Chile’s miners show heroism as corporations sabotage safety

By Berta Joubert-Ceci

Thirty-three miners from the San José copper and gold mine in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile were rescued on Oct. 13. They had been buried in the mine’s refuge more than half a kilometer underground since Aug. 5, when a mine collapse blocked the only exit route to the surface.

The miners’ ordeal during those 69 days is proof of the resilience, discipline and courage that the working class is capable of. Surviving on meager food portions — two tablespoons of canned tuna every 48 hours — and enduring intense heat, they kept their spirits up until a high-tech effort brought them back to their loved ones.

The first words surviving miner Luis Urzúa spoke to Chilean right-wing President Sebastián Piñera were, “I hope that this never happens again.” The words reveal a profound indictment of the Chilean government and its relation to transnational corporations, many of them U.S.-based.

Urzúa also reflects Chile’s history of dictatorship, which still haunts the population. Born to a labor leader who was “disappeared” during the cruel and bloody era of Augusto Pinochet, Urzúa knows firsthand the suffering brought by that U.S.-imposed dictatorship.

In fact, Pinochet’s presence is now more evident than in the governments that followed his dictatorship. Piñera is a Harvard graduate and, with an estimated wealth of $2.2 billion (Forbes, March 10), one of the richest persons in Chile. During Pinochet’s regime in the mid 1970s, Piñera was a consultant for the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.

Piñera won the presidency in January for the right-wing Coalition for Change and took office in March. In him the United States has a loyal servant, working on behalf of the criminal neoliberal policies that U.S. imperialism wants to deepen in Latin America.

Piñera is trying to privatize the national Codelco (Chile’s National Copper Corporation), which was formed thanks to assassinated Chilean President Salvador Allende’s nationalization of the copper mines in the country. He must change the Constitution, however, in order to pursue this privatization.

Piñera has holdings in multiple sectors of the Chilean economy, particularly in mining but also in telecommunications, airlines and real estate. As minister of labor under Pinochet, his brother José Piñera attempted to destroy labor unions and was responsible for the privatization of the mines, public health services and pension plans. The current unsafe working conditions in the Chilean mines, resulting in accidents causing an average of almost 40 deaths a year, are a direct result of José Piñera’s reforms during the dictatorship era.

Chile, although a small country, is the world’s main producer of copper. The copper industry is so important to Chile’s economy that Allende would refer to it as “Chile’s salary.” It was Allende’s nationalization of the industry that precipitated the infamous U.S. coup on Sept. 11, 1973.

Worldwide capitalist media formidably covered the miners’ rescue, raising questions about the purpose of the coverage. Why was there so much coverage when there are so many work-related accidents, including in mining, in many countries? And why not cover the courageous struggles of the Mapuche Indigenous people in Chile, who had been on a prolonged hunger strike for their rights, eliciting international solidarity and attention?

Workers World spoke with Cristian Cuevas, a leader of the Confederation of Chilean Workers (CUT) and president of the Confederation of Copper Workers (CTC). The CTC represents workers directly employed by the mining enterprise, as well as subcontracted workers.

WW: What do you think of the coverage of the rescue operation?

CC: The media made it into a frivolous act, like a “reality show” — the drama that these 33 men lived, buried in a mine due to the irresponsibility of the employers and the state that permits laboring under such unsafe conditions. This is a situation that our CTC has denounced.

When this “reality show” ends, there will remain 300 workers from the same mine who were recently fired without any compensation or benefits. That is why we are fighting against the big media and the transnational corporations. We need our voice to be heard. The president [Piñera], a right-wing entrepreneur, says we are united but does not acknowledge the real drama, which is that [the government and the mine employers] are not respecting international agreements, some of which have even been signed by Chile. Others have not yet been ratified: treaties about labor safety, safety in mines, union freedom and the right to collective bargaining.

Our country is being used and portrayed as a model to copy in terms of free trade, but this trade happens by negatively affecting the lives of workers. What happened at San José is an example. Chile is seen (by the imperialists) as a model to follow because neoliberalism triumphed here with the military coup d’état, a product of the most recalcitrant right wing. Now these forces are governing again, with a very effective discourse. Transnational corporations are concentrated here. This “reality show” was like a “lavado de imagen” [whitewash].

WW: Can you comment about the interests of U.S. transnational corporations in Chile’s mining industry?

CC: In the San José mine the capital is national, but there is also foreign investment.

Transnational capital here is Canadian, British, Australian, from the U.S. But the U.S. forms big transnational consortiums, like BHP Billiton and Anglo American, that operate in our country with very profitable advantages. For example, they take home $25 million a year without benefiting our country or paying royalties for the use of the land. They leave behind only negative effects.

When we have fought back, we have paid a high cost with layoffs, the canceling of work contracts and the denial of subcontracted workers’ rights. As a confederation, we have brought our complaints about the violation of our right to freely exercise our union rights to the International Labor Organization.

The last time it happened was in May, in a struggle of the copper workers with the Collahuasi mine, which is [partly, 44 percent] owned by Anglo American. The workers had been on strike demanding better working conditions, and instead of negotiating the mine administration called on the government. The workers were repressed when a Chilean Air Force plane landed along with more than 10 police cars and at least 300 police shooting at the strikers.

WW: What do you think of Piñera’s new labor proposal that he will reveal next week?

CC: Now that Piñera says that he is going to have a new labor treaty, we challenge him to ratify international treaties 155, 176, 87 and 98; on union freedom; on work in the mining sector; and safe conditions in all workplaces.

We also demand health care services, which are currently privatized and do not respond to the needs of the workers. They even profit from these accidents; many times they even cover them up. Workers affected by a work-related illness like silicosis [a respiratory disease caused by inhaling silica dust], have no protection.

In the agricultural industry, the workers in the fruit exporting fields do not have the right to negotiate. During the high season, there are more than 700,000 workers, men and women, who labor in the north zone, where the climate is best for farming. But because these are temporary jobs, the workers are under contract, do not have maternity benefits, nor can they negotiate collectively. They are exposed to pesticides that are forbidden in the U.S. but applied here, generating a series of health problems for those who work in the fields. It is a tragedy. Without the possibility of negotiation, their organization is very precarious.

But we continue struggling and we have very firm politics. We are working to organize common fronts with the workers of the mining, metallurgic and energy sectors. But we have to engage in this struggle and fight, updating the working class to the new phenomena, understanding where the changes are, adapting our language and using the technology to wage these battles. This is our task. It is about ideology. The working class has to find a way to unite and fight in a common front.

There is a new, young generation of workers who are doing precisely that, although the task is not easy. We need a greater effort, and we need the solidarity from all the peoples, including from the U.S. We welcome you to visit our website, www.confederaciondelcobre.cl, and to keep in contact with us. We call on class solidarity: to resurrect the spirit of past labor struggles; to push forward the labor movement in this 21st century; to recuperate the memory of the glorious workers from Santa María de Iquique in Chile and of the workers in Chicago in the U.S.

Email: bjceci@workers.org

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