Strikes avoided at Chile's Escondida, Caserones copper mines
Finalizing a tense period of wage negotiations, unions at BHP's Minera Escondida and Lumina Copper's Caserones decided to accept the companies' latest offers.
About 93% of unionized workers at Escondida, the world's biggest copper mine in northern Chile, approved the company's proposal, the union said in a statement Friday evening after the contract was signed the same day.
BHP confirmed in a release that the contract was signed Friday afternoon, avoiding a repeat of last year's strike.
The company's final offer included an end-of-conflict bonus worth 16mn pesos (US$23,963), a soft loan of 3mn pesos and a salary readjustment of 2.8% in real terms, instead of the 1.5% offered before an obligatory mediation process began.
BHP also reportedly accepted keeping in place a housing loan that was offered before the mediation process, newspaper Pulso said.
Escondida (in photo) produced 903,000t of copper last year.
CASERONES WORKERS SIGN CONTRACT
Lumina Copper's Caserones union said that it had agreed to sign the collective contract with the terms of the company's last offer made August 13, also following government mediation.
"In consequence and with the mandate that they granted us, we have proceeded to sign the collective contract, ending the process of collective negotiation," said the union in a press release.
Minera Lumina Copper Chile confirmed that the negotiation process had ended "successfully Thursday, August 16 with the signing of the new collective contract."
The end-of-conflict bonus was reportedly to be more than 14mn pesos, according to local newspaper El Mercurio.
Caserones, also in northern Chile, produced 122,800t of copper in 2017.
ANDINA UNION APPROVES STRIKE
A small union at Codelco's Andina division said via Twitter that the majority of its members had agreed to start a strike from Monday for three months, due to what it called an anti-union proposal made by the company.
This union accounts for 83 of the 1,758 Andina workers and work mainly in the copper concentrator plant. The strike is not expected to seriously disrupt operations.
The division produces around 200,000t/y copper, a little over 11% of Chile's total.
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