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   Vol. 70/No. 31           August 21, 2006  
 
 
On the Picket Line
 
Chile: 2,000 workers strike
world’s largest copper mine
More than 2,000 workers in Chile struck one of the world’s largest copper mines August 7. The Escondida mine-majority owned by BHP Billiton—produces 20 percent of Chile’s copper and accounts for 2.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. The unionists are demanding a 13 percent pay raise and improved benefits. They turned down the company’s 3 percent pay raise offer. The walkout has cut production by about two-thirds, the BBC reported. “This is the first real strike in the company’s history,” Pedro Marín, spokesperson for Escondida’s Workers’ Union No. 1, told the media. On the first day of the strike workers marched in Antofagasta, a major city in the mining region, located 995 miles north of Santiago.

—Brian Williams  
 
Nurses in New Jersey turn down
contract, prepare for strike
Nurses at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, announced August 3 that they would strike in 10 days if they do not have a new contract. Their three-year pact expired June 30. The nurses, represented by Steelworkers Local 4-200, had overwhelmingly rejected the hospital’s “final” offer July 27. One of the main issues is the hospital’s demand that nurses and their families have all nonemergency medical and dental procedures performed at the hospital where they work, or pay up to a $1,000 deductible for each procedure. Many of the nurses live some distance from the hospital and face long waiting periods to obtain care, union representatives told the press.

—Brian Williams  
 
New Zealand: pickets demand
contract at Auckland casino
AUCKLAND, New Zealand—More than 100 workers from Auckland’s SkyCity casino—restaurant and bar staff, housekeepers, cleaners, and workers from the gaming floor—held a noisy picket outside the facility’s main entrance July 29 to demand a new union contract. The workers, members of the SkyCity Employees Association-Unite (SEA-Unite) union, began holding walkouts and pickets July 21 after their contract negotiations broke down.

Workers carried signs calling for NZ$12.50 minimum per hour and secure hours of work (NZ$1=US 61 cents). “We have to ask permission to go to the toilet—it’s ridiculous,” table games inspector and union delegate Candese Sherman told the Militant. “It’s not about the money, it’s about respecting people,” she added. The SEA-Unite union organizes around 700 workers at the casino, which employs 2,800 people. Members of the Service and Food Workers Union on the site are also involved in contract negotiations.

—Felicity Coggan
 
 
Related articles:
Construction workers in Australia fight union-busting attack by gov’t  
 
 
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