For the handful of UMWA supporters who remained working at the Co-Op mine after December 9, harassment and firings by the bosses continued, workers report, leaving only one pro-UWMA miner on the job.

Meanwhile, the UMWA assisted the miners in filing unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against the company for the mass firings. Workers also say an official with the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) told them the government agency cited the mine with 10 safety violations on December 28.

One letter of solidarity from the UMWA in Pennsylvania arrived here before the holidays with a $300 check. “Each year we hold a haunted house in Indiana, Pennsylvania, to raise money for gifts for unemployed members’ children in Christmas,” the letter said, signed by two officers of UMWA District 2. “We hope this will make your Christmas brighter.”

Checks have also arrived from unions and individuals in Utah and other states, miners said.

Annie Fivecoat and her husband Bob, a UMWA retiree, help organize the Co-Op miners’ fund. “We are proud to be counted as supporters of the Co-Op miners,” Annie said in an interview. “It’s important for them to win their fight against the injustices from C.W. Mining. It’s very important for the miners to stand up for their human rights. It’s equally important for all of us to support the miners mentally, physically, morally, and monetarily. We urge all who can to give to their fund and we thank all those who have already stood up.”

Jesús Galaviz, one of the fired workers who worked at the mine for six years making $6 an hour, said the contributions are vital. “While we look for work, the donations help keep all of us together,” said Galaviz, who has a family of five.

The Voice@Work Campaign of the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., sent out a pre-holiday appeal to 30,000 union activists across the country asking for support for the Co-Op miners. “Once again, with the recent firings, the company is trying to frustrate the will of the workers and break their union, by leaving them without an income for the second time in two years,” the appeal said. “These miners live paycheck to paycheck, many only paid between $5.50 and $8.00 an hour (the average U.S. miner makes $18 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) and receive no health benefits while performing one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States. Having a union would allow them to negotiate for safer working conditions, a livable wage, and affordable health care. Make the difference for these miners by helping them continue to fight. Make a donation now by clicking on: https://secure.ga3.org/08/helptheminers.” Through this link individuals and organizations can make immediate financial contributions by credit card to the miners. The AFL-CIO told the miners that an additional $7,000 was raised through this appeal over the holidays.

As part of the Christmas spirit, Ricardo Silva, an activist from Salt Lake City, made the two-hour trip in his pickup truck to donate toys and 30 turkeys to the miners at the UMWA District 22 union hall in Price on December 23. Silva returned on January 3 with bags of clothes for miners’ children that he collected from friends and other supporters of the miners’ struggle in Salt Lake.

The unemployed miners said they are looking for other mining jobs in the area while they push for reinstatement at the Co-Op mine through the NLRB.

C.W. Mining, which operates the Co-Op mine owned by the Kingston family, fired 75 miners on Sept. 22, 2003, after miners demanded safe working conditions, protested harassment of co-workers and the firing of a colleague, and began the effort to win UMWA representation. The miners turned the lockout into a strike and set up picket lines for nearly 10 months, winning broad support in the labor movement in the West and beyond. The NLRB ruled July 1 that the miners were fired illegally and the company was forced to offer unconditional reinstatement to all the strikers, many of whom returned to work July 12. Since returning to work, miners said they faced a war by the company against UMWA supporters, which included selective firings of union backers and many attempts to intimidate and divide them.

Region 27 of the NLRB in Denver ruled November 18 that Kingston family members and relatives and supervisory personnel would not be allowed to vote in the union representation election.

The company appealed the decision 12 days later and the NLRB subsequently allowed more than 100 Kingston family members and relatives, whom the bosses claim are legitimate employees, to vote in the election. Their ballots were separated and sealed, however, pending a final decision from the NLRB.

On December 17, 40 mostly Mexican-born miners and the Kingston family members voted in the union representation election conducted by the NLRB. The ballot included as choices the UMWA, the so-called International Association of United Workers Union (IAUWU), which workers say is a company-run outfit, or neither. Results have not been announced because most of the ballots have been challenged.

A week earlier, on December 9, mine manager Charles Reynolds called nearly 30 miners into his office one at a time to inform them that was their last day of work. C.W. Mining claimed they lacked proper documentation in order to justify the mass firings. The miners say their documents remain the same from their hiring date. Mexican miners have worked at Co-Op since the 1970s, but only now—a week prior to a union election—did the company question their work documents, workers and union officers point out.

On December 28, maintenance supervisor Cyril Jackson went underground to pull miner Bill Estrada from the job. Estrada said the company claimed his alleged failure to do his job had resulted in a safety violation citation from the Mine Safety and Health Administration. This was one of 10 violations MSHA cited the company with that day, workers were told by an official with the agency. Estrada was given two “occurrences” by Jackson. These are disciplinary points, which the company said brought Estrada to a total of eight, the number at which the company supposedly may terminate employees. “This is retaliation against me because I and other miners have reported violations to MSHA and because I’m pro-UMWA,” Estrada said.

The company has also dismissed three other Mexican miners for alleged lack of proper work documentation since the mass firing on December 9. These latest firings leave only one UMWA supporter working at Co-Op, who is also under threat of termination, workers say. The company is now attempting to run the mine almost entirely with relatives of the Kingston family.

Miners visited the local MSHA offices in Castle Dale and Price to obtain information on their rights. One miner said an inspector informed them that MSHA has revoked the training papers for José Ortega, who was the safety trainer at Co-Op. Numerous Co-Op miners testified against Ortega in October 2003 for improper training and charging excessive payments for the courses—up to $350 for the 32-hour MSHA-required new miner safety class that he typically taught in six hours out of his house. Ortega and his father, both of whom the pro-UMWA miners say are staunch opponents of the union, remain working at the mine.

The Co-Op miners’ struggle has continued to receive attention in the media here. The Sun Advocate, the local daily in Price, featured the fight in its year-end issue. “Co-Op mine strike draws national attention to workers, local mine operations,” reads the headline of one of the two lead articles for the 2004 top stories section of the paper in its December 30 edition.

“The work stoppage not only gained statewide coverage by the television stations and in newspapers across Utah, but national attention was brought to the situation primarily through the efforts of the United Mine Workers of America,” the article said. “The UMWA had attempted to organize the mine workers when the stoppage began.”

The article also pointed out that in September the Co-Op owners and the IAUWU filed a civil lawsuit in federal court in Utah against the UMWA, 17 Co-Op miners, a number of labor unions and other organizations that have backed the union-organizing struggle, as well as many newspapers that reported on the labor struggle. The dozens of defendants were cited with “unfair labor practices” and “defamation” against the Kingston-owned company and the IAUWU.

Subsequently, the plaintiffs amended their legal complaint, dropping a number of the original defendants, in an effort to split those supporting the miners. Those no longer cited include all entities related to the Catholic Church, the local newspapers in Carbon and Emery counties, and a number of individual activists who have supported the miners over the last 15 months.

“The two local papers, the Sun Advocate and the Emery County Progress, were also named in the suit,” said the December 30 Sun Advocate article. “But the next week a mine official contacted the publisher of both papers and told him that the two local papers were added to the suit by mistake and their names were being withdrawn from it.”

The citation of the two local papers, however, was not done in passing in the original suit. The first company complaint named not only the newspapers and their publisher but also reporters of the papers and cited quotations from articles they had published on the miners’ struggle to back up the Kingstons’ allegation of “defamation.” These quotations remain and were even expanded in the amended complaint, which dropped the two local newspapers as named defendants.

The UMWA, other labor organizations, the Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret Morning News—Utah’s two main dailies, and the Militant remain defendants.

The new complaint is a sharper attack against the UMWA and others who have backed the fight. The amended Kingston legal brief now accuses the UMWA, through one of its “agents,” of misrepresenting the actions of the Co-Op bosses when they fired Bill Estrada on Sept. 22, 2003. The complaint claims that after his firing Estrada “falsely told the waiting workers they had also been fired,” thereby causing the walkout.

“The Kingstons are attempting to rewrite history and obscure what miners have been fighting for,” Estrada told the press. “The miners were responding not only to my firing but to two other disciplinary actions by the bosses against workers in the days preceding the firings. After I was fired, the miners as a group were making their opinions known to the bosses that I should be put back on the job, and were refusing to back down. That’s when management called the cops, ordered all of the miners off the property, and locked us out.”

C.W. Mining lawyers also state their intention in the lawsuit to prove allegations of defamation against the UMWA and the Militant through discovery. No mention of using discovery is made in relation to the Salt Lake Tribune or Deseret Morning News, the other two papers still named in the suit. This process, which can be used if the court does not dismiss the case in its early stages, opens up defendants to massive legal expenses as the Co-Op bosses’ lawyers organize a fishing expedition by demanding correspondence, records, and deposition from defendants.

“This is a frivolous lawsuit,” UMWA Region 4 director Bob Butero said. “The union’s attorneys will represent the miners and we will try to get this dismissed.”

The fired Co-Op miners say funds continue to be urgently needed. Almost all the fired workers live in trailer parks in Huntington. In the winter months heating bills can soar above $200, as much or more than rent payments. Funds can be sent to: UMWA District 22, 525 East, 100 South, Price, Utah 84501. Checks should be made out to the Co-Op Miners Fund. Messages of support can also be faxed to the UMWA at (435) 637-9456. For more information call the UMWA at (435) 637-2037.

Miners are also urging their supporters to write, call, or fax the NLRB to protest the mass firings, demand reinstatement of the workers, and ask that the election be decided based on the November 18 NLRB ruling on who was eligible to vote. Letters to the NLRB should be sent to Region 27, Director B. Allan Benson at 600 17th St., 7th floor—North Tower, Denver, CO 80202-5433; Tel: (303) 844-3551; Fax: (303) 844-6249.  
 
 
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