Read this article in:
30 June, 2008
ICEM Peruvian mining affiliate, Federación Nacional de Trabajadores Mineros Metalúrgicos y Siderúrgicos (FNTMMSP), began a national strike today over the National Assembly’s inactivity on two key pieces of labour legislation.
Despite President Alan García signing into law on 24 June a measure which gives new rights to contract workers, legislation remains stalled on raising the national threshold for profit-sharing plans and on improvements to pension schemes.
The union had twice previously – in May and again on 16 June – postponed strike actions by its 28,000 members in hopes that the government would act on all three issues to avert a national mining strike. The indefinite strike began at midnight today by several of FNTMMSP’s 70 branch unions, and is expected to spread over the next few days.
“There is a total lack of political will by the government to solve the demands of miners,” said FNTMMSP Secretary-General Luis Castillo Carlos late last week. “Many miners Exist on starvation wages, they do not have access to health benefits, nor do they have the right to retirement benefits for their service work.”
On 28 May, the National Assembly passed an outsourcing law that affects 85,000 contract workers in the mining sector. García had 30 days to sign it into law and did so three days before it was to expire. The law places stricter regulations on contract employers, including adherence to the nation’s labour code. It also grants contract workers the right to grieve adverse work conditions to the primary employer, and sets up an agency to monitor such abuses. Employers with contract workers can now face first-time sanctions.
The FNTMMSP had been the driving force inside Peru for the law, which was ardently opposed by business groups on the basis on restricting labour market flexibility.
Today’s strike is expected to hit Peru’s copper, gold, silver, zinc, and iron ore production, as well as send prices upward on world markets for those commodities. The strike will also again close Grupo México’s Southern Copper mining and smelting operations in Peru’s southern Moquegua province.
Southern Copper was closed for ten days in mid-June as roads were blocked in a regional dispute with the central government over tax revenue sharing. That dispute saw mayors of several towns in the south embarking on hunger strikes in Lima.
And Peru’s largest national labour centre, the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), has called a strike of its member unions on 9 July over rising food and energy prices, as well as on the legislative inertia over the profit-sharing and pension issues.