SHANGHAI, Sept. 7 (SMM) –According to integrated media report on September 5th, a union leader said workers at Peru's No. 3 copper mine Cerro Verde, controlled by Freeport McMoran Copper & Gold, will launch a 40-hour strike on September 7th for higher pay. Recently, strikes at many world's largest copper mines frequently occurred, as workers wanted to claim their shares of profits from higher copper prices. SMM believes that the strikes may imply gathering risks of continuous higher copper prices.
Since the start of this year, labor strikes took place one after the other at big copper mines in the world. In late July, workers at the world's third biggest copper mine Collahuasi held a 24-hour partial strike. On August 5th, workers at Chilean Escondida, the world's No. 1 copper mine, ended a two-week strike after accepting the company's bonus offer. Now, workers at Peru, China's second largest importing source of copper concentrate, are also planning strikes to claim shares of gains from higher copper prices.
Labor strikes at copper mines are presently staging in succession. The last time Escondida workers struck strikes was in 2006-for 25 days, because they had similar demands for higher bonuses linked to lofty profits given continuous moves of higher copper prices after setting record highs. However, copper prices later began to fall significantly after reaching to the highest. Similarly, continuous strike acts now at major copper producers probably indicate that copper prices will repeat the trends in the second-half of 2006.
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