A miner explained that they only got a $1.80 increase in wages over the six years of their new contract. "But the important thing is we beat back the 12-hour days" that the bosses demanded, the miner emphasized. Workers going to a nearby coke plant and power plant also stopped to buy the paper.

One miner said she saw the Militant at a "lady miners conference several years ago." Another miner stopped and handed us a bunch of money to get a copy. "Hey, that's a $20 bill here," we reminded her. "That's OK," she said and sped off into the mine.

This warm response to the socialist newsweekly was won as a result of the consistent and factual coverage the Militant gave to the P&M strike. The local president of the United Mine Workers of America stopped to greet the team selling the paper and thanked us for showing up.

The week-long sales team to the region sold a total of 64 papers at five coal mines in Colorado and Wyoming. The team went to both union and nonunion mines, met with miners at their homes, visited a local bookstore to place Pathfinder books, and set up a literature table at a community college.

"One of the things we've done differently this time around is sell the paper at both the morning and afternoon shift changes at most of the mines," team member Tony Lane explained. "We had people stopping a second time to discuss some of the articles they read. Other people who didn't have money when they saw us the first time, purchased a paper when they came back."

"This also helped the team get a better feel for what's taking place in the mine," said Lane, "because we were able to talk to more miners about what they are facing."  
 
 
Sales team visits rail yard and soda ash mine in Wyoming
 
BY MARION RUSSELL  
GREEN RIVER, Wyoming--We traveled from Grand Junction, Colorado, two weeks ago to sell the Militant to crews of workers at the big Union Pacific railway yard in this southwestern Wyoming city. We also wanted to learn what they thought of the strike by members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE) on January 26. The workers were just coming in from Rawlins, Wyoming, and Salt Lake City, Utah. Two engineers, two car men, and a conductor bought copies of the Militant.

"They reneged on their agreement on personal leave days," said one engineer of the company as he bought a copy of the paper. "The only trouble is, all of our strikes are four hours long!" He was referring to the quick intervention by a federal judge who issued a restraining order on more than 8,000 engineers who stopped rail traffic on the largest freight railroad in the United States.

In Rawlins, BLE Local 142 chairman Dan Schumacher told us, "Everywhere we had terminals we set up pickets. No one crossed our lines. We won in court, and now another contract is in the making."

Some of the workers we spoke with pointed to a successful action last year when members of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWE) walked off the job in February in solidarity with their fellow workers in Laramie, Wyoming. Union Pacific (UP) planned to close a plant it owns that fabricates panels used in train derailments, lay off more than 30 employees, and buy the panels from outside contractors. All other unions honored their picket line and let the trains stack up along the track. The strikers were ordered back to work when Union Pacific filed an injunction, but the court also ordered UP not to lay off any of the workers or use any panels other than those manufactured by BMWE employees. According to Schumacher, the plant in Laramie is still working today.  
 
Retired miners protest insurance hikes
Two weeks before our trip to the rail yard in Green River we visited the giant FMC trona (soda ash) mine there, where some 800 workers are employed. The mine produces soda ash for numerous industrial uses. We sold 10 copies of the Militant to miners there.

"Hey, where were you Monday? The retirees struck us!" stated one person in the first car that stopped. The miners explained how retirees (both salaried and hourly) put up a picket line in front of the plant on Monday, February 5. They were protesting hikes in the insurance premiums they must pay to remain in the company's health plan. Some premiums were raised 100 percent, leaving retirees paying more than $700 for insurance each month. Before the day shift buses reached the plant, company representatives promised a meeting to address the higher premiums and other concerns.

One miner who stopped said, "We've wildcatted them twice. This is how corporations act. Give me one of those subscription blanks."
 
 
Good sales of socialist literature at Alabama civil rights event
 
BY ARDY BLANDFORD  
SELMA, Alabama--Socialist workers from Birmingham participated in the March 2–4 activities here that commemorated the 36th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery voting rights march of 1965. An estimated 2,000 people participated in the event, which included a march of 500. We set up a literature table for two days and sold nine copies of The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning.

Many women who came by the table were attracted to the pamphlet Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle by Thomas Sankara, a leader of the Burkina Faso revolution in the 1980s. Four people bought copies of the pamphlet. We could have sold more if we had them.

In all, we sold about $150 worth of Pathfinder literature, including Fertile Ground: Che Guevara and Bolivia, Capitalism's World Disorder in French, two Militant subscriptions, one subscription to Perspectiva Mundial, and 25 copies of the Militant.  
 
 
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