Copper Crucible: How the Arizona Miners' Strike of 1983 Recast Labor-Management Relations in America (ILR Press books) [Paperback]

Jonathan D. Rosenblum (Author)

Book Description

Series: ILR Press books | Publication Date: November 1998

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

"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.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From 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.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Rosenblum, a lawyer and a journalist, gives an eyewitness account of the dramatic and ultimately unsuccessful 1983 strike by mostly Chicago miners in small Arizona mining towns against the Phelps Dodge company, all told against the backdrop of the uneasy relations between the company and the mine-workers' unions going back to 1903. Rosenblum contends that Phelps Dodge's move to hire permanent replacements for the strikers marked a fundamental change in American labor-management relations, giving employers an effective weapon for breaking lawful strikes. The chapters on the strike are written in an overheated style, but the discussion of the strike's larger consequences is calm and thoughtful. Suitable for academic libraries with labor union and industrial relations collections.
Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 274 pages
• Publisher: Ilr Pr; 2 Sub edition (November 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801485541
• ISBN-13: 978-0801485541
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #216,535 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #75 in Books > Business & Investing > Industries & Professions > Industrial Relations

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Killing a Union -- Phelps Dodge v. the Miners, October 19, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Copper Crucible: How the Arizona Miners' Strike of 1983 Recast Labor-Management Relations in America (ILR Press books) (Paperback)

This history of a bitter Arizona mining strike in 1983-86 is a top-notch case study of how unions were mugged by American corporations in the 1980s. To judge by the endnotes, Rosenblum interviewed every player in the strike -- from Phelps Dodge executives and union leaders to ex-Governor Babbitt and undercover cops -- and the result is a vivid narative that weaves together labor history and political and legal analysis. The sections on pro-management bias at the NLRB and the use of undercover police to spy on strikers are gems of investigative reporting. Rosenblum is pro-union but he presents management's case at length and doesn't hold back from sharp criticism of the United Steelworkers leadership. If you're interested in labor history or labor/management relations in the US, read this book.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The destruction of workers' lives despite union membership, July 10, 1999

By 

J. Grattan "Ideas can move the world" (Lawrenceville, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Copper Crucible: How the Arizona Miners' Strike of 1983 Recast Labor-Management Relations in America (ILR Press books) (Paperback)

This book focuses on the destruction of individuals' lives when they cross paths with a powerful corporation, Phelps Dodge, when that company has the leverage to do so. This book reveals clearly how thin was the veneer of the labor-management accord after WWII. Phelps Dodge saw an opportunity to bust their unions and aided by labor law, labor law officials, and law enforcement departments did so. This book is strongest in its depiction of personalities but is weakest in putting this entire episode in a larger perspective. Rosemblum casts doubt on the unions understandings and strategies in this strike of 1983. But what is missing is any broad attempt to frame this labor conflict in context of the political understandings and power of the American working class in general. Why are the anti-labor biases of labor law officials, judges, and law enforcement officials tolerated in this country? Do most working poeple support these biases? Do they not know that they exist or consider them to be irrelevant? Do they support union-busting? If not, are they powerless to elect pro-worker Congressmen and change labor laws? Union actions and community understandings take place in these unanswered contexts. The book is highly readable but one is left primarily with sympathy for the mostly Chicano workers who had their lives uprooted and not with a broader understanding of labor relations other than the obvious capability of a company with an extreme anti-union animus to carry out its will.

4.0 out of 5 stars More info, November 26, 2010

By 

Jim L. Welch "jimsvideosandbooks" (Covington, WA United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Copper Crucible: How the Arizona Miners' Strike of 1983 Recast Labor-Management Relations in America (ILR Press books) (Paperback)

The author nailed the information and facts pretty good but failed to mention the rest of the story. During the mulitiple strikes and layoffs Phelps Dodge was building two more smelters. One was being built in Nogales, Mexico and the other was being built in Playas, New Mexico. PD took key personal and sent them to these plants to get them running so they could eventually shut down the plants being troubled by union strikes and EPA fines. Nogales was offered up as a six month training job while Playas was maintained and still is a non-union plant. Union organizers can never stand a chance of getting to the personnel there. They were being well taken care of by the company. Where else could you get a company house for $50.00 a month for you family or an apartment for the singles. Company store, bowling alley and bar, medical facilities, they had no need to go anywhere else. All inclosed on company property near the plant. Phelps Dodge did alot of pre-planning prior to the strikes.