Workers at Zambia's Chinese-owned Luanshya Copper Mines have received a 14% pay rise in a new labor deal starting January 2013 as union officials continue to push for higher wages in Africa's largest copper producing nation, a union official told Dow Jones Newswires Friday.
Union representatives were pushing for as much as 20% in wage increments but had to lower demands following weeks of talks, Joseph Chewe, the general secretary of the Miners Union of Zambia, told Dow Jones Newswires. Luanshya, a unit of China Nonferrous Metals Co. (8306.HK) becomes the first mining company in Zambia to offer a pay rise as negotiations for 2013 labor deals continue across the Southern African nation's mining regions.
"Talks with Luanshya have been concluded very well, we are still negotiating with the other companies" Mr. Chewe said.
Zambia's unions negotiate annual labor agreements. Talks with companies including London-listed Vedanta Resources PLC (VED.LN), Glencore International PLC (GLEN.LN) and Toronto-listed First Quantum Minerals Ltd. (FM.T) started in October and expected to be concluded before the end of the year.
According to Mr. Chewe, union representatives are under pressure from workers to negotiate high wage increments, due to rising cost of living, occasioned by higher prices of food and basic commodities.
A company spokesman couldn't be reached for an immediate comment.
A five-day wage strike at Luanshya cost the mining company at least 14,000 metric tons of copper in lost output in December last year. Chinese-owned enterprises have pumped millions of dollars in Zambia's mining sector but their labor laws remain largely unpopular. Union officials say that Chinese companies pay the lowest wages in Zambia's mining sector.
In July, Zambian miners at the Chinese-owned Collum Coal mine killed their Chinese supervisor during a riot over a wage row.
There are some 60,000 unionized workers in the sector and copper accounts for the bulk of the country's exports.
Write to Nicholas Bariyo at Nicholas.Bariyo@dowjones.com
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Copyright ? 2012 Dow Jones Newswires
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