Workers plan strike at US miner Freeport's Indonesia site

About 10,000 workers at an Indonesian gold and copper mine owned by US firm Freeport-McMoRan will begin a month-long strike next week in protest at a series of fatal accidents, a union said Monday.

Four people were killed last month in the latest accident at the huge Grasberg mine, high in the mountains of remote, eastern Papua, when a giant haulage truck flattened a car.

Hundreds of workers staged a protest over the deaths at the start of this month, blockading the entrance and forcing a temporary suspension of operations.

"Anger among workers has peaked after a series of incidents at Freeport," union official Albar Sabang told AFP, adding they blamed management failures for the accidents.

Sabang said that as well Freeport miners, workers from two other Freeport subsidiaries involved in logistics and supplying power at Grasberg will join the strike.

The industrial action will start on November 6 and will continue until December 6, he said, adding that workers were calling for 54 management-level staff to be removed from their posts.

Grasberg, one of the biggest copper and gold mines in the world, has been plagued by accidents and production problems in recent years.

In May last year, a training tunnel collapsed killing 28 miners as they took part in a safety course in one of Indonesia's worst-ever mining accidents.

Another worker died in December last year when rocks fell from a machine, crushing him.

In 2011 a three-month strike crippled production at the mine, and workers only halted the industrial action once Freeport agreed to a huge pay rise.