DJ Strike Continues At Chile's Biggest Copper Mine - AFP

The world's largest underground copper mine remain shut down due to a strike by subcontract workers, the state mining company Corporacion Nacional del Cobre de Chile, or Codelco, said Saturday.

Work at El Teniente, just south of Santiago, was stopped late Friday for security reasons after the striking workers erected barricades blocking access to the mine and threw stones at buses bringing other miners to the job.

Ricardo Alvarez, Codelco's manager of the El Teniente mine, told Radio Cooperativa that the Friday night and Saturday morning shifts were suspended "to not put at risk the security of our workers."

He didn't say how long the suspension would last.

El Teniente, located 80 kilometers south of the capital, produces some 418,000 metric tons of copper each year.

Two smaller Codelco copper mines, El Salvador and Andina, have been shut since Wednesday due to striking subcontract workers. El Salvador produced 64,000 metric tons last year and Andina produced 218,000 tons.

The workers maintain that Codelco hasn't followed through on a labor accord adopted after a strike last year. But Codelco maintains that the workers must negotiate directly with the subcontract companies that employ them at the mines.

Last year, subcontract workers went on strike for five weeks at mines in Chile, the world's largest copper producer, in a mobilization estimated to have cost the industry $100 million.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

04-19-08 1654ET