Chile: Strikes shut down world’s largest copper mines - World Socialist Web Site
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Escondida in northern Chile, the world's largest copper mine [Photo: BHP]Two of the largest copper operations in the world are now paralyzed by strike action, as the class struggle erupts in the sector that is the lifeblood of the Chilean economy. At the Centinela mine, a large open-pit copper and gold mining complex controlled by the Luksic family’s Antofagasta Minerals, 709 workers from the Esperanza mine and Centinela district unions have been on strike since October 7. At the Escondida mine, the world’s largest copper mine, operated by the Anglo-Australian giant BHP, the 1,020-member Union No. 2 of Supervisors and Staff has announced a strike for Wednesday, October 14, after 94.8 percent of its members rejected the company’s final offer. These strikes are a sharp expression of a crisis that is convulsing the entire Chilean mining industry, a crisis of falling production, rising prices, mounting deaths, and a working class that is beginning to move against the corporatist union apparatus that has policed it for four decades. On Sunday, another serious accident at Codelco’s El Teniente Division claimed the lives of two workers from the contractor Aura Ingeniería S. A.
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