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The International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, Local 890 building is located at 302 Tom Foy Blvd. in Bayard, New Mexico. Bayard locals refer to the Local 890 building as the "Union Hall", where it is used as a community meeting place.
On October 17, 1950 workers decided to strike after contract negotiations stalled in protest of racial injustice and indignities suffered while employed by Empire Zinc Company, then based out of Hanover, New Mexico. Mexican American workers suffered unequal pay and segregation in pay lines for Anglo and Mexican workers. The small communities of Bayard, Hurley and Santa Rita, where the workers lived, were segregated and the Mexicans suffered inferior sanitation, no electricity and unpaved streets. The public pool and movie theatre were also segregated. Mexican Americans were subject to police brutality.
In response to all of this the miners formed picket lines at the gates of the mine and held the strike until June 1951 when a court injunction ordered for picketing to cease under threat of incarceration. The Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 restricted the activity and leverage of labor unions. The wives of the miners formed the Ladies Auxiliary 209 and took up the cause of picketing on June 12, 1951 since the injunction only banned the miners themselves from doing so. Many of the women were threatened and jailed along with their children for protesting. The picket held for another six months until January 25, 1952, when negotiations were settled granting miners increased wages, benefits and housing conditions. This was the first successful mining strike in American history.
News of the victory quickly spread and in 1953 Hollywood producer Paul Jarrico and director Herbert Biberman visited the Union Hall with a budget of $250,000 and the intention of recreating the story of the striking men and women for the 1954 film Salt of the Earth .
They cast five professional actors, among them Rosaura Revueltas, a native Mexican actress, as the leading role of pregnant striker Esperanza Quintero. The rest of the cast and extras were the strikers themselves and local people. Among them was Juan Chacon, who was Local 890 union president for many years, who was cast in the leading role of labor organizer Ramon Quintero.
There were attempts to disrupt the shooting of the film including FBI investigation into its financing, flyovers by noisy aircraft interrupting production, rifle shots fired at the set. and the film had to be stored and edited in secret. Film processing labs and projectionist unions were rumored to have been told not to work on the film. The leading actress Rosaura Revueltas was deported back to Mexico during filming.
Only twelve theaters in the country would screen the film and an official premiere in New York City did not happen until 10 years after completion. After filming, in 1957 director Herbert Biberman was questioned by the House Committee on Un-American Activities for Communist ties. He refused their questions and spent time in a federal prison. Jerrico, Biberman, Ruvueltas and actors Will Geer and Michael Wilson were part of the Hollywood blacklist during the Era of McCarthyism. The film itself was blacklisted, denounced by the United States House of Representatives, and was boycotted by the American Legion.
In 2004, on the 50th anniversary of the making of the movie, the film was inducted to the Library of Congress National Film Registry for posterity as one of the top 100 films representing Americana.
Ellen R. Baker wrote a book about the two-year strike and the film production called On Strike and On Film.
Juntos de la Union [1] is a society for the preservation of The Mine Mill and Smelter Workers Local 890 headquarters located in Bayard, New Mexico. The group was founded by Hueteotil Lopez of Silver City, New Mexico and has proposed that the Union Hall be recognized as a National Historic Landmark on the National Register of Historic Places.
Juntos de la Union has secured a letter of support for the proposal from retired U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman of the Second New Mexico Congressional District. [2] The Wisconsin Labor History Society [3] and the City of Bayard, New Mexico Town Council has submitted letters of support as well.
In October 2014 the Local 890 Union, one of the longest running unions in the country was disbanded by vote of the miners working now under Freeport-McMoRan.
Local Silver City artist Fred Barraza with the support of the Mimbres Region Arts Council painted a mural of a photograph of the Ladies Auxiliary 290 that spans the side of the Union Hall.
Salt of the Earth is a 1954 American film drama written by Michael Wilson, directed by Herbert J. Biberman, and produced by Paul Jarrico. Because all three men were blacklisted by the Hollywood establishment due to their alleged involvement in communist politics, Salt of the Earth was one of the first independent films made outside of the Hollywood studio system.
Strike action, also called labor strike, labour strike in British English, or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became common during the Industrial Revolution, when mass labor became important in factories and mines. As striking became a more common practice, governments were often pushed to act. When government intervention occurred, it was rarely neutral or amicable. Early strikes were often deemed unlawful conspiracies or anti-competitive cartel action and many were subject to massive legal repression by state police, federal military power, and federal courts. Many Western nations legalized striking under certain conditions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The United Mine Workers of America is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the United States and Canada. Although its main focus has always been on workers and their rights, the UMW of today also advocates for better roads, schools, and universal health care. By 2014, coal mining had largely shifted to open pit mines in Wyoming, and there were only 60,000 active coal miners. The UMW was left with 35,000 members, of whom 20,000 were coal miners, chiefly in underground mines in Kentucky and West Virginia. However it was responsible for pensions and medical benefits for 40,000 retired miners, and for 50,000 spouses and dependents.
The Western Federation of Miners (WFM) was a labor union that gained a reputation for militancy in the mines of the western United States and British Columbia. Its efforts to organize both hard rock miners and smelter workers brought it into sharp conflicts – and often pitched battles – with both employers and governmental authorities. One of the most dramatic of these struggles occurred in the Cripple Creek district of Colorado in 1903–1904; the conflicts were thus dubbed the Colorado Labor Wars. The WFM also played a key role in the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905 but left that organization several years later.
Rosaura Revueltas Sánchez was a Mexican actress of stage and screen whose career was cut short by the entertainment industry blacklist in the 1950s. She is best known for her role in the 1954 Salt of the Earth.
Herbert J. Biberman was an American screenwriter and film director. He was one of the Hollywood Ten and directed Salt of the Earth (1954), a film barely released in the United States, about a zinc miners' strike in Grant County, New Mexico. His membership in the Directors Guild of America was posthumously restored in 1997; he had been expelled in 1950.
The Harlan County War, or Bloody Harlan, was a series of coal industry skirmishes, executions, bombings and strikes that took place in Harlan County, Kentucky, during the 1930s. The incidents involved coal miners and union organizers on one side and coal firms and law enforcement officials on the other. The Harlan County coal miners campaigned and fought to organize their workplaces and better their wages and working conditions. It was a nearly decade-long conflict, lasting from 1931 to 1939. Before its conclusion, an unknown number of miners, deputies and bosses would be killed, state and federal troops would occupy the county more than half a dozen times, two acclaimed folk singers would emerge, union membership would oscillate wildly and workers in the nation's most anti-labor coal county would ultimately be represented by a union.
Clinton Jencks was an American lifelong activist in labor and social justice causes, most famous for union organizing among New Mexico's miners, acting in the 1954 film Salt of the Earth, and enduring years of government prosecution for allegedly falsifying a Taft-Hartley non-communist affidavit.
On April 21, 1920, during a miners strike in Butte, Montana's copper mines, company guards fired on striking miners picketing near a mine of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, killing Tom Manning and injuring sixteen others, an event known as the Anaconda Road massacre. His death went unpunished.
The Cripple Creek miners' strike of 1894 was a five-month strike by the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) in Cripple Creek, Colorado, United States. It resulted in a victory for the union and was followed in 1903 by the Colorado Labor Wars. It is notable for being the only time in United States history when a state militia was called out in support of striking workers.
The 1983 Arizona copper mine strike began as a labour dispute between the Phelps Dodge Corporation and a group of union copper miners and mill workers, led by the United Steelworkers. The subsequent strike lasted nearly three years and resulted in the replacement of most of the striking workers and decertification of the unions. It is regarded as an important event in the history of the United States labor movement.
The Colorado Labor Wars were a series of labor strikes in 1903 and 1904 in the U.S. state of Colorado, by gold and silver miners and mill workers represented by the Western Federation of Miners (WFM). Opposing the WFM were associations of mine owners and businessmen at each location, supported by the Colorado state government. The strikes were notable and controversial for the accompanying violence, and the imposition of martial law by the Colorado National Guard in order to put down the strikes.
One of the Hollywood Ten is a 2000 Spanish-British bio-picture. The film was written and directed by Karl Francis.
The Copper Country strike of 1913–1914 was a major strike affecting all copper mines in the Copper Country of Michigan. The strike, organized by the Western Federation of Miners, was the first unionized strike within the Copper Country. It was called to achieve goals of shorter work days, higher wages, union recognition, and to maintain family mining groups. The strike lasted just over nine months, including the Italian Hall disaster on Christmas Eve, and ended with the union being effectively driven out of the Keweenaw Peninsula. While unsuccessful, the strike is considered a turning point in the history of the Copper Country.
The Ladies' Auxiliaries (LA) of the International Union Mine Mill and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) were women's organizations in the United States of America and Canada associated with local units of the IUMMSW. Women active in the Auxiliaries were the wives, daughters, sisters, and mothers of IUMMSW members. Women's organizations associated with trade unions in male-dominated industries have played a central role in labour struggles since the end of the 19th century.
Anti-union violence is physical force intended to harm union officials, union organizers, union members, union sympathizers, or their families. It is most commonly used either during union organizing efforts, or during strikes. The aim most often is to prevent a union from forming, to destroy an existing union, or to reduce the effectiveness of a union or a particular strike action. If strikers prevent people or goods to enter or leave a workplace, violence may be used to allow people and goods to pass the picket line.
The International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) was a labor union representing miners and workers in related occupations in the United States and Canada.
The Empire Zinc strike, also known as the Salt of the Earth strike, was a 15-month-long miners' strike in Grant County, New Mexico against the Empire Zinc Company for its discriminatory pay. The strike drew national attention, and after it was settled in 1952, a movie entitled Salt of the Earth (1954) was released that offered a fictionalized version of events.
The 2021–2023 Warrior Met Coal strike was a labor strike in Alabama, United States. The strike began on April 1, 2021 and involved members of the United Mine Workers of America striking against Warrior Met Coal Inc. Warrior Met was formed after the bankruptcy of Walter Energy and operates coal mining facilities in the state. The strike was over the failure of the union and company to agree to a labor contract for the approximately 1,100 union members who work for Warrior Met.
The 1927–1928 Colorado Coal Strike was a spreading strike, spearheaded by the Industrial Workers of the World. The exact number of workers involved is unclear due to the nature of the strike. However, it shutdown nearly all of Colorado's coal mines.
