The mine, owned by Pittsburg and Midway Coal (P&M), employs 300 miners and is located on the Navajo reservation. Some 95 percent of those who work here are Navajo.

"The company had a predisposition to strike," UMWA Local 1322 president Lawrence Oliver said in an interview. Pittsburg and Midway is demanding the miners give up double-time pay for work on Sundays and triple-time pay for holidays and birthdays. P&M demands that workers get no overtime pay at all unless they work more than 40 hours in a week.

Another big issue is health care. The miners are now covered at 100 percent of all health-care costs. The company wants to take that away from Native American miners. P&M offers to pay them $100 a month if they agree to go to Indian Health Services, a supposedly free service provided by the federal government.

Meanwhile, the UMWA declared a "memorial day" for May 15 at the York Canyon mine in Raton, New Mexico, and the North River mine near Birmingham, Alabama, both owned by Pittsburg and Midway. Miners there did not go to work that day in solidarity with Local 1322. According to their contracts, UMWA members have a certain number of memorial days the union can call that give miners a day off.

The contract at the Kemmerer mine in Wyoming, the other P&M holding, expires May 26.

This is the first strike for those miners who have been hired over the past three years. Most of the workers are veterans of the strikes in 1987 and 1995. Many of the miners Militant reporters talked with thought this could be a long walkout, but everyone expressed determination to stay out as long as it takes to win the fight.  
 
 
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