“The Co-Op bosses blatantly harass UMWA supporters at the mine,” Bill Estrada, one of the miners, said at an August 28 meeting of the Utah Jobs with Justice Co-Op Miners Solidarity Committee in Salt Lake City called to build the anniversary event in Huntington. Co-Op miners Celso Panduro and Ricardo Chávez took part in the event along with Estrada. “They are waging this kind of war against us even though all such activity by the bosses is supposed to be illegal, according to the National Labor Relations Board [NLRB] settlement the Co-Op bosses and the union signed, under which we returned to work in July. We are documenting and publicizing all these incidents and are working together to stand up for our dignity on the job.”

The solidarity committee, which includes union members and students, also plans to organize a picket line in Salt Lake September 18, miners said, in front of the office of Carl Kingston, one of the prominent members of the Kingston family, which owns the Co-Op mine. Through the publicity around the September 18 action, unionists and students in Salt Lake say they are planning to fill a bus for the anniversary event in Huntington.

The NLRB ordered C.W. Mining, also known as the Co-Op mine, to reinstate the 75 workers the company fired Sept. 22, 2003, because they protested victimization of union supporters by management, and demanded safe working conditions and representation by the UMWA. The NLRB ruled the miners were fired illegally, are eligible for back pay for losses during the strike, and can vote for the union of their choice. The labor board ordered a union election after most of the miners signed a petition demanding it, and held a hearing in Price, Utah, to determine who will be eligible to vote. It has not yet announced a ruling based on that hearing or the date for a representation election. The miners were back on the job July 12, after the company made an unconditional offer to return following the NLRB decisions.

When the bosses are not doing the harassment directly, their relatives working at the mine will do it for them, Estrada told the unionists and youth at the August 28 meeting. “I sometimes work on a crew with one of Carl Kingston’s sons,” the miner said. “He makes a point of telling me he reads everything I and other miners tell the press about the fight at Co-Op, and accuses me of lying. The Kingston relatives also constantly spout the company line that Co-Op can’t afford to pay us more than $5 to $7 an hour, and will close down the mine if the workers press for the union.”

Estrada told the Salt Lake group that their solidarity is needed now as much as when the workers were walking the picket line.

“Management has a lot of family members working in the mine right now trying to dissuade workers from going with the UMWA, and they obviously organize what they are going to say and do,” Estrada said. “Out of the blue, one day last week, all of the Kingstons started saying, ‘I like working here, I like the conditions at this mine.’ They just repeat what the company says.”

The Kingstons are claiming more than 100 family members and close relatives employed at the mine now have a right to vote in the upcoming union election on the basis of being part-time, seasonal, and office personnel, including management personnel. Workers will have a choice of voting for representation by the UMWA, a company outfit called the International Association of United Workers Union, or no union. The UMWA contends that all management employees and Kingston family members should be excluded from the vote because of their loyalty to the company owners.

The miners speaking at the Salt Lake meeting also said that the company is not hiring new workers at the mine, even though the mine is shorthanded, for fear new employees would be partisans of the UMWA in an election. All miners are working 12-hour shifts, four days a week. They are also routinely asked, and sometimes pressured, to work longer hours and extra days.

“A boss sent a co-worker of mine to tell me to stay for a second shift after coming off a 12-hour graveyard shift,” said Ricardo Chávez. “They wanted me to work another 15 and a half hours! I said no.” Some miners do volunteer to work extra days to compensate for their low hourly wages, Chávez and other miners said.

One of the tactics of the company to divide and demoralize UMWA supporters is to target individual backers of the union, trying to get them to quit or break their spirit.

Alyson Kennedy, one of the leaders of the fight here, has come under such attack recently.

“I was written up twice last week for ‘poor work performance,’” Kennedy said in an interview. “I was moving a scoop and accidentally bumped it against another piece of mine equipment, a ram car. No damage was done to either piece of equipment. The boss told me I would be losing supplemental pay in my next pay check, and would receive two occurrences.”

According to “C.W. Mining Personnel Guidelines,” Kennedy said, if a miner has seven occurrences he or she receives a three-day suspension and a final written warning. A miner can be terminated after eight occurrences and rehired in two weeks as general labor. Occurrences are cumulative. Only one is eliminated every 90 days.

As a way of keeping workers in line, the Co-Op bosses pay workers an arbitrary “supplemental bonus” each week, which is a small percentage of hourly wages. The bosses can take away the bonus for any number of reasons—getting hurt on the job, damaging equipment, attendance, alleged poor work performance, asserting safety rights or saying something the boss doesn’t like, among others—workers said. This threat of loss of pay is always held over workers’ heads.

In addition to the formal written complaints issued against Kennedy, which go on her record and can be used to build up a case to fire her, Kennedy said that the bosses and their hirelings routinely harass her verbally. Loren Reynolds, the brother of mine manager Charles Reynolds, recently badgered Kennedy about her reasons for working at the mine. According to Kennedy, Reynolds said, “Alyson, why are you working here? You’re a woman. How old are you? Over 50? You shouldn’t be working in a mine. Why aren’t you married? How much is the UMWA paying you to be here? Why are you trying to destroy a ‘way of life?’”

Panduro, another leader of the effort to win UMWA representation, said it was important for the workers at the mine to defend Kennedy against the bosses’ harassment. “They’ve laid off some of the other leaders like Bill, Jesús, and myself,” he said. “Now they are going after Alyson. We can see through what they are doing and we can’t let them get away with it. It is blatant discrimination. We have to defend her and we have to get this story into the press.”

Kennedy is now the only woman working underground at the mine, miners said.

While the bosses alternate the union supporters against whom they direct the most severe harassment, Panduro said the company continues to operate the mine unsafely, which has a big impact on all workers. Roof bolters at the mine, which is Panduro’s job, are paid on a piece-rate basis—40 cents a bolt. Unheard of in other mines, paying workers piece rate for bolting means that an already dangerous job is made more hazardous due to pressure to make more money through speed-up and continuing to work when equipment is broken, miners said.

“Right now one of the roof bolters doesn’t have working torque gauges,” Panduro noted. “An operator doesn’t know if he is applying proper torque and securing the roof top correctly. Our crew has reported this to our supervisors, but they expect us to work with the defective equipment regardless.”

The Co-Op miners report that they are encouraged by the solidarity they are receiving since returning to work. That support, the efforts being made to stand up for workers rights at the mine, and explaining how low wages, unsafe conditions, and lack of respect will continue unless workers organize into a real union, has helped win new supporters for the union in the mine. “We are making steady progress in convincing many who crossed the picket line or were hired during the strike to vote for the UMWA when the election comes,” said Panduro. “The company, with its fake union, is not offering anything for the workers here.”

“My union and myself want the miners to win representation with the UMWA on their anniversary celebration,” said James Weddington, a retired longshore workers from International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 23 in Tacoma, Washington, in an interview. “We continue to support the miners at Co-Op.” Weddington and Farrand Green, another ILWU member from Tacoma, visited the miners and their supporters in June of this year to learn first hand about the union struggle. They have used that trip to expand labor solidarity for the UMWA struggle in the Pacific Northwest.

Estrada and Timoteo González, another Co-Op miner, spoke at the King County Labor Council (KCLC) in Seattle August 18 to give an update on their fight, garner more solidarity, and invite union affiliates of the KCLC to their September 25 anniversary event.

The Co-Op miners said they urge all those who support their union organizing struggle to continue sending messages of solidarity. They also said they can speak at union and other meetings.

The miners said they are asking supporters of their struggle to send letters to the NLRB urging the labor board to rule that Kingston family members not be allowed to vote in the upcoming union elections. These letters can be sent to B. Allan Benson, NLRB Region 27, 600 17 St., 7th Floor-North Tower, Denver, CO 80202-5433; Tel.: (303) 844-3551; Fax: (303) 844-6249.

Messages of solidarity and financial donations for the miners’ struggle can be sent to the UMWA at 525 East 100 South, Price, Utah 84501. Tel: (435) 637-2037; Fax: (435) 637-9456.  
 
 
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