Mexican miners strike briefly to stress safety concerns

By Paul Kiernan
Associated Press
via Yahoo News
Thursday, July 5, 2007

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070705/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_miners_strike

MEXICO CITY -- Mine workers across Mexico waged a 24-hour strike Thursday, hoping to achieve better safety standards and to improve collective labor's footing in the industry, a union official said.

Carlos Pavon, spokesman for the National Mining and Metal Workers Union, said the organization started planning the walkout about a week ago.

With the majority of the union's 34,000 members engaged in the strike, Pavon said it will affect all of Mexico's mining companies, including Grupo Mexico SAB, a major copper producer, and Industrias Penoles SA, the world's top silver producer. The union also includes workers of steel plants owned by Arcelor Mittal in the Pacific port of Lazaro Cardenas.

Safety at Mexican mines has come under increased scrutiny after 63 miners were killed last year in an underground explosion in a northern mine.

Industrias Penoles spokesman Luis Rey Delgado said the strikes have caused two of the company's 10 operations in Mexico to stop, but only partially.

Penoles' workers so far have respected the company's request to keep running its machinery, which requires maintenance that cannot be put on hold for 24 hours, he said.

Delgado said while Industrias Penoles "energetically rejects strikes," the company respects the union's wish to express its support for victims of past mining accidents.

An official at Grupo Mexico said its zinc mine in the northern state of Zacatecas was 30 percent affected by the walkout and that work was halted at a small mine in the city of Taxco, in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero.

The Mexican government valued its mining industry at $6.8 billion in 2006, which accounted for 1.6 percent of the country's GDP. The industry employs 279,000 workers.

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