INDUSTRIAL ACTION ENDS AT SOUTH AFRICAN MINE

  About 8,000 black miners returned
  to work after a week-long industrial action at South Africa's
  largest gold mine, mine owner Anglo American Corp of South
  Africa Ltd &lt;ANGL.J> said.
      A spokesman for the mining house said the action started on
  Wednesday last week when thousands of miners staged a go-slow
  at One underground shaft of the Free State Geduld division of
  Free State Consolidated Gold Mines Ltd &lt;FSCN.J>.
      The action later escalated into an underground sit-in at
  the mine over the weekend, prompting management to close the
  affected shaft because of what the company described as "the
  creation of unsafe working conditions."
      Anglo American spokesman John Kingsley-Jones said the
  company held talks with the National Union of Mineworkers
  (NUM), South Africa's biggest trade union which claims a
  membership of 360,000 black workers, but failed to establish
  the cause of worker dissatisfaction. He acknowledged that the
  mine suffered a loss of production, but declined to give
  estimates.
      Free State Consolidated last year produced 104 tonnes of
  gold from 28 underground shafts.
      The NUM was not immediately available for comment on the
  action. But a spokesman for the union earlier told the South
  African Press Association that miners had been locked out of
  the mine at the weekend after staging a strike in protest
  against being ordered to carry bags containing explosives as
  well as food for white miners.
  

