15 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 on 5 August after a 15-day strike at the world’s largest copper mine, majority owned by BHP Billiton. Mineworkers voted by 65.5% to 34.5% on 4 August to end the strike after their leaders negotiating the previous two days with Escondida management.
Those talks produced a memorandum of agreement providing a remedy to a dispute over a 2010 production bonus. But equally important, the memorandum addressed several grievances and breaches by Escondida management from a 2009 labour agreement.
Sindicato No. 1, representing Escondida’s 2,375 direct-employed miners, 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 connected to Mitsubishi – 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 called the strike illegal and said throughout that it would not negotiate with the union. But as the days wore on and production was crippling revenue from the rich mining complex, 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 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 those stipends; safer and higher-quality bus transport service, and compensation for tickets; no retaliation, redundancy, or punishment for union or strike activity; and review on why the 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 stay vigilant that the issues agreed to in the memorandum will get addressed and 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 on the Pacific Ocean Port of Coloso.
In 2010, Escondida’s production totaled 1.087 million tonnes, consisting of 786,603 tonnes of copper concentrate and 300,098 tonnes of copper cathodes. The Escondida mine complex provides 7% of the world’s copper supply.