CMPC: Strike paralyzes biggest sawmill in south-central Chile
Jun 02, 2010. Chilean forestry and paper company CMPC said a worker strike over pay had paralyzed its biggest sawmill in south-central Chile.
Jun 02, 2010. /Lesprom Network/. Chilean forestry and paper company CMPC said a worker strike over pay had paralyzed its biggest sawmill in south-central Chile, as Reuters agency informed Lesprom Network.
CMPC's Mulchen plant, one of the company's three operating sawmills, produces between 350,000 to 400,000 cubic meters of sawed wood a year. The three mills together usually produce around 1 million cubic meters of sawed wood a year.
The company has a fourth sawmill that has been out of action since early 2009.
"Workers have called a strike. The plant is paralyzed," Eduardo Gacitua, operations manager for CMPC's sawmills business, told Reuters. "They are calling it an indefinite strike."
Gacitua said around 130 of the plant's 400 workers had joined the strike. Local radio reported the striking workers were blocking access to the plant, which lies around 315 miles (500 km) south of the capital, Santiago.
CMPC is a rival of Chile's Arauco, one of the world's largest pulp producers and the forestry unit of Chilean industrial conglomerate Copec.