UPDATE 3-Mexico miners plan nationwide walkout for Thursday
Wed Jul 4, 2007 6:52PM EDT
reuters.com
MEXICO CITY, July 4 (Reuters) - Mexico's mining union plans a 24-hour nationwide walkout on Thursday, a senior official said, citing safety conditions and a long-running power struggle in the union.
Senior union official Carlos Pavon told Reuters on Wednesday the union had called on workers to walk off the job at almost all mining operations across Mexico.
"We are going on a wildcat strike. The (labor) ministry has obliged us to react in this way," Pavon said, adding that the walkout was intended to pressure the ministry to resolve a union leadership struggle.
A union spokeswoman said the walkout was due to begin at all 73 union chapters during the first shift on Thursday, between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m.
Grupo Mexico declined to comment. But a source close to the company, who asked not to be named, said it did not believe a stoppage would be widely supported.
Copper prices touched a seven-week peak in London after news of the walkout and a growing strike threat at Chile's Collahuasi mine, one of the world's largest.
Grupo Mexico (GMEXICOB.MX: Quote, Profile, Research) stock rose slightly to a record closing high of 70.17 pesos on Wednesday.
Pavon said the union also plans a formal strike beginning on July 16 at three Grupo Mexico facilities, including its Cananea mine, which produced 186,000 tonnes of copper last year.
He said miners at Cananea as well as Grupo Mexico's San Martin zinc mine and its silver mine will strike on July 16 unless the firm improves safety conditions and cedes to demands to negotiate new labor contracts.
An explosion in a Grupo Mexico coal shaft killed 65 miners last year, heightening fears about safety conditions in Mexico's mines.
Last month a similar threat to strike roiled copper markets but was dropped after the labor ministry ruled that union boss Napoleon Gomez, who currently lives in Canada, did not appear in Mexico to verify certain documents.
Gomez was recently reinstated as union leader after being ousted by dissidents last year. His supporters do not recognize contracts negotiated by his usurper.
Grupo Mexico's labor relations have been prickly ever since Gomez took the Mexico City-based firm to court to win the $55 million privatization-related payment for workers.
© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. |
