BY JEFF POWERS
RANGELY, Colorado - Members of United Mine Workers of
America (UMWA) Local 1984 returned to work at the Deserado
mine July 12, ending their two-month strike against Blue
Mountain Energy. The miners voted 74-14 to accept a contract
that was slightly better than the company's original offer.
The new agreement included a $1.65 per hour pay raise spread
out over five years, a small increase in retirement benefits
(the company improved its contribution to the 401 K plan), a
return to rotating shifts-something the miners were
demanding, better contract wording on threats to outsource
union jobs, improvements in accruing vacations, and no
changes in medical, dental, and vision benefits. The UMWA was
not able to secure health care for retirees, one of the major
issues in the strike.
The company would only let the union employees back into the mine after they took and passed a urine analysis. All the miners took the test and no miner was told that he or she could not return to work.
No union miners crossed the picket line during the strike, but the bosses attempted to mine coal. "It looked to me like they were able to get about 20 or 30 feet a day. That is nothing," said Local 1984 recording secretary Carol Amy. "It is easy to get 120 feet."
In June Blue Mountain Energy placed adds in every local paper in the area offering to hire scabs. Following the July 4 holiday the company began to process applications. "We heard that they gave physicals and hired 17 people," Ed Hinkle, a miner with 14 years at Deserado, said. "Since they had not been working, I doubt they were experienced miners."
"The company didn't tell people what they were getting into," Hinkle explained. "When we heard they were interviewing in Vernal [a town in Utah about 50 miles from Rangely] the union organized a team of miners who talked several people out of putting in applications."
"They were just people trying to make a living, not demons," Hinkle added.
"When the company looked like they were going to bring in the scabs it made a big difference," said Lloyd Chavez, another miner with 14 years. "It worried a lot of people." In saying this he echoed the sentiments of several other miners the Militant spoke with.
"A lot of what was involved in this was respect," Amy said. "We all walked out together and we stuck together and the union is a lot stronger because of it."
Since returning to work the union is fighting to get the company to abide by the contract - something they often neglected to do before. "One of the guys wrote up a boss for doing union work the day after we came back to the job," Amy said.
Both Amy and Hinkle said what impressed them the most was the solidarity of the younger workers traditionally called "green hats."
"They hired the green hats in the hopes that they would cross, but they were right there with us the whole time," Amy said. "They had come from the oil fields where they had seen their benefits taken away and they wanted to fight and saw that they could fight."