http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/business/freeport-strike-may-stretch-as-talks-stall/467312
Freeport Strike May Stretch as Talks Stall Rieka Rahadiana & Samuel Wanda | September 23, 2011 Jakarta and Timika. Freeport Indonesia’s labor union may extend its strike at the Grasberg copper mine beyond one month as talks with management came to a deadlock, union official Juli Parorrongan said on Friday. The union earlier said it planned not to continue with a tripartite mediation involving the government, and is seeking to discuss the matter directly with the company. “We didn’t reach agreement with the management,” Parorrongan said. “The strike continues until we reach agreement — it is possible to extend it beyond a month. No more mediation.” Earlier on Friday, a Freeport spokesman said that management respected the mediation process. Government officials, the union and Freeport, have been engaged in three days of mediation talks in Jakarta this week. The union, which plans a month-long strike that started last week, said Freeport Indonesia’s total workforce was 23,000 people, and that more than 12,000 of them were on strike. The union is pushing for higher pay for workers, since it says other Freeport workers around the world get paid 10 times as much. The strike may also have been spurred by recent record prices for gold, given that Grasberg also has the world’s biggest gold reserves. Parorrangan said the union had offered to lower its demands from $17.5 per hour to a range of $12.5 to $10 per hour, but Freeport management had insisted on a phased wage increase of 22 percent. The mine workers’ current rate is $1.50 to $3 per hour. Documents showed the lowest pay for striking workers at Grasberg was 3.7 million rupiah ($422) a month, with the union pushing for an increase to 27.2 million a month, plus benefits. On Wednesday, Freeport Indonesia said the strike at its Grasberg operation had limited mining, processing and shipping of concentrate at the world’s third-biggest copper mine. A day earlier, parent company Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold’s CEO Richard Adkerson said production at the mine had slowed significantly. Sources said on Friday that contractors at the mine had restarted limited production, but not enough to ship the ore as port workers were also striking. The copper market largely shrugged off supply disruptions at both Grasberg and a Freeport mine in Peru, hitting its lowest in more than a year amid a bleak outlook for the global economy. Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange traded at $7,290 a ton at 7:11 GMT, versus $7,674 at Thursday’s close. Reuters [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: [email protected] Subscribe : [email protected] Unsubscribe : [email protected] List owner : [email protected] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
