The 75 miners, who have been on strike since September, are demanding recognition of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), safe working conditions, better wages, and an end to company abuse. At the invitation of Massachusetts Jobs with Justice, the miners sent two strikers to Boston in mid-March.

Lepore was speaking at a March 18 meeting held at the Boston Teachers Union hall. It was chaired by Gabriel Camacho, president of the Massachusetts Labor Council for Latin American Advancement. The two miners, William Estrada and Ana María Sánchez, were featured speakers at the meeting.

Among the speakers were also Ronald Estrada and other workers at Commercial Cleaners who are fighting to be represented by Service Employees International Union Local 615, and Wilmer Sosa, a leader of the United Food and Commercial Workers union organizing drive at Kayem Foods, a packing plant in nearby Chelsea.

Ronald Estrada described how the bosses at Commercial Cleaners fired him for his union support. Sosa said, “I identify with the problems these brothers and sisters have had.” He told how the company fired him in a similar way last summer, and reinstated him seven months later after a campaign by union supporters on his behalf.

“The bosses never thought we would wake up and struggle for our rights, but we did, and here we are,” Sánchez told those attending the meeting. As evidence of the unsafe working conditions the miners had worked under, William Estrada said, “Three of the last mine fatalities in Utah occurred in this mine.” He said miners from nearby Deer Creek mine, the only UMWA-organized mine in Utah, contribute food regularly to the strikers. In the process of linking up in solidarity, some of the Deer Creek miners, most of whom are U.S.-born, are learning a little Spanish and the Co-Op miners, most of whom are Mexican-born, are learning some English, Estrada said.

Before the meeting two members of UNITE Local 1 presented the strikers a check for $57 raised in a collection at the Sterlingwear garment plant in East Boston.

Earlier that day, the two coal miners met with officials of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. The union officials voted to donate $500 to the strike fund and to send a letter to all member locals requesting solidarity and financial contributions.

Estrada addressed the monthly meeting of the Springfield, Massachusetts, Central Labor Council, where he was well received. Sánchez spoke at the Southeastern Massachusetts Central Labor Council in North Dartmouth, where they received $426 from the labor council and $210 from a collection taken by UNITE Local 377 members at Riverside Manufacturing in New Bedford.

The miners spoke at the morning and evening membership meetings of International Union of Electrical Workers/Communications Workers of American Local 210, which organizes production workers at the General Electric aircraft engine plant in Lynn, Massachusetts. The local gave the strikers $390. The local’s newsletter, Electrical Union News, has featured the miners’ strike in two recent issues.

Estrada told the Local 201 members, “Miners are working to undo conditions in nonunion mines that are more and more like those of the Co-Op mine.”

Sánchez and Estrada answered questions about the company “union” that the company pretends is a legitimate representative of the workers in order to keep miners from bringing in the UMWA. “The bosses are members of that so-called union,” Sánchez explained. “It never represented us or did anything for us.”

UNITE sponsored a brown-bag lunch meeting for Sánchez at the union’s headquarters. Laundry workers participating in an all-day workshop on organizing took part in the lunch meeting. Martie Voland, assistant manager of the UNITE New England Joint Board, welcomed the visiting miner.

The contributions raised in Massachusetts for the miners’ strike fund totaled some $4,200. The miners were interviewed by the Metro West Daily; Metropolitan, a Brazilian weekly in Portuguese; and by a Spanish-language radio station.

Maggie Trowe is a member of UNITE Local 1 in Boston.
 
 
Related article:
Utah miners upgrade picket line, win support  
 
 
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