15 December, 2011After 94 days of strike an agreement was signed in Jakarta on December 14 between PT Freeport Indonesia Workers' Union (SP KEP SPSI) and the Indonesian subsidiary of US mining giant Freeport-McMoRan.
INDONESIA: The agreement ends 94 days of strike by 10.000 miners at the world's largest gold and second largest copper mining complex - Grasberg in Papua province. Work is scheduled to start again on Saturday, December 17.
The agreement was reached with the assistance of the Indonesian government. The miners will be paid wages for the three months they were on strike. Disciplinary actions against a number of strikers are withdrawn. The company will pay allowances for health care, housing and education, shift premiums, service-year bonuses, and a metal bonus, calculated on fixed costs, rather than on variable cost schemes, as Freeport-McMoRan had insisted. Grasberg miners' wages will be boosted 24 per cent for the period to October 1, 2011, and with a further 13 per cent in October 2012.
Some 7,000 of the striking mineworkers had earned between 2.13 and 2.54 US dollars per hour. The 37 per cent raise is well below the union's initial demands. Bargaining committee member Juli Parorrongan said "We made the decision to settle due to humanitarian reasons and out of concern for our workers."
For Freeport, the strike has been costly. The Grasberg mine holds the world's largest gold and second-largest copper reserves, and in October 2011, the company had to declare force majeure to avoid liability as it couldn't fulfil contractual obligations on existing orders. The Grasberg mine was operating at about 5 percent capacity during the strike.
On December 16 the bargaining team of PT Freeport Indonesian Workers' Union, part of the national Chemical, Energy, Mine Workers Union (CEMWU) of SPSI, plans a mass meeting with strikers to brief them on the agreement, and then hold a ceremonial end to the blockade at Mile 28.
See a full report on the strike and blockade on the ICEM website here.