Copper Crucible: How the Arizona Miners' Strike of 1983 Recast Labor-Management Relations in America (Ilr Press Books)

A Choice Magazine "Outstanding Academic Book for 1995" "Jonathan D. Rosenblum's history of this one strike reveals to us, in chapter and verse, the barbaric use of power by the corporate big boys. It is a stunning metaphor for labor's trouble today."―Studs Terkel (from a review of the first edition) "Rosenblum writes with the verve of a good journalist and the empirical precision of a fine scholar. He is as deft at sketching brief portraits of key executives, union officials, and rank-and-file strikers as he is at untangling the legal skein in which the miners got fatally ensnared."―Michael Kazin, New York Times Book Review (from a review of the first edition) In this new edition, Jonathan D. Rosenblum describes the resurgence in 1996 and 1997 of union activism at Local 890 in Silver City, New Mexico, the famous "Salt of the Earth" union. Phelps Dodge obliterated all the unions at its Arizona properties in the devastating 1983 campaign of permanent replacement documented in Copper Crucible. The company later acquired the Chino mine in western New Mexico; with the copper ore came the elements of union rebirth. When Phelps Dodge officials argued that "while unions may have had a purpose in the past, that time is gone," they rekindled the union's fighting spirit, according to Rosenblum. Local 890 beat back Phelps Dodge's 1996 decertification campaign, handing the company its first major setback against unions in fifteen years.

Jonathan D. Rosenblum describes the resurgence in 1996 and 1997 of union activism at Steelwarkers Local 890 in Silver City, New Mexico, the famous "Salt of the Earth" union. Phelps Dodge obliterated all the unions at its Arizona properties in the devastating 1983 campaign of permanent replacement documented in Copper Crucible. The company later acquired the China mine in wetern New Mexico; with the copper ore came the elements of union rebirth. Local 890 beat back Phelps Dodge's 1996 decertification campaign and, inspired by the union president's admonition that "We are still the salt of the earth," launched a community -wide campaign to resist the antiunion tactics of Phelps Dodge.

Publishers Weekly

The 1981 firing and replacing of striking air traffic controllers by President Ronald Reagan is considered the start of labor's current decline. Legal protection of employees' right to join unions is now often ineffective and the strike, once labor's most potent weapon, has been defanged by employers who use permanent replacements for striking workers. In his first book, lawyer and journalist Rosenblum argues convincingly that the crucial struggle over permanent replacements came not with PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) but in the lesser-known 1983-1986 strike by the United Steelworkers of America against the Phelps Dodge copper company in Arizona and Texas. There, the company moved quickly to hire replacements. Over a year later, after picket-line violence (including a National Guard call-up by Governor Bruce Babbitt), much human tragedy, religious, racial and ethnic divisions among Phelps Dodge workers, an abortive union-sponsored corporate campaign and a lingering recession, replacement workers were legally allowed to vote the union out. And, with help from Phelps Dodge and an employer-friendly federal labor official, they did. Rosenblum chronicles this story with compassion and considerable objectivity. He portrays the strikers sympathetically but not uncritically, and his portrait of Phelps Dodge details the cooly self-interested executive decision-making processes, devoid of compassion for the employees. (Jan.)

This revised and updated edition of COPPER CRUCIBLE, the 1994 expose of corporation versus union at Local 890 in Silver City, New Mexico includes the resurgence of union activisim during 1996-97. "Rosenblum . . . Is as deft at sketching brief portraits of key executives, union officials, and rank-and-file strikers as he is at untangling the legal skein in which the miners got fatally ensnared".--NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW. Presents an account of the dramatic and ultimately disastrous 1983 miners strike against the Phelps Dodge company in Arizona, all told against the backdrop of the uneasy relations between the company and the mine-workers' unions going back to 1903. This edition also describes the resurgence of union activism in Silver City, New Mexico, in 1996-97