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To: LoneClone who wrote (111350)	3/18/2015 1:22:55 PM
From: LoneClone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 194034

Freeport Indonesia workers block Grasberg access road for second day finance.yahoo.com March 17, 2015 5:31 AM * More than 100 workers block an access road * No details on whether copper output has been hit * Protest not arranged by unions -union official JAKARTA, March 17 (Reuters) - More than a hundred workers at Freeport-McMoRan Inc's Indonesian unit have blocked an access road to one of the world's biggest copper mines for a second day, government and union officials said on Tuesday. Freeport runs the huge Grasberg complex on remote Papua and workers began blocking a road to the site on Monday to protest against a settlement reached with other employees at the end of a previous dispute, said a senior mines ministry official. "What they request is compensation (more payment) from management because they had worked, while others who joined the union didn't work at the previous demonstration but still got paid. So they request for fairness," Bambang Susigit said in a text message to Reuters. It is not known whether production at the mine has been hurt, but Susigit added that workers had been hindered from accessing Grasberg. Any disruption to copper supplies could support benchmark metal prices that have dropped more than 8 percent so far this year. "There are more than 300 people," Susigit said about the protest. "Access to workers to the site is closed. There is now negotiations to allow site and mill maintenance workers to pass through the protest." Freeport Indonesia, which employs around 24,000 workers and is expected to produce 43 percent more copper concentrate this year at 2 million tonnes, could not be reached for a comment on Tuesday. On Monday, company spokeswoman Daisy Primayanti said they had received a report of an employee demonstration "resulting in a disruption of mine road access at the area of Mile 74", adding that talks were being conducted to find the reasons. "The current security condition in our operation area remains under control," she told Reuters in an email. Albar Sabang, a senior Freeport union official, told Reuters on Monday that the protest had not been arranged by unions so the reasons behind it were not known. Relations between Freeport and the workers' unions have been strained in recent years. Late in 2014, a planned one-month strike following the death of four workers was cancelled at the 11th hour.