London (Platts)--23Jul2012/1159 am EDT/1559 GMT
Workers from the Colombian private railway company Fenoco, which rails thermal coal from major coal producers Glencore Drummond, and Goldman Sachs, went on strike Monday morning because of disagreements with management over pay and working conditions, according to Sintraime union leader Felix Herrera. Fenoco confirmed the strike is underway. The 226 km (140 miles) Fenoco rail line transports most of the thermal coal from the mines in the northern part of Colombia, the world's fourth-largest thermal coal exporter, to the coal export ports on the country's Caribbean coast. It has the capacity to transport about 42 million mt/year of coal. Herrera said the strike went ahead because "we could not reach an agreement with the company" as they "did not make an economic offer" to the company's approximately 620 workers. He said that the main points of disagreement with Fenoco are concerning pay conditions, hiring practices, the unjust lay-offs of some workers from a previous dispute. "The workers are peacefully on strike, as is stated by Colombian law. I hope that Colombian authorities respect our right to strike," Herrera said. Fenoco workers had voted on July 13 to authorize a strike and were in talks with the company. The Fenoco strike comes at a time when workers from the 7 million mt/year La Jagua thermal coal mine, owned by Prodeco, a unit of Glencore, walked out in protest over salary and worker's compensation Thursday. In a March interview, Fenoco president Peter Burrowes said that they expected to transport 52 million mt of coal in 2012, almost 10 million mt more than the previous year.--Jaime Concha, jaime_concha@platts.com--Edited by Alisdair Bowles, alisdair_bowles@platts.comSimilar stories appear in Coal Outlook. See more information at http://www.platts.com/Products/coaloutlook