The 960 union miners, out of a workforce of some 1,500, work at the company’s underground and surface mining operations in Carlin Trend, a 250-square-mile area in northern Nevada where one-third of all gold is mined in the United States.

Workers carried out the two-day strike in response to company efforts to gut seniority rights. Newmont bosses are demanding a "skills-based" seniority system, which they claim would provide greater "opportunities" for employees while allowing the company more "flexibility" in moving workers from job to job. Union chief negotiator Frank Herrera told the Las Vegas Sun that "Newmont could demote workers if they don’t meet certain company criteria, including being able to handle up to eight different pieces of equipment."

The miners work rotating 12-hour shifts. Many pay for charter-bus rides to get to the Carlin mining operation, which is about 30 miles away from Elko.

The company wants "to be able to hire people off the street for less money to do the jobs of those with more seniority," said a miner, "and then put the older people in harder jobs to make them quit and lose their pension."

Another miner also spoke about the harsh conditions in the underground mine. "The company assigns you to work for two hours in a place more hot than hot," he said, "and some people have passed out [including me.] They don’t care."

Whether miners are members of the union or not, most say that they supported the walkout. "The union sets the wage scale," explained a worker coming back from work. "If the company wins against the union or if they get rid of it, the wages would go down in all the mines." Miners say that Newmont is the only union-organized gold mine in northern Nevada.

Miners say that Newmont has penalized workers for union activity, and imposed unilateral changes such as an increase in co-payments for health-care benefits, and cuts in bonuses.

Miners also confront a dangerous level of naturally occurring arsenic, a very dangerous carcinogenic chemical element, in the hot underground mine. The workers are demanding an arsenic-free place to eat their lunch.

After the walkout, the company agreed to restart negotiations.  
 
Bonanza for mine bosses
Elko township is situated in northern Nevada at an elevation of 5,060 feet. With only a 90-day growing season placing severe limits on agriculture, the state’s economy is based mainly on the mining industry and casinos. The state of Nevada is the third-largest producer of gold in the world after South Africa and Australia.

Denver-based Newmont Corp. also has mining operations in Indonesia, Africa, Australia, Bolivia, Ecuador, New Zealand, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. The company hires close to 25,000 workers worldwide, including 2,875 in the United States. Newmont’s underground and pit mines at the Carlin Trend started production in 1965, and by April 2002 this mining operation had produced 36 million ounces of gold.

Higher gold sales and prices nearly quadrupled the company’s net income in the last quarter of 2002. Newmont’s chairman and chief executive officer, Wayne Murphy, told the March 28 Elko Press that "a dollar change in the gold price results in a one-cent impact per share and $5.3 million in cash flow for the company."

The average price of gold was nearly $310 per ounce in 2002, compared to a low of $271 per ounce in 2001. The price rose to $380 earlier this year and now stands near $330 per ounce.

Due to the weak U.S. economy and the decline of the U.S. dollar, some businessmen, middle-class layers, and governments in several countries have started to increase their holdings in gold in place of U.S. currency. Unlike paper money or shares in stocks, precious metals are commodities possessing an intrinsic exchange value, derived from the labor power involved in mining and processing them. Gold is a traditional haven in times of economic and political crisis. This is behind the recent rise in the price of gold--it constitutes a real asset, while the U.S. dollar is just a promise.  
 
State laws aid mine owners
Nevada is a so-called right-to-work state, which means the "closed shop"--a gain of the labor movement which makes union membership mandatory in union-organized work places--is outlawed. The wealthy in Nevada also don't pay estate, personal property, or inventory taxes.

The General Mining Law of 1872, still in effect, allows corporations to take over land where there is a deposit of minerals and buy it for no more than $5 an acre--the price set in 1872. Newmont owns or controls around 3,000 square miles of land in Nevada. Under the same 1872 law, no royalties are paid to the federal government by hard-rock mineral mines. In comparison, royalties from coal, oil, and gas on public lands are between 8 and 16 percent.

Nevada tops all 50 states in pollution with 1.3 billion pounds of toxins, mostly from hard-rock mining, released into the air, water, and soil--the equivalent of 750 pounds of pollutants for every person living in the state. The toxic elements include lead, arsenic, cyanide, and mercury. Under the Mining law 557,000 hard-rock mine sites have been left unreclaimed.

Newmont spilled 24,000 gallons of cyanide solution at its Pinion mill facility, in Winnemuca, in May of last year. The Nevada Department of Environmental Protection claimed that this did not affect the aquifers or the Humboldt River, and that therefore there were no public health risks.

Barrick Goldstrike Mines, Inc., a Toronto-based company with a mining operation in Carlin, is one of the largest polluters in the country. It won a victory in April when Judge Thomas Jackson ruled in Washington, D.C., that the Environmental Protection Agency was wrong in requiring mining companies to include "the natural movement of rock" as part of their annual toxic release inventory report. Barrick produces about 400 million pounds of pollutants every year. Nevada currently is 10th in the nation in cancer mortality.

Bill Estrada is a coal miner in Utah and Rollande Girard is a sewing machine operator in San Francisco.  
 
 
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