Lepanto mining strike ends

MANKAYAN, Benguet — The three-month long labor strike at Lepanto Consolidated Mining Co. has finally ended over the weekend.

All 19 officials of the Lepanto Employees Union earlier "dismissed" by the mining firm after leading a supposed "illegal strike" starting June this year will have to go, said LCMC lawyer Weldy Manlong.

"But all the other members of the more than 1,700 member LEU will go back to work on Monday."

LEU president Ninian Lang-agan also confirmed they already agreed to become "sacrificial lambs" to give way to the wider economic interests of their co-workers and their families.

Lang-agan furthered they want to prove that via their resignation from the union and the company, they led the strike out from very just demands and not their own interests.

The three-month long strike had at least cost LCMC some P500 million worth of lost opportunities.

The firm earlier lambasted the union for the strike even as the labor department ordered them to go back to work and declared and "assume jurisdiction" over the labor row stemming from demands of workers for wages hike.

LCMC is still the country’s biggest producer of gold in its underground mining operations in Mankayan town, Benguet for the past 70 years.

In the 80’s, LCMC produced a peak of 11 kilos of gold in four to five days operations although the firm’s management claims that there had been a decrease in production over the last few years including the present mode of operations.

The Cordillera Police Command whose Benguet provincial police office had been directly involved in the strike after the labor department ordered them to help maintain peace and tranquility in the area during the whole duration of the strike also hailed the decision of Lang-agan and his co-leaders of the LEU.

Earlier, several violent confrontations between policemen and strikers resulted in scores hurt from both the police and the workers.

The Cordillera police even sensed a planned attack by the New Peoples’ Army to vital facilities of LCMC, thus increasing police presence in the Northern Benguet area.