safety and health issues (including the under-examined consequences of fatigue and human error as a result of longer working shifts) and the alarming spread of HIV/AIDS which is increasingly prevalent in some sectors of the mining workforce.
"Mineworkers, their families, their communities and their mining companies, notably in sub-Saharan Africa are particularly affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic", the report warns.
"In some countries the proportion of the mining workforce that is HIV-positive is considerably above that of the population as a whole (for example, 20-30 per cent of the mining workforce versus 12 per cent of the general population in South Africa)", it says. Depending on the degree of labour intensity, HIV/AIDS "has been estimated to add 4-5 per cent to a mining company's labour costs." In spite of the costs and the complexity of coping with such a problem, the report finds that "the mining industry in southern Africa has been at the forefront in recognizing and tackling HIV/AIDS including through providing treatment to its infected workers and their dependants".
For many miners, fatigue and the consequences of human error are shaping up as one of the major occupational risks due to increased shift work and longer hours at work. Work in mines is increasingly organized around continuous operations with miners spending more time on the job followed by longer periods off work. But the consequences of these practices are not yet clear, according to the ILO report.
"The combined effects of shift work and workplace environment in mines, such as noise, heat, dust, hard physical work, ergonomic issues and the effect of each, appear to require further study. This would seem to be particularly relevant where long shifts or many shifts in a row are worked."
The report warns that fatigue and human error are primarily the consequences of inappropriate practices. Current work patterns may have more debilitating effects on judgement and skills than is currently thought, especially in an inherently dangerous activity like mining.
The report warns that fatigue can be as debilitating as drug or alcohol abuse on work performance. "Employees who exceed alcohol limits are generally prohibited from working, whereas a worker who has been awake for 18 hours or more shows the same symptoms but faces no such barriers." With blasting, drilling and boring going on in inhospitable environments, sometimes over a mile underground and involving large, expensive hi-tech machines, the intensive work practices currently followed "may turn out to be a poisoned chalice for workers, their families, the mining industry and society at large some years in the future", the ILO report warns.
1 " The evolution of employment, working time and training in the mining industry", document TMMI/2002, International Labour Office, Geneva, 2002. ISBN 92-2-113223-4. Price: 17.50 Swiss francs.