Gold company forced to reinstate union officials

26 Lepanto Employees Union officials were reinstated in early March after a one-month strike at the biggest gold mine in the Philippines.

Management at the Lapanto Consolidated Mining Company in Benguet agreed to the reinstatements days after threatening to sack around 700 miners if they failed to return to work by 1 March.

Lepanto Consolidated Mining, the biggest gold producer in north Luzon, reinstated 26 of 42 officials of the Lepanto Employees Union who were sacked during a month-long strike caused by compulsory holiday work, reporting time, and hiring casuals instead of formal workers. The 16 remaining officials decided to take early retirement.

The strike began on 1 February, causing losses worth 200 million pesos (US$3.8 million) for the company.
The miners went back to work on 3 March, but not before Lepanto had posted advertisements for 600 new workers to break the strike.

The union said, “Such is a very dangerous move [because] resuming [the] operations with (a) new workforce, especially … underground would be fatally hazardous without the presence and assistance of miners already familiar with the area. Presently, at least two shafts at level 700 of Nayac tunnel have been flooded or have caved in, while the rest of the abandoned shafts are full of poisonous gases.

The company decided to back down from earlier refusals to rehire the men, for ‘humanitarian reasons’.

Manila Times, 4 March 2003, World Socialist Web Site, 8 March 2002