7 May, 2007
A mass strike in Peru has proven successful, despite government efforts to downplay the effect the strike has had on a number of mining enterprises. The strike was called by ICEM affiliate National Federation of Mining, Metallurgy, and Steel Workers Union (FNTMMSP) on 30 April and, by all accounts, over 40 copper, nickel, zinc, iron, gold, and silver mining operations have lost high levels of production since last week.
The strike can easily be said to be a success, with the government already guaranteeing higher social benefits for contract and agency workers at the outset of the strike. After the union’s return to tri-partite bargaining on 4 May, and following cessation of the strike, FNTMMSP is now pushing for further regularisation of the contract labour status, which needs to include the right to unionisation for contract workers.
The strike by the 28,000-member FNTMMSP saw roughly half of Peru’s 110,000 miners participating. This included a good number of the mining sector’s 50,000 contract or agency workers.
Peru’s Labour Minister Susanna Pinilla, however, has taken to the airwaves and has been quoted in the business press playing down the success of the strike. Throughout last week’s strike, she kept providing a regular narrative of mining operations in Peru that continued production.
The mining union federation, FNTMMSP, covering some 75 individual site-level unions, has complained bitterly to the government for some time that the Labour Ministry and other monitors have failed to keep pace with the burgeoning number of agencies or contract labour providers doing business in Peru’s booming mining industry. Many of these agencies and service providers operate in the black.
“The over-exploitation of these workers has been going on for too long,” said FNTMMSP Sec. Gen. Luis Castillo Carlos, who himself has participated in ICEM conferences on Contract and Agency Labour. “The miners’ strike was called because the authorities lack the political will to enforce labour rights,” he added.
FNTMMSP and its affiliated mining unions are seeking strict regularisation of mining employment agencies; enhanced profit-sharing arrangements for its members and newly-established profit-sharing for contract and agency workers; shorter work days; and improved pension benefits.
The 30 April strike actually started two days earlier when miners from two sites of Grupo Mexico-connected Southern Peru Copper Co. blocked roads around Ilo, Peru. Southern Peru’s mines in Toquepala and Cuajone suffered deep production losses during the strike. FNTMMSP held marches in several regions on 1 May, and also conducted rallies on 2 May and 4 May at the Labour Ministry in Lima.
A sampling of mining operations in Peru affected by the strike includes: Southern Peru Copper Co.; US-operated Doe Run’s La Oroya copper and lead smelting operations; several of Volcan Cia Minera SA’s zinc smelters; BHP Billiton’s Tintaya copper operations in Cusco; Chinese state-run Shougang Hierroperu’s iron ore mines in the country’s south; Glencore International AG’s Los Quenuales zinc operation; Cia. De Minas Buenaventura; and zinc producers Cia. Minera Santa Luisa SA and Cia. Minera Raura SA.
At US-based Newmont Mining’s Yanacocha SRL’s gold mine and smelter, South America’s largest gold operation, miners conducted a march and protest in support of FNTMMSP’s strike.
One already achieved result of the strike is that the government did commit to increase the number of labour inspectors in Peru from 100 to 250 by the end of the year. That should help in monitoring and in getting agency labour agencies to comply with Peruvian law.
Despite Labour Minister Pinilla downplaying the effect of the strike, one cabinet minister did publicly confirm the significance of the strike. “The demands voiced by these workers are fair,” stated Energy and Mines Minister Juan Valdivia in a published report.
Referring to the vast proliferation of service-providing entities inside Peru’s mining sector, he added, “There are companies that comply and others that don’t. The ones that do not respect labour rights should be punished,” said Valdiva.