Workers at Minas da Panasqueira, in Covilhã, today handed in a third strike notice until April 28 and the company is threatening to go into lay-off if it doesn’t back down.
“Either the strike is called off by Monday morning, or we withdraw the entire proposal and start the lay-off process,” the administrator of Beralt Tin and Wolfram told Lusa today.
According to António Corrêa de Sá, “there’s no chance of keeping the mine working” and if the miners, who have been on strike since the 14th for the first three hours of each shift, don’t back down, the company will no longer be able to “fulfill its commitments” and “without sales, there’s no money”.
The Mining Workers’ Union has proposed a 13% wage increase, which corresponds to a minimum of 110 euros, although union representative Mário Matos said that the workers are “willing to agree” to a 100 euro increase, but Beralt said it could not go beyond 6%.
The union representative said that since the second strike notice was handed in, the company had only proposed a one euro increase in the food allowance, in addition to the 6% increase in salary, which he considered to be insufficient and “far below” what had been demanded.
Mário Matos highlighted the “very high level of adherence” to the strike, which has brought extraction to a halt during the strike period, and stressed the “firmness and unity shown by the workers in support of their just demands”.
Speaking to the Lusa news agency, the union official expressed the workers’ willingness to negotiate and stressed that the company “at any moment has every chance of resolving the situation, as soon as it is willing to present proposals that the workers can consider”, with values “that are close” to what is being demanded.
“We’ve entered a situation where we can’t cope. We’ve stopped fulfilling our contracts, we have no sales, we have no money,” said the administrator.
Corrêa de Sá said he was “hopeful that [the workers] will lift the strike notice and accept a reasonable position of a 6% increase”, adding that it represents “an increase three times higher than inflation”, after last year’s 10% increase.
“The plant can’t stop and start, it damages the equipment. The production of concentrates is minimal, we won’t be able to meet our commitments,” lamented the director of Beralt, the company that owns the tungsten mines in the south of the municipality of Covilhã, Castelo Branco district, owned by the Canadian group Almonty.
The union representative does not accept the justification of financial incapacity to accommodate the increases requested, referring to the investments planned by the group, with mines also in South Korea and Spain.
“This is the Almonty group’s only operating mine. It’s supporting the rest of the group. We don’t understand how, when investments of 150 million are announced, there isn’t money for the workers as well, there isn’t investment in the workers”, argued Mário Matos.
Corrêa de Sá rejected the correlation made by the union representative.
“The group can invest to open new mines, which is what is happening in [South] Korea. It’s another thing to have the money to keep the operation at a minimum. With that amount, the company is no longer profitable,” said the director.
As well as a pay rise, the workers are demanding better health and safety conditions at work, career development, “because there are miners who, after twenty years, are still at the start of their careers”, the payment of a risk allowance for all those who work at the bottom of the mine and a fire allowance for all those who carry out this task.
