Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 23:43:43 -0500
Subject: AUT: Part 2, Mex Labor News, 2 Feb 99



               ARIZONA LABOR HOLDS RALLY AND FOOD DRIVE
               FOR STRIKING MINERS IN CANANEA, MEXICO

                         by George Shriver 

          [Special to MEXICAN LABOR NEWS AND ANALYSIS]

TUCSON, AZ -- January 28 -- A coalition led by the Arizona State
AFL-CIO, the Central Arizona Labor Council (CALC) in the Phoenix
area, and the Southern Arizona Central Labor Council (SACLC) in
Tucson held a successful rally and food drive on January 27 to
benefit striking miners in Cananea, Sonora, Mexico. The state of
Sonora borders Arizona to the south, and the Sonora desert
stretches across both states, oblivious of borders.

     Union leaders declared that they too had no regard for
borders. They would continue to aid the Cananea strikers for as
long as they needed. Until they got a fair contract. They
repeated a common theme: Corporate greed doesn't stop at the
border. And union solidarity won't either.

     As Ted Murphree, president of the Central Arizona Labor
Council, put it. "The Cananea miners are being forced to choose
between two things: surrendering their right to have a union, or
starving."

     The January 27 rally and food drive touched a chord in the
Tucson community. Many Tucson residents have direct family and
personal ties with Cananea. A member of the Letter Carriers union
at the rally told me, for example, that he himself had worked at
the Cananea mine for over thirty years.

     The Letter Carriers were only one of many unions present at
the rally. Nineteen different union locals had people there.
Speakers from the Steel Workers local at a copper mine north of
Tucson said their local had voted to give the Cananea strikers
$200 a month for the duration of the strike. A rail worker told
me the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers sent the Cananea
miners a check for $500.

     The time set for the rally and food drive was 5-7 p.m., but
people kept showing up with contributions late into the evening,
until the 10 p.m. closing time of the Kino Community Center, site
of the rally. Over the course of the evening an estimated two
tons of food piled up in the trailer truck which local Teamsters
had obtained for storing and transporting this vital aid for
Cananea.

     Kathy Campbell, a Teamster activist and state ALF-CIO vice-
president, coordinated labor's part in the action together with
SACLC President Ian Robertson and Jimbo Watson of the SACLC's
community services.

     Besides food, the several hundred people at the rally
donated a thousand dollars cash. Earlier money donations -- to
the address of Labor's Community Services Agency in Phoenix --
added up to $3,000, which CALC President Ted Murphree brought to
Tucson with him. He reported that this included $150 from a union
local in Alaska. Word of the Cananea struggle was reaching far
and wide.

     Through supermarkets organized by the United Food and
Commercial Workers, this money bought larger amounts of food than
usual because of discounts given to the union. Other activists
solicited donations for the Cananea miners from supermarkets
whose customers are mainly Mexican Americans. A caravan was
scheduled for Saturday, January 30, to bring the collected food,
clothing, blankets, etc., from Tucson to Cananea.

     The diversity of the groups supporting the rally and food
drive was impressive. Derechos Humanos, a mostly Chicano human
rights group in Tucson that focuses on border rights issues,
played a big part in organizing the action and spreading the
word. Rabbi Weisenbaum, formerly active in the sanctuary movement
for refugees from U.S. government-funded death squads in Central
America, chaired the rally. He introduced the writer Demetria
Martinez, a former sanctuary activist who teaches at Arizona
State University. She read her poem -- dedicated to the Cananea
miners who came in December to Tucson seeking aid for their
struggle -- as an invocation to begin the rally.

     City, county, and state officials declared their support for
the Cananea miners. One city official stated he would introduce a
motion to stop any purchases by the city of Tucson from any
source connected with sweatshop labor or child labor.

     Several environmentalist groups attended -- including Earth
First, Student Environmental Action Coalition, and Southwest
Center for Biological Diversity. They met the next day with the
three Cananea miners who spoke at the rally. They wanted to
discuss common concerns. Environmental damage and dangers caused
by the company that runs the Cananea mine are a big issue for the
miners, especially the company's plans to close a waste water
treatment department, eliminating nearly 200 jobs.

     Members of the Arizona Chapter of the Labor Party actively
built the rally and food drive and turned out for the January 27
action. So did the local Jobs with Justice. The poverty
organization Project PPEP, which mainly aids impoverished farm
workers, has also helped gather aid for Cananea from the start.

     Old and young, male and female, black, brown, and white --
the turnout showed that the Arizona labor movement is reaching
out and making links with the community at the same time that
it's setting an example of international labor solidarity.

     As one activist from the Machinists union put it, "No local
can win a strike by itself anymore. It takes all of the labor
movement. And all the allies we can get. The help we give now
will come back to us when we need it."

[George Shriver is a member of the Tucson sub-local of the
National Writers Union, UAW 1981, and a delegate to the Southern
Arizona Central Labor Council.]

                              ###

          DIARY OF A SOLIDARITY CARAVAN TO CANANEA

                         by George Shriver

     "You never know what you'll come across when you go to
Mexico," said my friend, from behind the wheel of the pickup
truck.

     We were part of a caravan of a dozen pickups, vans, and a
rented truck taking food, blankets, clothing, Christmas toys,
etc., to the families of striking copper miners in Cananea,
Mexico.

     My friend knows what he's talking about. His family roots go
back to both sides in the Mexican revolution. Spanish is his
native tongue, and he has traveled in Mexico frequently. The
miners walked out on November 19. (A fact sheet with their
grievances and demands accompanies this article.) A strike at
Cananea is big news in Mexico -- a workers' revolt there in 1906
helped ignite the Mexican revolution of 1910. The prison at
Cananea, where rebel miners were held, is now a museum, a kind of
shrine to the area's revolutionary history. 

     At another stage in that country's history the Mexican army
was sent in to occupy the mine, the fifth largest copper
-producing operation in the world, we were told. The mine had
been government-owned. It was privatized in 1990 under President
Salinas, and sold to a group of financiers led by a notorious
Mexican billionaire, Jorge Larrea. Larrea's financial group
promised to invest in modernized equipment and pay bonuses for
increased production. But they didn't keep their promises, one of
the reasons for the strike. Cananea is less than an hour south of
the U.S.-Mexican border, traveling from Bisbee, Arizona, also a
copper-mining town of considerable notoriety in labor history.

                         Many Surprises

     One surprise we came across involved a Mexican highway
patrol car with flashing lights, which appeared at one point. Its
driver's intention seemed to be to pull over one of the vehicles
in our caravan. The next thing we knew, the patrol car had parked
off to the side and sat there quietly as we all continued on our
way.

     We learned later that the governor and the state legislature
of the state of Sonora, as well as the public in general, support
the Cananea strikers. Our guess is that the cop was "called off."

     Another surprise -- quite a thrilling one -- was the
reception waiting for us as we drove up to the mine entrance. A
crowd of thousands of miners, family members, and supporters,
lining both sides of the street, greeted us with cheers and
chants and waving hands and fists.

     The supplies we brought were collected mainly by the
Southern Arizona Central Labor Council (SACLC) and the Arizona
AFL-CIO, whose mobilization director was part of the caravan. He
is Jerry Acosta, of Yaqui Indian heritage. By coincidence, he has
family members who work at the Cananea mine and/or live in
Cananea. (The Yaqui people live on both sides of the border,
surviving centuries of both Spanish, Mexican and Yankee
oppression.) 

     Also collecting supplies, doing support work, and helping to
publicize the striking miners' cause were the American Friends
Service Committee and their Border Rights project; the (mainly
Chicano) Derechos Humanos human rights group in Tucson; and
others, such as the poverty agency Project PPEP. USWA-organized
copper workers at the Asarco and San Manuel mines near Tucson
sent large quantities of supplies, as did Tucson area Teamsters,
Operating Engineers, Postal Workers, and many other unions. One
pickup truck load was driven by Ray Figueroa, a top officer of
the AFSCME District Council in the Tucson area. Figueroa is a
former president of the SACLC. The current SACLC president, Ian
Robertson, is a working miner at Asarco and was unable to take
part in the caravan. Jimbo Watson, who heads community services
work for the SACLC and has been an officer of the International
Association of Machinists and Aerospace workers at the Raytheon
plant in Tucson (Lodge 933), brought greetings from Ian Robertson
on behalf of the Southern Arizona labor council.

     Also representing Southern Arizona labor in the caravan were
Eduardo Quintana, executive board member of IAM Lodge 933; and
Nancy Hand and myself from the Tucson sublocal, National Writers
Union/UAW Local 1981. Members of the Arizona Chapter of the Labor
Party have made support to the Cananea miners a priority, and
several LP members took part in the caravan. Among other activist
participants were: Demetria Martinez, an outstanding Mexican
-American poet and novelist, whose prize-winning novel Mother
Tongue is a powerful account of the Central America sanctuary
movement of the 1980s; attorneys Isabel Garcia and Jesus Romo,
longtime human rights activists in the Tucson area; and Jon
Miles, of Veterans for Peace.

          Greetings to Miners Rally from John Sweeney

     A rally in a large union hall near the mine -- with most of
the 2,100 striking miners and their supporters attending -- heard
Tim Beaty, a representative of the AFL-CIO who is stationed in
Mexico City (and speaks excellent Spanish). This was another, and
a pleasant, surprise. Beaty announced personal greetings from
President John Sweeney on behalf of the 13 million workers
organized by the U.S. labor federation. He promised that the AFL-
CIO would put pressure on any U.S. investors involved in
ownership of the Cananea mine.

     This quite unusual development -- open support for a strike
in Mexico from the top levels of the AFL-CIO while the strike is
in progress -- was obviously very encouraging to the Cananea
miners.

     In early January, the Arizona AFL-CIO sent out a notice to
all its affiliates. It described the December 18 caravan, but
noted "the food shipment made [only] a small dent in a town
dependent on its copper mine...Recently [the company] sent out
termination notices to union activists and strike leaders. This
entire town...33,000 people are being forced to choose between
their union (starvation) and old-fashioned union busting." The
AFL-CIO statement went on: "WE MUST REDOUBLE OUR EFFORTS!
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY! NO BORDERS FOR CORPORATE GREED! Support
Striking Miners and Their Families in Cananea, Sonora, Mexico. We
are asking for donations and/or canned food." The statement gave
the addresses of the Central Labor Councils in Phoenix and Tucson
as drop-off points for food donations.

          Owners of Cananea Also Provoked Rail Strike

     Jorge Larrea, head of the financial group that bought the
Cananea mine in 1990, was also part of a consortium that, in
March 1997, bought the part of the Mexican national railway
system (the Pacifico-Norte line) that runs through Sonora, as
well as other areas. That privatization operation resulted in the
firing of hundreds (if not thousands) of rail workers and
abrogation of the existing labor contract for those workers. 

     The actions of the new private owners of the rail line
caused a rail workers' strike in the spring of 1998, which
centered around Empalme, Sonora. The Cananea miners told us they
had supported the striking rail workers -- because they faced the
same super-exploiting, union-busting owners. The giant U.S.
corporation Union Pacific is, along with Larrea, a part of the
consortium that now owns the former Pacifico-Norte rail line,
which serves Cananea.
                         More Surprises

     On our way back from Cananea to the border crossing near
Bisbee we had another, not so pleasant surprise. We were stopped
by a Mexican army roadblock. The teenage soldiers in olive green
uniforms asked if we had any matches. It was cold and they wanted
to light some heating device. We were allowed to go on without
any difficulty, but rumors we had heard of the army closing off
the area around Cananea echoed in our heads. The army had
occupied the Cananea mine during a labor dispute in 1989, we were
told. (This roadblock may have had nothing to do with the Cananea
strike. Army roadblocks, it seems, are fairly routine now as part
of "anti-drug" operations along the border.)

     At the border crossing a U.S. official (obviously Mexican
-American) asked us where we had been and where we were going. My
friend driving the pickup told him we had been part of a caravan
bringing aid to the Cananea strikers. The border official asked
if it was going to be a long strike. We said it looked like it.
(Miners told us they could hold out for several months, longer if
they got more aid.) The border official joked: "You should
contact Clinton. If there's a problem he'll solve it. He'll drop
a bomb on it." We were back in the land of impeachment and
cruise-missile bombing.

     Back in Tucson the local media have been reporting regularly
on the Cananea strike and aid efforts in the area. Several
Cananea miners have come to Tucson, told about their strike to
supportive organizations and audiences, helping the campaign to
publicize the struggle and win more aid for the miners. At
Christmastime the Arizona Star reported that an anonymous donor,
a former San Manuel copper mine worker who more recently has been
successful in real estate, gave $10,000 for Christmas toys for
the children of Cananea. One more surprise. Now we hear there is
dissidence in the Mexican army itself, a protest demonstration of
fifty uniformed personnel led by a lieutenant colonel of
indigenous background, a man of the Otomi people, expressing
solidarity with the struggle of the indigenous people of Chiapas,
the Zapatista rebellion that began on New Year's Day five years
ago. And from the state of Chiapas we hear unconfirmed reports of
a protest among the police, the ranks objecting to corruption
among their leaders.

     Who knows what surprises may come next? Surprises, we hope,
that cruise missiles cannot stop. 

                              ###


          FACT SHEET ON MINERS' STRIKE IN CANANEA, MEXICO

     The following information, drawn from material distributed
by the Cananea miners' Comision de Difusion (Information
Distribution Committee), was selected and translated by Eduardo
Quintana. Some information from a fact sheet circulated by the
Arizona AFL-CIO has been added.

     1. Name of Mine: Mexicana de Cananea.

     2. Owner: Grupo Mexico, a financial group headed by the
Mexican billionaire Jorge Larrea.

     3. Union: Seccion 65 (Local 65) of the Sindicato Minero-
Metalurgico Nacional (Mexican Miners Union). Seccion 65
represents 2,100 workers.

     4. Grievances: the strike began over (1) violation by the
company of 53 sections of the collective bargaining agreement;
(2) company violation of the 1995 productivity agreement; and (3)
company violation of the 1990 purchase-and-sale agreement, under
which it was supposed (a) to remit 5 percent of the sale price,
or $20 million, to the workers after the sale, but did not do so;
(b) invest $251 million in plant improvements (not done); and (c)
implement measures to prevent environmental contamination (not
done).

     5. Background to Strike: the strike was originally called
for October 19, but was canceled after intervention by the
Mexican secretary of labor; at that time the company agreed to
act on the miners' grievances. But since October 20, the company
has instead increased production without paying previously
agreed-on bonuses, in effect cutting wages by 10 percent. It also
threatened to close the smelter and other departments,
threatening the jobs of 435 workers, and it began bringing
charges against union activists without just cause.

     6. Earlier History: since buying the mine in 1990, Larrea's
group has fired 600 workers without just cause; closed the
construction department; closed the maintenance department;
closed the security department; closed the forge and iron works;
closed the boilermakers' shop; and closed the machine shop. Also,
the company has refused to support the town of Cananea by making
purchases locally, buying instead from Hermosillo, the capital of
Sonora, hundreds of miles away. 
     
     7. Support for Miners: the Sonoran Congress has unanimously
expressed solidarity with the miners and urged the national
government to act in support of the miners' demands.

     8. Danger of Army Intervention: in 1989, on the eve of the
privatization of the mine, the Mexican army sent parachute troops
in to break up a labor dispute.

     9. Miners' Demands: that the company should (a) stop
violating the labor agreement and start implementing the October
19 agreements made with the secretary of labor; (b) comply with
federal labor law; (c) stop the political repression against
union activists; (d) stop closing mine departments (listed
above); and (e) pay miners the money they are owed. Also, that
the Mexican Congress should form an investigating commission to
review the 1990 purchase-and-sale agreement and call on the
secretary of labor to take action obligating the company to keep
its end of the bargain.

     10. Environmental Concerns: the workers consider the closing
of the waste water sluice department an ecological disaster. The
waste water dam is located a scarce 300 meters from the spring of
the Sonora River, which feeds the oldest cities in the state of
Sonora, Mexico. The river ends in Hermosillo, the capital.
Without the work of the waste water department (nearly 200
employees) the underground water and the river water will be
quickly contaminated. The company has also reneged on promises to
replant trees, and disciplines any workers' efforts aimed at
protecting the environment.

     END PART 2, MEXICAN LABOR NEWS AND ANALYSIS, 2 FEB 1999


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