Indonesia Freeport mine workers extend strike

Workers at a giant Indonesian mine owned by US company Freeport-McMoRan will extend their three-month strike over wages to January 15, a union spokesman said yesterday.
“We have decided earlier this week to extend the strike until January 15 until we reach a solution with Freeport,” the workers’ union spokesman Virgo Solossa told AFP.
Around 8,000 of Freeport’s 23,000 workers at its Grasberg gold and copper mine in Papua province have been on strike since September 15 demanding higher wages. Deadly clashes broke out there in October.
The mine employees claim to be Freeport’s lowest-paid workers in the world, including those at mines in Africa and South America, and originally demanded 20-fold increases from a minimum of USD 1.50 to USD 30 an hour.
While they previously rejected Freeport’s 35 percent hike offer, they are “now open to it provided there are fixed allowances”, Solossa said.
“If the company really can’t raise its 35 percent offer, then we want to know if it can provide fixed allowances for things like housing, healthcare, education and overtime work,” he added.
“We are not being difficult. We want this problem solved too.”
The strike that began in mid-September has crippled production, prompting the company in October to declare force majeure – a legal declaration of extraordinary circumstances enabling it to avoid liability on existing customer orders – as it was unable to deliver shipments to some customers.
Freeport Indonesia spokesman Ramdani Sirait said “the management is working diligently to reach a fair agreement” with the workers.