Enlarge imageBy Manuel Farias
ANTOFAGASTA, Chile (Reuters) - Striking workers at Chile’s Escondida, the world’s largest copper mine, rejected fresh salary and benefit offers from the world’s largest copper mine late on Sunday in a surprise vote that came after a week of hard negotiations.
The strike has seen daily production at Escondida, majority-owned by BHP Billiton Ltd./Plc, cut in half since it started on August 7 and forced the global miner to declare force majeure on shipments of copper concentrates.
"It (the offer) was just rejected unanimously in the assembly, halfway through the presentation," Union secretary Pedro Marin told Reuters in Antofagasta, the mining town that serves Escondida and a host of other mines owned by multinational companies.
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The offers represented a substantial improvement over earlier proposals from the company and included bonuses of up to $32,000.
The strike has generated debate in Chile about what fair union wages are at a time of huge profits in mining, its backbone industry, and has sent global copper prices up and down as investors bet on when and how it will end.
Marin said the vote had to be ratified still by a government labour representative.
Escondida’s offer includes two contract options, one for a four-year deal and the other for a three-year deal.
The four-year deal proposes the equivalent of $32,000 in bonuses and soft loans and a 4 percent wage hike for the first three years of the contract and a further 1.3 percent raise in the fourth year.
The three-year deal proposal includes the equivalent of $23,500 in bonuses and soft loans and a 4 percent raise over the life of the contract.
Both contract proposals include health, education and vacation benefits.
Escondida, majority-owned by global mining company BHP Billiton Ltd./Plc, supplies about 8 percent of global copper output.
Workers said earlier on Sunday they were open to any new contract proposal from the company that reflects copper prices are five times higher than they were when the union signed its last contract in 2003.
Copper prices are near $3.50 a pound, compared to 67 cents a pound three years ago.
Marin said earlier workers would not vote for on the deal until Monday at 11:00 a.m. (1500 GMT), when a government official could be present to bear witness to a fair vote.
Instead, workers rejected the deal outright, Marin said.
The 2,052-member union at Escondida walked out on August 7, demanding a 13 percent raise and a special $30,000-per-worker bonus. They later said they would accept a 10 percent raise.
The company, which reported a $2.9 billion net profit in the first half of 2006, had offered in its last proposal a 3 percent raise and $15,000 in bonuses and soft loans.
The mine accounts for more than a fifth of the copper produced in Chile, the world’s largest source of the red metal.
