Union Strikes Agains the Phelps Dodge Corporation
FURY ETCHES STRIKERS' LIFE IN Aging FIGHT AT ARIZONA MINES
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July thirty, 1984
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The 3:30 P.M. whistle blows, signaling the shift modify, and in the glaring dominicus on the side of the mountain a bitter ritual begins.
As state police officers watch from their cruisers, the workers at the copper mine endemic by the Phelps Dodge Corporation stream from the gate in a convoy of cars, pickups, vans and motorcycles.
At the side of the road, one-half a dozen strikers stand nether an orangish umbrella shouting insults and taunts. ''Scab! Scab! Scab!'' a striker cries.
The ritual is a brilliant illustration of the bitterness of the struggle between 12 unions and Phelps Dodge in this mining army camp in southeastern Arizona, where a strike is entering its 14th month, and 4 other mining communities in the Southwest. Some Fearfulness It Is Lost
Many strikers remain intransigent, just some union members say they fright the strike appears lost. A defeat would be a severe blow for the American labor movement.
Efforts have begun to decertify the striking unions, significant they no longer would represent the miners. Hearings before the Natonal Labor Relations Board are scheduled to brainstorm July 30. Phelps Dodge expects elections to deprive the unions of their status every bit collective bargaining agents to be ''every bit presently every bit September'' and predicts the unions volition lose.
The company is besides moving to evict 38 militant unionists from company houses. Last summer, the visitor dismissed 100 strikers it said engaged in scout line violence; those cases are now being heard by an arbitrator and, so far, the company has won all.
The strike began July 1, 1983, when 2,900 workers went out. On Aug. xx, 1983, Phelps Dodge, with 700 country police officers and National Guardsmen on hand, reopened the plant. Today 2,400 miners are working at Phelps Contrivance, including 1,055 new workers and one,345 people who were working before the strike. 'A Perfect Case'
A number of labor consultants encounter the strike every bit an example of labor's helplessness.
''The Phelps Dodge strike is a perfect case of what is incorrect with the American labor movement,'' said Ray Rogers, a New York labor consultant. He added that new methods of fighting were desperately needed, including carrying union disputes to banks, investment houses and insurance companies that supported target companies.
The problem is compounded because this is a historic union expanse, for years a centre of the Western Federation of Miners and the International Workers of the World.
''If you tin break a strike here, you can break a strike anywhere,'' says Robert Schrank, a New York consultant who was one time an organizer for the quondam Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, predecessor of the division of the steelworkers that is one of the striking unions here.
The strike involves erstwhile matters, the militancy of Western metal miners and the resistance to unions by mining companies, and new matters, especially global economics.
The Phelps Dodge miners live in often bleak environment in the hot, treeless camps on the lips of the mines and in the shadows of the tall smelter smokestacks. Their homes are often stark and ill-kept. But in recent decades the union wrested relatively big wages from the mining companies - the typical wage at Phelps Dodge before the strike was $26,000 a year - and the miners have been willing to get on strike to protect benefits.
In the negotiations before the strike, Phelps Dodge decided it had to reduce labor costs. Foreign copper companies have flooded the market with low- priced copper that George B. Munroe, Phelps Contrivance chairman, says is often subsidized by multinational institutions such equally the International Monetary Fund.
The company lost $64 million in 1983. Mr. Munroe says that in 1981 and 1982, miners' wages rose xxx percent while the cost of copper dropped 28 percent. 'Not in Tune' With Economics
He says the strike is ''tragic'' but that the strikers and their unions, led by the United Steelworkers of America, were ''non in melody with the economic realities.''
The unions clearly underestimated the company's resolve; political disagreements in the steelworkers matrimony meant a partitioning on how to procede in negotiations. Lloyd McBride, then the union president, who has since died, and Frank S. McKee, union treasurer, clashed over concessions, with Mr. McBride believing them necessary but Mr. McKee opposing them as a sign of weakness.
In March, Mr. McKee was defeated past Lynn Williams, union secretary, in an election to replace Mr. McBride. The matrimony's stand at Phelps Dodge was used by Mr. McKee's supporters equally an example of his tenacity, despite the losing position the miners face.
Still, the company's tactics, including hiring replacement workers to reopen the Morenci mine, are tactics that take been used past mining companies in the west for decades.
The steelworkers marriage says that any mistakes made at Phelps Dodge will non be made again. Arrests on Anniversary
Violence has been committed past strikes and nonstrikers, and on June 30, the date marked every bit the first anniversary of the walkout, strikers led by Dr. Jorge O'Leary, a visitor doctor until he was dismissed concluding October, clashed with country police force officers; two dozen demonstators were arrested.
Many strikers come across themselves equally fighting non merely the company but the constabulary. When the Department of Public Prophylactic is involved, Manny Rodriguez, a striker, said, ''Yous got to stay low profile.''
A different bespeak of view comes from David Rameriz, who struck for a while just then returned to piece of work and is now active in the decertification move. ''They listen to the union guys who have been in the union leadershp for years and years,'' Mr. Rameriz says. ''They are obsolete.''
He says the union should have got ''some good young attorneys'' and obtained information on the financial situation in the copper manufacture.
Earlier the strike, the visitor was paying average wages of $13 an hour; today information technology is paying wages of $10 an 60 minutes, with new employees receiving $vii an hour. Toll-of-living payments accept been eliminated, and the company, unhindered past union contracts, has imposed new work rules and says it has raised productivity substantially.
The unions said in June that they would accept a freeze on the toll-of-living payments if the company reinstated strikers and dismissed workers who crossed wedlock lookout lines. The company refused.
The costs of the strike are immense.
Today, many homes in Morenci are boarded up; strikers movement away to seek other jobs. Fifty-fifty on cool nights playgrounds are empty. Families and old friendships take been destroyed.
''This was a beautiful little town,'' Fina Roman, a strike supporter, said, sitting in Clifton watching a convoy of nonstrikers. ''Everybody knew everybody. Now yous don't know half the people who drive through. It used to be that the worst matter was when 2 friends would get into an statement. Nobody had locks. At present that is gone.''
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1984/07/30/us/fury-etches-strikers-life-in-crumbling-fight-at-arizona-mines.html
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