"Minera Panama is violating workers’ rights", 10 May 2023

...IndustriALL Global Union general secretary, Atle Høie, has written to the CEO of First Quantum Minerals Ltd., Tristan Pascall, to warn him that his company is violating workers’ fundamental rights.

He also cautioned that the company is in breach of its human rights due diligence obligations by discriminating against the leaders of the Sindicato Industrial de Trabajadores de la Construcción de Minas y Desarrollo de la Minera (STM), an affiliate of Convergencia Sindical (CS) in Panama, and by preventing them from carrying out their legitimate trade union activities. 

Høie urged the company to take the measures required to reverse the acts of discrimination against the STM and to ensure full respect for the right to freedom of association. The STM informed IndustriALL that Minera Panama is violating the workers’ right to freely form and join organisations of their own choosing, which is a right enshrined in the standards of the International Labour Organization (ILO).  

The union organisation condemned the company’s unfair dismissal of STM union leaders...

...Additionally, three other union leaders are being denied access to the mine, preventing them from holding meetings and assemblies with their members and the other workers. And three active members who recorded videos in support of the STM as part of the union’s recruitment campaign have suffered reprisals and are unable to report for work at the mine. 

The workers also argue that the company used tactics to delay its compliance with several Panamanian Supreme Court rulings and continued to repeatedly violate the right to freedom of association...