Teniente Copper Production HaltedUPDATE: Codelco Confirms Teniente Copper Production Halted
07-26-2007 09:11:00 PM
(Updates with comments from the company's CEO on production, copper deliveries to clients and legal actions against workers)
SANTIAGO (Dow Jones)--Copper giant Corporacion Nacional del Cobre de Chile's, or Codelco, chief executive confirmed that production at the El Teniente division was halted as of 2000 GMT Thursday.
Several unions leaders representing El Teniente's direct workers said earlier Thursday that they were calling on the division's 4,500 direct workers to not show up for work because of safety concerns.
El Teniente will be manned with a skeleton emergency staff and will go into maintenance mode, the company said. For every day that El Teniente is closed, Codelco loses about $9 million from lost output, Codelco's chief executive Jose Pablo Arellano told reporters at a press conference late Thursday evening.
Despite the current stoppages at El Teniente and El Salvador and the several days that the Andina division was closed, Codelco has been able to meet all its deliveries to its clients, the chief executive said.
"Our whole commercial team is working hard to continue deliveries," he said.
In addition to halting production, Codelco will request that the government name a special investigating prosecutor to delve into the violent events at and near the mine sites and will press criminal charges against anyone found responsible for the damages at the different divisions, Arellano said.
As to the violent protests, Arellano said "this is not the way to build consensus" but added he was confident a solution to the conflict with contract workers was near.
Late Wednesday night, striking contract workers threw rocks at buses carrying workers up to the mining facilities and direct workers now fear for their safety, union leaders said.
El Teniente is Codelco's second-largest division, with annual production near 420,000 metric tons of copper, or about 23% of the miner's annual output.
A group of some 10,000 contract workers are now in their 31th strike day, while Codelco reached a bonus-and-benefits agreement earlier this week with some 14,000 non-striking workers. On Thursday, another 5,000 contract workers at the massive Norte division also signed the bonus-and-benefits agreement, thus ensuring output at the division.
The mining company's board of directors, meanwhile, held its monthly session Thursday afternoon and in a statement issued after the meeting, said the agreement already signed with non-striking workers, which has also been extended to the striking workers, is the company's final offer. The miner's board also called on contracting companies to assume their responsibility in the solution of the conflict.
Although the contracting companies that employ the striking contract workers have been part of the three-way negotiations between Codelco and the workers, most have opted to remain quiet and not comment on the conflict.
Codelco is the world's largest copper producer, with an annual output near 1.8 million tons.
-By Carolina Pica, Dow Jones Newswires; 56-2-460-8544 carolina.pica@ dowjones.com