[imagesource: Martin Rhodes]

Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman had a very good 2021, as did the company he has sat at the helm of since 2013.

According to its website, the mining company is the world’s largest primary producer of platinum, second-largest primary producer of palladium, and third largest producer of gold.

Earlier this month, it posted a record R33 billion profit and made it rain to the tune of R14 billion in shareholder payouts.

Froneman (above) himself netted – wait for it – R300,3 million in 2021. That’s a considerable spike from 2020, when he took home ‘just’ R62,73 million, reports Fin24:

While Froneman was awarded a basic salary of R12.42 million in 2021, plus an R7.8 million cash bonus, an added R264 million was paid over to the CEO from conditional share proceeds…

The company share price has increased 300% in the past three years, rising from R14 a share in April 2019 to R55 a share currently.

Sibanye-Stillwater’s executive directors and prescribed officers netted a combined R804,9 million in remuneration in 2021.

Some analysts argue that Froneman’s payday isn’t unusual for a CEO running a company of this size.

However, other CEOs at South African metal mining companies that performed well over the course of 2021 weren’t as handsomely rewarded:

Impala Platinum’s long-time CEO Nico Muller took home R108.5 million in 2021. While Anglo American Platinum CEO, Natascha Viljoen, who has been in the job for two years, was paid R28.9 million.

There’s another reason Froneman’s payday is attracting such attention.

For more than six weeks, miners have been striking for an increase and Froneman has played it tough at the negotiating table.

The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) have downed tools since March 10 and are after a R1 000 per month wage increase. This is in line with the raise Harmony Gold agreed to last year.

Sibanye’s offer is R700 per month. Speaking three weeks ago, Froneman said that such a raise was in line with inflation and “the wage profile is fair”.

General secretary at Solidarity, Gideon du Plessis, reckons the CEO’s R300 million payday is “obscene” and “immoral”:

“Sibanye says that the salary increases that the striking workers are demanding are not justifiable, but that kind of package is also not justifiable. The board and the remuneration committee need to own up on how they can support him in his stance regarding salaries for workers compared to his obscene salary,” he said…

Image: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg

“With that kind of salary, he is stuck in the old way of shareholder capitalism, where everything goes to the haves, and the minimum goes to the have-nots”.

It’s certainly unlikely to make him more popular with the miners and their unions holding out for that extra R300 a month.

The longer the strike goes on, the more everyone loses. Some numbers via The Daily Maverick:

South African consumer inflation is currently running at 5.7%, but it must be said that above-inflation wage hikes do not always go far in a miner’s household. The rule-of-thumb estimate is that the typical mine worker has about eight dependants, and the surge in poverty and unemployment in the wake of the pandemic almost certainly means that those numbers have risen…

According to Sibanye’s calculations, after 35 days the strikers will have lost wages that exceed the increases it offered over two years. After 53 days, they will have lost all of the wage increases offered by the company over three years. It’s hard to see anyone winning here.

Well, I can think of 300,3 million reasons why at least one person would consider themselves to be #winning.

[sources:fin24&dailymav]