Workers striking over a pay dispute have halted mining since last week on the \u200ctwo blocks of Guinea’s giant Simandou iron ore project operated by a consortium led by China’s Baowu Resources, four sources told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Blasting, loading, hauling and dumping have stopped, though rail and port operations continue, a consultant to the project and two union \u200brepresentatives said.<\/p>\n
Management and workers were holding talks on Wednesday, the union representatives said, adding that the \u200bstrike – the first at the Baowu joint venture – involved around 3,000 workers.<\/p>\n
All of the \u2060sources asked not to be named as they were not authorised to speak.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Baowu, the world’s \u200bbiggest steelmaker and\u00a0operator\u00a0of Simandou’s blocks 1 and 2 under the Baowu Winning Consortium Simandou (WCS), declined to comment. Guinea’s \u200bmines ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
DISPUTE OVER GUINEA’S NEW MINING PAY STRUCTURE<\/strong><\/p>\n Guinea introduced a unified mining pay structure in 2025 to standardise wages and reduce disparities across the sector. And most operators are now broadly compliant, a \u200bGuinea mining executive told Reuters.<\/p>\n Workers at WCS, however, stopped work on April 28 claiming the company had failed \u200bto apply the new salary grid, the consultant and union representatives said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no mining activity as we speak,\u201d the consultant \u200csaid. \u201cThere \u2060is a direct impact on production and they need to find a solution very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n A source at Baowu confirmed the strike but said WCS was in compliance with a government-mandated pay structure.<\/p>\n The source said the workers were seeking parity with their counterparts on Simandou’s southern blocks 3 and 4, which are being mined by Simfer, a \u200bjoint venture between Chinalco, Rio \u200bTinto and the Guinean \u2060state.<\/p>\n “My pay is like two, three times lower than my colleagues at Simfer,” said a truck driver, who has worked with Baowu WCS since 2020.<\/p>\n He said the company \u200bhad asked workers to accept low pay during the mine’s development, promising increases \u200bonce production began, \u2060but that salary increases never materialised.<\/p>\n A Guinea government team met with the workers on Tuesday but failed to negotiate an end to the strike, the driver said.<\/p>\n Simandou, home to the world’s richest untapped deposits of iron ore, began\u00a0exports \u2060in November\u00a0\u200bafter decades of delays. At its peak, it is expected to \u200bproduce 120 million metric tons of iron ore annually.<\/p>\n WCS employed more than 10,000 workers during construction of the mine, rail and port infrastructure \u200band is now\u00a0scaling down\u00a0as production ramps up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Workers striking over a pay dispute have halted mining since last week on the \u200ctwo blocks of Guinea’s giant Simandou iron ore project operated by a consortium led by China’s Baowu Resources, four sources told Reuters. Blasting, loading, hauling and dumping have stopped, though rail and port operations continue, a consultant to the project and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20796,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,3028,27],"tags":[5126,5127,396,248,4688],"class_list":["post-20795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-mining","category-west-africa","tag-baowu-resources","tag-baowu-winning-consortium-simandou-wcs","tag-china","tag-guinea","tag-simandou"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20795"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20797,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20795\/revisions\/20797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}