* Workers vote to lift strike, accept wage deal
* Strike was the longest in Chilean private copper mining
* Little market impact seen as deal already priced in (Adds miners to return to work Tuesday, analyst comments)
By Fabian Cambero
IQUIQUE, Chile, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Workers at the world's No.3 copper mine, Chile's Collahuasi, on Monday agreed to end the longest-ever strike at a major private mine in the top producing country, which had stoked supply fears.
Union workers accepted a wage deal in a vote, defusing a 32-day strike experts say had little impact on output or global copper prices.
The stoppage was seen costing Collahuasi a few thousand tonnes at most, a tiny fraction of its annual output of 535,000 tonnes a year.
Miners planned to return to work during the first shift of Tuesday, a union leader told Reuters, effectively ending a strike that trumped the length of a 26-day stoppage at Escondida, the world's top copper mine, in 2006.
Collahuasi, owned by Xstrata and Anglo American , extracts about 3.3 percent of global mined copper and aims to challenge Escondida as the world's No.1 copper mine.
Most workers voted in favor of management's new wage proposal, which was similar to a previous offer of around $29,000 in bonuses and benefits.
Shortly after the vote, workers hauled television sets, suitcases and mattresses out of an abandoned school hundreds had occupied for weeks during the strike.
"We will get them the next time," said one worker, carrying a mattress over his shoulder.
PRECEDENT
Collahuasi's management came out ahead in the conflict after union leaders failed to wrest better terms in a strike seen driven more by union politics than justified wage demands, analysts said.
The strike is viewed as one of the toughest faced by any foreign miner in Chile, where labor action is usually short-lived. Soaring copper prices have emboldened workers to demand a bigger slice of profits.
The end of the stoppage is seen having little impact on copper prices after the market priced in an end to the dispute in recent days after a wage deal appeared imminent.
"Market impact will be marginal. News of the imminent deal had no real impact so I don't think the market will react now that it is over," said Juan Carlos Guajardo, head of influential Santiago-based mining think-tank Cesco.
Copper prices rose when workers started the strike a month ago, but then showed little sensitivity to the walkout, partly because the operator has kept supplies flowing and other factors such as the euro zone debt crisis have taken precedence.
Collahuasi mine spokeswoman Bernardita Fernandez said management welcomed the end of the stoppage. She declined to say how much output the mine had lost during the strike.
For weeks, Collahuasi has said operations were normal according to a contingency plan, and has delivered copper to buyers in Asia and Europe. It did not say what 'normal' meant.
The company has previously said at least 220 full-time workers, or 14 percent of union membership, had broken the strike and returned to work. The mine also hired hundreds of temporary workers and about 100 new, permanent employees. (Writing by Simon Gardner and Alonso Soto; Editing by Michael Urquhart)