The miners addressed a meeting of United Steelworkers of America (USWA) Local 392 and two meetings of the Paper, Allied/Industrial, Chemical and Energy union (PACE). Unionists at these gatherings donated funds and pledged additional support for the Co-Op miners.

USWA Local 392 is an amalgamated local that organizes workers at the giant Kennecott copper mine and smelter plant on the outskirts of Salt Lake City; Syro Steel, a company in Centerville, Utah; and Calhoun Maintenance, a custodian contractor for the Salt Lake Airport.

“What happened to Co-Op miners getting fired for union activity is happening to us,” Linda Marcus, a USWA Local 392 member who works for Calhoun Maintenance, said in a telephone interview November 8. “My son was fired because he is a union member. The union is arbitrating his case. This is going on everywhere. Where Co-Op is located used to be all union until the coal companies started to turn things back to the early 1930s when there was no union. The Co-Op miners are valiant for what they are doing.”

Marcus said that after the miners left the meeting her local voted to organize a $1 per member collection and hopes to raise between $800 and $1,000 for the Co-Op miners in time for the holidays.

According to Danny Hernández, one of the Co-Op miners who spoke at this meeting, Local 392 collected $180 at the meeting for the Co-Op fight. “On September 22,” Hernández said he had told the steel workers, “the company unjustly fired and locked out 75 miners for standing together in solidarity with a co-worker they had suspended for three days with intent to discharge. The company called the sheriff to order us off the property. We had been talking to the UMWA about organizing a union. The company has a so-called union and all of the officers are bosses. We are fighting to get our jobs back.”

The invitations to speak at these union gatherings came from a trip to Salt Lake City on October 30 when a dozen Co-Op miners were part of a picket line with 40 people organized by Jobs with Justice, a coalition of labor and community organizations. The protest was held in front of the offices of Carl Kingston, the lawyer who represents the Kingston family, the owners of C.W. Mining (see last week’s Militant).

Jesús Salazar, a leader of the Co-Op miners fight who was part of this delegation, said in a November 5 interview, “At the union meetings we said that our wages were very low and we worked in abusive conditions. We decided to unite and seek support from different organizations. That is why we went to Salt Lake and why we will be seeking broader solidarity.”

The next morning part of the miners’ delegation returned to Huntington with a pickup truck full of food from students at the University of Utah. The four miners who remained in Salt Lake were interviewed by Univisión for the November 5 evening news.

That evening the embattled miners spoke at two meetings of the PACE union. Co-Op miners Jesús Salazár and Alyson Kennedy addressed one of these meetings. “We were dismissed unjustly and are seeking support from different organizations,” Salazar told the members of PACE Local 8-578, who work at the Holly Corporation Woods Cross oil refinery. “We are seven weeks out of work and our situation is critical. That is why we are here. We ask for your support.”

These workers had collected $250 from an in-plant collection, which they gave to the miners. Following the talk by Salazar, the local voted to give an additional $350 to the Co-Op miners fund, organized by the UMWA in Price.

“The Co-Op fight represents a basic struggle for decent human rights,” said David Brown, chair of the Workmen’s Committee of PACE Local 8-758, who attended the meeting. “Our wages in PACE-organized refineries are like what most members of the UMWA make. But the Co-Op miners do not even have the basic rights to live and survive. The Kingstons are taking advantage of these miners.”

Brown said the Holly Refinery was recently bought out by a corporation in New Mexico. He said the local is facing serious attacks by the company, which is trying to cut wages and benefits.

Two other Co-Op miners, Ana María Sánchez and William Estrada, spoke at the meeting of PACE Local 8-931. This local organizes the Chevron oil refinery. The workers there took up a collection for the miners and voted to send additional funds.

On November 7, some 80 Co-Op miners and their families and supporters gathered at the San Rafael Catholic Mission just a few miles outside of Huntington for a food distribution for the locked-out miners.

Early that morning, the Co-Op miners’ food committee and the spouses auxiliary brought a truckload of food to the church and organized it into cardboard boxes. The food committee had purchased the groceries earlier that week with donations sent for the Co-Op miners to the UMWA office in Price. Every miner’s family received boxes full of canned goods, rice, beans, flour, produce, shampoo, soap, and lotion.

Just as the food distribution got going, four students from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City arrived at the church. They brought more food and clothing that they had collected on campus during the week. The students had met the miners at the picket line held in front of the Kingston family offices in Salt Lake one week earlier.  
 
Funds urgently needed
Shortly after the students’ arrival, three members of UMWA Local 1984 from the Deserado mine in Rangely, Colorado, entered the church. They had brought loads of very much needed eggs, gallons of fresh milk, pot roasts, chicken, and more fresh fruits and vegetables.

“At our union meeting last Sunday, we were discussing the annual Christmas party,” said Carol Amy, a member of UMWA Local 1984. “We decided to take what we spend on this and give it to the Co-Op miners. We agreed on this last Sunday and then we got the ball rolling. We found out what the miners really needed and we bought $871 of groceries. Our local had two strikes, in 1988 and 1999, and they paid off.”

The miners have been receiving support from the mine workers union nationally. Larry Huestis, a UMWA international representative from Sheridan, Wyoming, has been assisting them. The UMWA has also set up a fund out of which Co-Op miners have been getting regular payments. These payments are given to the miners that have been pulling picket duty. The miners organize pickets in four six-hour shifts per day, seven days a week.

The Co-Op miners received their third payment from the fund as the food was being distributed. After the next week’s payment, however, the fund will be down to $800, according to UMWA representatives here. Urgently needed funds can be sent to the UMWA, 525 So. 1st St., Price, Utah 84501. They should be earmarked: Co-Op Miners. These funds help the miners pay the rent on their trailers and apartments. The miners are also receiving help from local food banks and Catholic churches for utility bill payments.

After the food and payments were distributed, everyone gathered for an impromptu program. The students presented the miners with $350 they had collected on campus.

“We had been discussing the Co-Op fight at several union meetings,” Don Thomas, a member of UMWA Local 1984, told the crowd. “At the last meeting a motion was made to take the money for the Christmas party and send it to the Co-Op miners. But just sending the money in an envelope was not the same as delivering the food ourselves. Sending it couldn’t have the hands, the faces, and the hearts with it. The Co-Op fight is so very much what the union is about. You are doing something for us. You are courageous and remind the rest of us of what it took to get what we have.”
 
 
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