The all-out management offensive during the first week on the job, miners report, included a 12-and-a-half-hour rotating shift schedule; selective enforcement of safety rules; a rapidly accumulating series of verbal and written warnings on trumped-up charges against supporters of the UMWA; and blatant violations of the recent settlement the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) brokered between the UMWA and the Co-Op owners, which mandated the company to make the strikers an unconditional offer to return to work.

Miners report some crews had their first day off July 19, after working seven days straight.

In response, the miners report, they have begun a counter-offensive. They are using their collective strength inside the mine to demand safe working conditions and treatment with dignity, and to push back the bosses’ drive against the miners’ right to be represented by the UMWA. Miners say they are encouraging fellow workers to work by the rules, and to put safety before the company’s pressure for coal production. They are also documenting every violation of the NLRB settlement by management.  
 
‘Safety rule violations’
The bosses have been writing up miners for doing what the supervisors had told them to do, and are now chalking up as “safety rule violations,” workers said.

On his first day back underground, Héctor Flores said he was written up for “not having his safety glasses on” while he was cleaning them during lunch break, and that the section supervisor, Chris Petersen, then went on to give the same warning to another miner for this “offense.” Flores has gone on to get a job at a nearby mine.

When Alyson Kennedy returned to work July 18 from two days off, Cyril Jackson, a maintenance foreman and Kennedy’s supervisor, asked her to follow him to the back office because he needed to talk to her, she reported. After he denied Kennedy’s request to have a co-worker present, he told her that mine manager Charles Reynolds had called him earlier that day, and instructed him to write her up for “low work performance.”

Three days earlier Reynolds had brought a tour group into the mine to show them a piece of equipment, Kennedy said. During the tour, Reynolds arranged for the group to take a picture with Matthew Kingston—a nephew of John Daniel Kingston, one of the mine owners—who was shoveling coal along with Kennedy. It was while Kennedy was left to work alone that Reynolds claims she was not performing adequately. The trumped-up charges came a day after Kennedy had spoken at a rally in Salt Lake City in front of A-1 Disposal, another business owned by the Kingston family, where she exposed the low wages, lack of benefits, and brutal conditions the Co-Op bosses impose on the miners (see article on this page). John Daniel Kingston had been there, photographing the rally.

After Kennedy refused to sign the warning on the fabricated charges, Jackson told her that if she went to the “proper structure” of the company “union” he believed the charges would be removed from her file.

Bill Estrada, an underground maintenance worker, told the Militant that he was singled out first for a verbal and then a written warning on false charges of working unsafely.

A day before, the same boss crammed 10 miners and their equipment onto the bed of the pickup truck used to transport the miners in and out of the mine, with no seats or seatbelts, reported Estrada.

The two-mile trip from the miners’ bath house to the entrance of the mine and back again at the end of the shift is particularly unsafe because of the steep, unpaved, and bumpy mountain road.

Three other miners refused to get into the truck because they thought it was unsafe.

The fight for on-the-job safety is one of the main issues in the Co-Op miners’ struggle for a union.

Estrada said that according to the maintenance logs kept of the mining operation, no preventive maintenance has been done in the mine since the company locked out 75 miners who stopped work on September 22 of last year to protest his suspension. During the strike that ensued the Co-Op bosses were able to run limited production using immediate family members and close relatives of the Kingston family, and miners who had crossed the picket line.

“This lack of preventive maintenance shows the bosses’ total disregard for the life and limb of the workers,” said Estrada.  
 
Response by the miners
Miners are now organizing to respond to this offensive by the bosses.

“The workers are the only ones that can make things safe,” said Celso Panduro, a roof bolter, with six years in the mine. “If they say they want to do things by the rules, we will work by the rules,” he added. “We are not going to use defective machinery.”

The fight to build a union at the Co-Op mine is being led by the more than two dozen miners who returned to work after the National Labor Relations Board ruled that they had been fired illegally and ordered C.W. Mining to reinstate them. The NLRB ruled against Co-Op on unfair labor practice charges filed by the UMWA last September. The government agency scheduled a public hearing July 20-22 in Price on who among the mine employees will be eligible to vote in the union election (see report below).

Of the 75 miners who were locked out last September, 50 had signed letters of intent to return to work at Co-Op, which miners and their supporters turned in to the company after a march to the mine on July 6. Among those who signed letters of intent to return, nearly half were working in other better paying nonunion mines in the area, and most decided not to go back to Co-Op.

The returning miners are discussing the challenges facing supporters of the UMWA in constructing a union, as they prepare for a representation election.

Returning miners described the required eight-hour refresher safety class the company is responsible for providing. They reported that the class was given by the company’s trainer, José Ortega, who is under investigation by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) of the U.S. Department of Labor. The class was videotaped and monitored by Kent Norton, an MSHA representative.

During the training class, and to their surprise, miners say Norton told them that Co-Op was a “safe mine,” and that they should be thankful for the $5.25 an hour some of them are paid there. “‘These are good wages,’ he told us,” said Panduro, who was present at the class, “and that if we did not like it ‘we should go work at Wal-Mart.’”

“First, I was shocked,” said Panduro, “because this was the same guy who did the mine safety classes at the local college, and he had warned us then about the low wages and unsafe conditions at Co-Op.”

The comments by the MSHA official provoked an angry response by miners, one of whom reportedly asked Norton how much the Co-Op bosses were paying him to say these things.

After confirming to UMWA international representative Larry Huestis that he had made the comments, Norton offered an apology, union supporters report.

“He should be replaced with somebody who is really going to do the job,” Panduro said of Norton, “someone who can be objective about safety.”  
 
Violations of NLRB settlement
The NLRB-brokered agreement between the Co-Op bosses and the UMWA has been posted in large-format versions in English and Spanish in the bath house and in several spots at the mine, miners said.

Despite explicit provisions in this settlement prohibiting threats or harassment of union backers by the company, several miners report the bosses have asked them whether they are being paid by the UMWA to be there.

“What the supervisors are doing is illegal, they are violating the agreement, and we are documenting every incident,” said Juan Salazar, a leader of the fight.

In another flagrant violation, miners said, the company posted a notice July 19 informing those who had just recently returned to work that they would not be entitled to back pay for the time they were locked out by the company if they had received assistance from the UMWA or any other supporters to pay their bills, or any donations.

The NLRB agreement signed by the company states that they “will make the employees named whole, with interest, for any loss of wages or other benefits to which they may be entitled under Board law as a result of their work stoppage.”

The company notice also threatened workers whose papers are not “100% legal,” asking them to have their names removed from the list submitted by the UMWA for the representation election. “If the question of back pay is raised, then you will be investigated to determine if you are legal,” said the notice.

A “Co-Op Miners Benefit Dance and Dinner” took place in nearby Price. The Mission San Rafael Catholic Church and UMWA District 22 co-sponsored the celebration to raise money for families of the Co-Op miners who had been on the long strike.

“Every worker must now be an organizer,” Jesús Salazar told fellow workers in a discussion at the benefit.

Back on their crews, UMWA supporters are organizing to win the votes for the union of the 27 miners who had crossed the line during the strike. The impact of the efforts to win Co-Op production workers to the importance of voting for the UMWA was shown when eight of the miners who had crossed the line came to the July 17 fund-raising dinner, joining in solidarity with those who had taken part in the strike.
 
 
Related articles:
Miners rally in Salt Lake City
NLRB holds hearing on Co-Op miners  
 
 
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