Read this article in:
8 August, 2011
Union members of Sindicato No. 1 de Trabajadores de Minera Escondida, a branch of Chile’s Federation of Miners (FMC), returned to work Friday night, 5 August, at the world’s largest copper mine, majority owned by BHP Billiton. Some 2,375 miners at the Escondida mine ended a 15-day strike with a 65.5% to 34.5% vote the night before after two days of negotiating with mine management.
The memorandum of agreement provides a remedy to a dispute over a 2010 production bonus but just as important, addresses several grievances and breaches by Escondida management from a 2009 labour agreement.
Sindicato No. 1 said of the memorandum, “the company promises to solve a series of labour issues such as establishing a new attendance policy, regularising a certification system based on competency for promotions, and reformulating the criteria for calculating a production bonus.” These were just some of the issues in dispute inside a four-year labour agreement that was signed in November 2009.
In 2010, Escondida – 57.5% owned by operator BHP Billiton, 30% by Rio Tinto, and 12.5% by Japanese holding companies – saw profits of US$4.3 billion, up 35% over that of 2009. Last week’s amended bonus to each worker amounts to CHP 2.65 million (pesos), or US$5,800. Miners will receive that on 25 August.
Sindicato No. 1 Files Papers in a Labour Court in late July
Escondida said the strike was illegal and indicated throughout the walkout that it would not negotiate with the union. But as the days wore on and the company was losing US$30 million per day, that changed. In a statement after signing the memorandum of agreement, the company said workers had ended their “illegal work stoppage” and “this action is due to the success of talks between the parties.
“Minera Escondida reiterates that dialogue and respect are the foundation for maintaining a beneficial relationship with its workers.”
Besides the aforementioned labour issues, that respect includes a more transparent system for the production bonuses; restoration of a housing allocation that lifts restrictions on where miners may use the stipends; safer and higher quality buses for transportation to and from worksites, as well as compensation for tickets; no retaliation, redundancy, or punishment for union activity; and review of company-installed surveillance cameras.
Miners will also be paid their salaries for the 15-day strike. Sindicato No. 1 de Trabajadores de Minera Escondida had filed labour court charges on several of the issues involved in the strike.
For its part, the union said it hopes to maintain and deepen channels of communication with management, but also will remain vigilant that the issues agreed to in the memorandum will get resolved.
Minera Escondida consists of two open-pit copper mines some 170 kilometres southeast of Antofagasta, in Chile’s Region II. It also consists of two concentrator plants, Los Colorados and Laguna Seca, which have a combined capacity of 330,000 tonnes per day. The company operates two pipelines and a filter plant at the Port of Coloso.
In 2010, Escondida’s production totalled 1.087 million tonnes, consisting of 786,603 tonnes of copper concentrate and 300,098 tonnes of copper cathodes. It provides concentrates to smelters in Japan, China, Korea, India, and Chile, while the cathodes are sold to markets in France, the Netherlands, Italy, China, Korea, Canada, and Mexico. It provides a total of 7% of the world’s copper supply.