Caracas (Platts)--23Nov2012/128 pm EST/1828 GMT

A two-day strike at Sidor steel in Puerto Ordaz ended early Thursday morning after management agreed to immediately pay the plant's workers their Christmas bonuses, a spokeswoman with the company said Friday.

Originally, management said it intended to make the annual payment on December 28.

"They reached an accord very late Wednesday and the plant is operating normally now," she said. "There were losses in production, but we don't have exact figures at this time."

Worker protests over the bonus issue began last week at Sidor, the largest steelmaker in the Andean region. Sidor has seen its output fall 40% since Venezuela's government decided to re-nationalize it in May 2008.

During the last few months Sidor workers, which number around 10,000, have been the most vociferous among CVG state industrial companies in their demands. Sidor's Sutiss union continues to claim that management owes the workforce employee benefits and insists that stalled collective bargaining agreement talks move forward immediately.

Labor strife hit the CVG units hard during the last three years, since the Hugo Chavez administration ordered a power cut -- of 200 MW for Sidor and 300 MW for CVG-Venalum smelter -- in early 2010.

Power was later restored, but the companies have yet to recover their normal production levels. Sidor has 3.6 million mt/year of installed capacity.

--George Soules, newsdesk@platts.com

--Edited by Valarie Jackson, valarie_jackson@platts.com