About 2500 workers have been on strike since February 9 at the Escondida mine in Chile鈥檚 north.
Owned by two Anglo-Australian mining giants, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, Escondida is the largest producer of 鈥渞ed gold鈥 in the world. The mine extracts about 900,000 tonnes a year. This represents 20% of copper production in Chile, the country with the largest copper reserves in the world.