Chilean workers fight back

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For over five weeks the 10,300 strong workforce of the El Teniente copper mine in Chile has sustained a strike in demand of an 18% increase in wages, productivity bonuses, overtime payment, transport, educational and job security rights against the dictatorship of Pinochet which has offered a derisory 2%.

The El Teniente strike marks a new step forward in the slow and painful recovery of the Chilean working class defeated so cruelly in the coup of September 1973.

The length of the strike, its size, firmness, and resistance to constant police harassment, the threat of full-scale military intervention and widespread dismissals, has to be understood against the very poor economic condition of the workers and the seven-ycar offensive against the very poor economic condition of the workers and the sevenyear offensive against the labour movement by the capitalist state, reliant not just on brute force but also a string of anti-worker decrees.

Banned

Today in Chile industry-wide unions are allowed to exist only on paper; nominations for union clections are forbidden until the day of the poll; any group of workers- unionised or not-may deal directly with the employer; strikes are limited to 60 days and after 30 days any group of workers may desert their comrades and fix a separate deal; no assemblies are permitted in worktime and there are strict limits on those outside of it.

Negotiation of 'non-wage benefits (health, housing, education, training and job securily) is banned and all existing agreements on these points become null and void upon the negotiation of new contracts; arbitration is by the military, and political activity is banned . There are a score of further judicial measures that provide for the division of the working class.

The strength of the El Teniente miners is, therefore truly impressive. The state copper corporation, Codelco says its offer is final' but it is losing $1.2 million a day and the regime is well aware of it Hacts of the action on the rest of Chile's working class.

In the other large state-owned. mines of Chuquica-. mata and Andina: the workers have already rejeeted Codelco's offer, are seeking rises of 15% and said to be preparing action.

Twelve miners have already been arrested and there have been clashos with the carabineros in the streets of Ranagua where the clouds of lear gas bear cloquent testimony to the return of active class struggle.

Not only has the FI Teniente union declared that its action will be indefinite' but it has also called for the removal of Bernardo Castillo and Guillermo Medina, the leading "yellow' union officials appointed by the dictatorship who have incessantly aftacked the strike as 'counter-productive' In this call lies the recognition that. the struggle for class. independence and the regaining of control over the workers' economic organisations cannot be separated from the political campaign against the dictatorship: