El Teniente is the fourth largest copper mine in Chile. Its output was halved on Saturday as miners walked off the job due to violent protests made during the week by striking sub-contractors.
The mine owned by the state run company Codelco is the world’s largest underground copper mine and is located 80 km south of the capital city of Santiago at a height of 2,500 meters above sea level. The mine has about 2,400 km of underground galleries. The operations by Codelco are run by 19,347 full time employees and 41,241 subcontracted workers at the various mines that it operated.
The company officials decided that it was unsafe for full time staff members to come to work at the mine due to lack of safety measures. The officials claimed that operations were not completely halted and that emergency shifts were still operating at the mine on Saturday. It claims that the output is currently at 40 % of the capacity of the mine.
The situation arose when about ten thousand sub contracted miners went on strike starting May 25 seeking pay and benefits equal to union workers. The striking miners turned violent a few days back as they began throwing rocks at buses that were transporting union miners to the mine on Thursday and Friday.
El Teniente employs about 11,000 contractors. They are mostly for the supporting non-production operations like reinforcing tunnel walls, repairing machinery and distributing food. The mine also has 4,000 staff workers who are linked directly to output operations. The protest leader Marco Alarcon hopes that negotiations will solve the problem.