Labor unrest has spread throughout South America and threatens to envelop the entire continent and flip the copper market back into a sustained deficit after a strike vote at Chile's largest copper mine (by production).
It had been a quiet year for labor negotiations this year, with miners and their respective unions agreeing on comprehensive contracts without any work stoppages. But after millions of tonnes of production were successfully negotiated, the main union at Chile's Escondida voted to reject a new labor contract offer and strike in a ballot that ended on the evening of Wednesday August 1, representatives told Metal Bulletin.The spreading contagion of labor unrest was forecast at the beginning of the year, with labor deals that would impact 4 million tonnes of the red metal then poised to expire. That now seems to be playing out, with workers at the Caserones copper mine in Chile's Atacama region also preparing to strike on August 7 after rejecting a final contract offer by Lumina Copper.Additionally, workers at Codelco's...