Roughly 220 workers at the Tara zinc mine, 60 km north of Dublin, returned to work after an agreement was reached to settle, via mediation, a 9-month dispute.
Workers are represented by the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union, Ireland’s largest trade union.
The dispute centres on demands for a sick-pay scheme, improved pension benefits and increased annual leave. Miners staged a 3-day strike in early June to bring attention to the issues.
Mediators will be drawn from the European Works Council and Boliden’s human resource department. The mediators will issue a report with recommendations to both parties by July 16.
In November 2001, Tara closed for nearly a year and has long been affected by poor labour relations. In 2000, a 2-week strike over training, promotion and the use of foreign workers crippled production. Tara’s management had planned to increase production this year to around 2.7 million tonnes of ore, from 2.5 million tonnes in 2003.
Boliden owns the mine, though Finnish-based Outokumpu has a 49% ownership interest in Boliden.
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