UNITE and particularly BASSA move with the speed of a glacier, they are a force for stagnation not for flexibility, they have forgotten that the health of the company that pays their employees is paramount - without a healthy company there are no employees and hence no union members.
Juan, those miners jobs were going anyway. The pits were going to be closed because they could not compete.
This is the real issue facing all of us. We cannot compete, we cannot evolve enough to compete with the lowest cost based operator out there. The only way to match them is for the workforce to work for the same terms and conditions. Is this really viable in Europe? I think not.
Therefore we need a solution to the real problem. The real problem is we are unable to compete on equal terms thereby damaging the companies health. Possibly a political solution is required or we all accept that every business will run its course and the day will eventually come when it has to close because it can't compete.