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The positions of the company and Sindicato No. 1, which represents 2,500 workers at the Chilean mine, remain very distant after more than six weeks of negotiations. The union is tightening its speech after rejecting BHP's first salary offer, which did not include a real wage increase and envisaged a 47% premium lower than the workers' expectations.
"Workers will respond with all their might. The union said Friday to its members in a statement.
Negotiations were blocked last year 44 – day strike that ended in March without agreement. The workers resorted to a little-known article in the Labor Code that extended their old contract from 18 months to 31 July of this year. This allowed the negotiations to be conducted under the regulations of Chile's new Labor Code, which came into force in April 2017.
New Regulations
The new law establishes that companies can not reduce the benefits of workers, can not replace striking workers, except for essential functions, and can not extend the contractual benefits to non-unionized employees without the union's authorization. At the same time, the code gives companies new powers, among which they are allowed to ignore the union and communicate directly with individual workers.
If the strike continues, several things can happen:
You can submit a new offer every 10 days. Workers have a secret ballot and, if more than half agree, the strike ends.
* Individual workers return to work. From a legal point of view, the strike continues indefinitely, even if only a minority remains on strike.
* The company or government authorities bring their case before a labor court, which may require workers to end the strike if it seriously affects the economy. Then an arbitration tribunal may impose a final solution.
Some aspects of bargaining remain unchanged; BHP, the world's largest mining company based in Melbourne, is due to submit its final offer to the union earlier this week, giving workers five days to hold a secret ballot before the contract expires.
] If the offer is rejected, the company and the union will hold five days of negotiations negotiated by the government, which could be extended for an additional five days. If no agreement is found, the strike will begin in mid-August
The previous strike dealt a severe blow to the Chilean economy.
BHP's total copper production fell 44% to 227,000 tonnes in the first quarter of 2017 compared to the previous year, due to the fact that the strike that began in February lasted until In March. Chilean gross domestic product contracted 0.4% in this quarter, the first year-on-year decline since the third quarter of 2009.
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