Of the 387 nonmanagement employees at the mine, 311 are members of the UMWA. No one has crossed the picket line.

The mine is on the Navajo reservation, and more than 90 percent of the workers are Navajo. Pittsburg and Midway (P&M) owns mines in Alabama, New Mexico, Texas, and Wyoming. Strikers have been reinforced by the mine workers who went on strike May 28 at the company's mine in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

On June 2, 45 miners and supporters "greeted" company officials driving into the north gate of the mine for day shift. Equipped with a bullhorn and picket signs, strikers yelled, "No contract, no work," and "Are we going to win?--Yes!" Many shouted at the trucks going into the mine, "How do you like alternative scheduling?" referring to company attempts to move to a 12-hour workday. Another 15 workers picketed the south gate, along busy Route 264.

This was the third of the union's weekly Friday morning expanded picket lines.

Members of the Laborers International Union (LIU), who work for a contractor that does reclamation work at the P&M mine, joined the pickets. LIU members, who have honored the strike, have no medical benefits and earn about half as much as UMWA workers at the mine.

Other unionists from the region have of fered solidarity with the strikers.

Members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers from two nearby power plants that McKinley has contracts to sell coal to have visited the picket lines. UMWA members from the Kayenta and Black Mesa mines in Arizona, the president of the New Mexico state AFL-CIO, teachers union members from Gallup, health-care workers, and iron workers from Phoenix have also walked the lines.

The local has set up a strike headquarters and bolstered the line with picket shacks at both the south and north gates. At both places, grills hold pots of strong sheepherder's coffee and the tables are topped with sodas, snacks, and water.

Most strikers interviewed said P&M provoked a strike by demanding deep concessions it knew the miners would not accept. One of the main issues is P&M's attempt to begin dismantling the company's medical plan, which covers 100 percent of health-care costs for miners and their families. The company wants Native American miners to "voluntarily" opt out of the company plan and instead they will be given $100 a month, with the suggestion they use the government health care provided under Indian Health Services. Unionists point out this second-class setup would be discriminatory.

The company also wants to move toward "alternative scheduling," instituting 12-hour shifts with rotating days off over a seven-day workweek. Under the expired contract, most miners work eight-hour shifts Monday through Friday. Only dragline operators have a rotating schedule, and all miners are paid time and a half on Saturdays and double time on Sundays. The new plan would eliminate all overtime and premium pay until after 40 hours' work.  
 
'New plan is unsafe'
A miner's wife on the picket line pointed out, "This new plan is unsafe. Nobody can operate this giant equipment 12 hours a day and work as safely as they can in eight hours."

UMWA miners at McKinley must reach 62 to retire with a full pension and 55 for a partial pension, regardless of how many years worked at the mine. The union is demanding a retirement plan after 20 years of service and that the company contribute the same amount of money to the pension fund as do companies under the Bituminous Coal Operators Association (BCOA) contract.

After a strike in the mid-1970s at the McKinley mine, P&M left the BCOA with a "verbal" agreement to keep miners' pensions on the same level as those negotiated with the BCOA.

Miners at P&M's Raton and North River mines have pensions on a par with the BCOA. The company has stated it plans to close McKinley around 2006. Under the current plan only a handful of workers would receive a full pension.

Pittsburg and Midway has hired David Smith, a notorious antiunion lawyer, to negotiate for the company at both the New Mexico and Wyoming mines. Smith was the bosses' chief negotiator during the UMWA strikes against A.T. Massey Coal in 1984 and Pittston Coal in 1989.

Said striker Wilbur Willie, "David Smith is a union-buster. We don't want him out here, and we'll send him back east with his tail between his legs, like Loretta Lynn says."

Willie has 25 years at the mine and operates a dragline. He and others said this is the first time the company has hired an outside person to negotiate. Most of those interviewed expect a long strike and see this as further evidence the company is playing hardball with the union.

Miners also struck the McKinley mine in 1987 and 1995. Most unionists participated in the hard-fought 75-day strike in 1987 and the shorter two-week strike in 1995. They went through the experiences of state police violence in 1987 and the use of riot police in 1995 to try to intimidate and provoke the unionists.

The sense of confidence and camaraderie on the picket line is strong. The union was gearing up for a strike months in advance and the company is confronting a tested and united workforce.

Local union leaders visited the 110 chapters (communities) on the Navajo Nation to win support for the miners in advance. In 1987, the Navajo Tribal Council, the governing body of the Navajo Nation, sided with the company at the start of the strike.

The first negotiations since the strike began were scheduled for June 6.  
 
 
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