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California Borax Miners Locked Out
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Some 540 workers were locked out of the giant Rio Tinto Borax mine in Boron, Calif., Jan. 31 after the workers, members of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 30, unanimously rejected the company’s latest contract offer. The company shut off further contract talks and brought in replacement workers.
The mine is the largest open-pit mine in the Golden State and the second largest borax mine in the world. Many of the town’s 2,000 residents work at the mine, which has been a key contributor to the town’s economy.
Jim Freeman, a 31-year veteran at the mine, told the Los Angeles Times.
I think the company had the impression we were going to roll over and let them feed us the poison.
London-based Rio Tinto employs some 720 people in Boron, paying between $12 and $35 an hour, according to the union. The mining giant operates on five continents and reported $2.5 billion in net earnings for the first half of 2009.
Yet Rio Tinto, which says it lost 25 percent of its share of the global borax market, is demanding the right to hire more nonunion workers and to change the seniority system.
On the local’s website, workers say they are determined to fight for their rights and the rights of working people.
While Rio Tinto has shown that they don’t care for us and our communities, we’re more determined than ever to stand up and see this thing through. Too many people in America are losing good jobs and working harder, while big companies make billions and don’t play by the rules. That’s why we’re taking a stand in Boron, not just for ourselves and our communities, but for everyone in America who’s fed up with corporate greed and a system that doesn’t protect hard-working families.
Union spokesman Craig Merrilees says:
Rio Tinto wants to take good full-time jobs and replace them with part-time, temporary positions that pay little or no benefits, and make it impossible for working families to survive.
People here are tough and willing to see this through to the end. It’s not just about Rio Tinto but all the companies doing this to people across the country. In this little town people are drawing the line.
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6 Comments
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Here are a few more details below about his story. Capitalist globalization is again the culprit, maximizing profit by maximizing exploitation on a global basis. This devastating crisis for working people cannot be solved within the framework of global “free market” capitalism, which both Democratic and Republican parties so fervently support.
Some additional imported facts are posted on the copyrighted article by Associated Press writer Robert Jablon.
The Buffalo News
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MINE_LOCKOUT?SITE=NYBUE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
In the most recent issue of The Dispatcher, the ILWU newspaper, the front page had a picture of a recent demo in Boran and it showed membes of ILWU Local 30 holding up a sign asking Rio Tinto to “be fair.”
The inside story detailed how a preacher was on hand leading the ranks “in prayer.” i wrote The Dispatcher, which i subscribe to, a letter asking why their actions did not match the rhetoric detailed in the paper about the proud history of the ILWU and went on to detail how Rio Tinto had been confronting the Government of China and in continual battles with Australian miners and prayer was not the way out as it only inboldend the bosses at Rio Tinto. We now have the prove of that statement.
I would like to introduce you to the town of Boron, California. You’ve probably never noticed it as you drove through the Mojave Desert on Highway 58, but it is a quiet little community of about 2,500 people. It is the kind of town that everybody wishes they lived in. Children can play in the street and walk to school safely. Everybody knows everybody else. People look out for one another.
It has a main street with small local businesses – a local market, a resturant, and a museum dedicated to the mining town’s meager beginnings. The street is Twenty Mule Team Road, named for the original method of hauling the the mineral deposits out of the mine at US Borax. Boron is a company town. It is a main street kind of place. It is my hometown.
US Borax, is the mining company in Boron, CA, owned by Rio Tinto Borax. The miners are Union employees (International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 30.) Since November, 2009, they have been working under threat of Lockout because their contract had expired. Sunday, the company made good on that threat. Five hundred fifty union employees were given final pay checks and sent home.
This has come as a result of several attempts by Rio Tinto to circumvent and weaken the Union. In a mining environment, enforcement of labor laws and employee bargaining ability is extremely important to the safety of the workers. My father and stepmother have been employed as Union workers at US Borax for most of their adult lives. They and nearly everybody else I knew from childhood are on the street today without work. The workforce has been made up of generation after generation of the same families going all the way back to the opening of the mine. The company’s assault on the Union is an assault on its workers, which is an assault on the town of Boron. This town depends on the mine and, even if Rio Tinto refuses to admit it, the mine depends on the town.
Rio Tinto’s contract draft stipulated that the union members would modify the meaning of seniority and allow the company to violate labor laws. These employees have built their entire lives around this mine. In thanks for their loyalty, Rio Tinto repayed them Sunday by firing them when they refused to accept unfair and unsafe labor practices. Rio Tinto wants to decrease wages by firing its current workforce and hiring them all back at lower wages. They are trying to take advantage of the fact that these people are invested in the Boron community and cannot easily pick up and move. Many were born there and have built a life on one of the few sites of good old fashioned family values. Rio Tinto’s unfair business practices and its all-out war on union labor and their bid to drive up their profits at any cost cannot be allowed to continue.
In light of the economic climate in the United States and in the world, it is difficult to sympathize with Rio Tinto’s heavy handed strategy for boosting profits. This is especially true when it is done at the expense of the town who provides its labor force. Rio Tinto is making an attack on all unions by trying to eliminate the union workforce in Boron.
Please help my little town survive. I ask you to put pressure on Rio Tinto to treat it’s employees fairly, to end the lockout and to restore all the union employees to their previous status of employment. Send a message to other companies who are strategizing to abolish unions. Let them know that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated and that Unions are not expendable.
Write a letter to your congressman/woman. Tell your local media. If you’re a union member, tell your union that you support the miners and ask them to do so publicly. This is a town worth saving! Will you help us?
Thank you,
Hollie Choi
Proud Child of a Union Member
check out this article from today’s Financial Times:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ea5d1a86-1062-11df-a8e8-00144feab49a.html
“Rio, which acquired Canada’s Alcan for almost $40bn in 2007, was the most high-profile victim last year of a debt binge that the world’s top mining companies undertook during the commodities boom between 2003 and 2008.”
So Rio got in trouble with debt, and looks who’s paying the price.
Why can’t the American labor “movement” finally draw the line in the sand with the democrats and the republicans? This fight should be our fight. It should be a symbol of a new labor movement. How else are we going to democratize our labor reform — because obviously helping democrats win Congress and the White House is not going to do it. Let’s stop deluding ourselves. Let’s fire up the imagination of young workers all over America by showing them that we are not just a bureaucracy — but a movement that can fight on a large front. Otherwise, if the American labor movement is ever going to revive or experience an explosion in growth like in the 1930s or 1960s, it will have to happen with out us. In fact, it will happen in spite of us!
This looks like a very serious struggle. Serious enough to employ an international strategy. A strategy that will forever stick in the minds of the Rio Tinto bosses.
Only through solidarity can we bring these bosses hack to reality! Without our blood, sweat, and tears they have NOTHING! Our labor is what makes their profits, not the other way around!
Brother Trumka, we cannot allow our sisters and brothers down! Our sisters and brothers throughout the globe must become aware of this situation! We must all stand together to defeat the corporate monster!