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Freeport Strikers to Return to Work
Olivia Rondonuwu | December 23, 2011

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Thousands of workers at Freeport-McMoRan’s giant gold and copper mine in Papua will start going back to work today to end a three-month strike that shook labor relations in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

The union will also lift a road blockade that prevented other workers from accessing the Grasberg mine, senior union official Virgo Solossa said on Friday.

The workers agreed to a deal with management last week on a pay raise of about 40 percent to end the three-month strike that crippled the firm’s production.

The union had planned to mobilize workers to return to the mine on Dec. 17, but that was delayed as they waited for guarantees from management that no disciplinary action would be taken against the strikers.

“We reached an agreement about the guarantee from the firm just now,” said Solossa, adding that no action would be taken against those who went on strike.

“So [on Saturday] we will hold a ritual to conclude this process and lift the road blockade,” Solossa said.

Many workers at the Grasberg mine are Papuans, and the union said it would hold a traditional stone burning ritual including a feast in which pigs are slaughtered and roasted over hot stones.

Solossa said the workers would start returning to the mine after the ceremony was finished in the afternoon.

The strike is the longest in recent Indonesian history and represents the first major attempt by workers to reap greater financial rewards in one of the world’s hottest emerging markets.

A senior Freeport official, Scott Hanna, confirmed Friday’s agreement to lift the blockade and mobilize union workers, but he did not say when exactly they would return to work.

The firm expects full operations to resume early next year and shipments of concentrate will remain limited until then, Hanna wrote in an e-mail.

Union officials say the deal to end the strike fell short of their expectations but still represented a significant advance that could galvanize other unionized sectors of the economy of the world’s fourth-largest country by population.

The blockade, imposed in October at Mile 27 and 28 of the road leading to the mine, included a large tent inhabited by workers and several heavy vehicles.

Security is poor in the highlands of central Papua because of a low-level insurgency by militants demanding independence for the western part of the island from Indonesia.

A recent military siege in Papua targeted these militants and yielded allegations of widespread human rights abuses.

Reuters