JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The leader of South Africa's AMCU union said on Friday a wage deal with the world's top three platinum producers was imminent, in a sign the longest mining strike in the country's history may soon be over.
Workers and shop-stewards from the Association of mineworkers and construction union (AMCU) begged leader Joseph Mathunjwa on Thursday to end a five month stalemate and sign the latest offer from platinum companies, which amounts to an increase of around 20 percent, or 1,000 rand ($93) per month.
Mathunjwa told Johannesburg radio he hoped to meet with leaders of Lonmin, Anglo American Platinum and Impala Platinum late on Friday or over the weekend to relay the response of his members to the offer.
"At least there is light at the end of the tunnel, which is not the light of a goods train," he told Talk Radio 702.
The major outstanding sticking point was whether the wage deal should stretch over three or five years, he added.
"We are in quite a sensitive stage of trying to resolve this and reach and agreement. We won't do things haphazardly," he said.
South Africa is home to 80 percent of the world's known platinum reserves and the strike has halted production at mines that usually account for 40 percent of global output of the precious metal.
The strike by the 70,000 AMCU members began in January and dragged Africa's most advanced economy into contraction in the first quarter as mining output fell at the steepest rate in half a century, and pulled manufacturing down with it.
(Reporting by Ed Cropley; Writing by Joe Brock)
