BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya – A foreign
mining company is offering an additional compensation package for its workers
to avert a work stoppage following its reported failure to give in to their
demand for a wage increase.
A company insider said
the workers were demanding a P3,000 a month across-the-board increase, which is
the only unresolved issue in their collective bargaining agreement negotiations
with OceanaGold Philippines Inc.
As a result, some of
the firm’s rank-and-file employees are threatening to stage a strike following
the reported failed negotiations for the wage increase.
The employees, in
their assembly last Jan. 20, voted to push through with their planned strike
after OceanaGold allegedly failed to give in to their demand for a wage hike.
The workers’ union,
Kiphodan, which filed a notice to strike with the Department of Labor and
Employment last December, has about 80 members, or 20 percent of the company’s
rank-and-file employees.
A local subsidiary of
a Melbourne-based company, OceanaGold was contracted by the national government
to undertake the multibillion-peso Didipio gold-copper project along the
mountain boundary of Nueva Vizcaya and Quirino.
The company started
its commercial operation in May last year following nearly two decades of
exploration and construction activities.
Amid the planned
strike, Brennan Lang, the project’s general manager, said they are currently in
“deep talks” with the union to thresh out their differences, which also
resulted from the firm’s ongoing cost-cutting measures amid the declining price
of gold in the world market.
“The company believes
in the right to a legal and peaceful strike and will work in good faith with
unions to avoid a strike and seek out a negotiated resolution to this matter,”
he said.
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