[Laborers in the Republican-dominated Texas Panhandle find
themselves in a protracted fight with one of the world’s largest
copper producers.] [[link removed]]

IN AMARILLO, COPPER WORKERS’ STRIKE ENTERS FOURTH MONTH WITH NO END
IN SIGHT  
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Gus Bova
February 19, 2020
Texas Observer
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_ Laborers in the Republican-dominated Texas Panhandle find
themselves in a protracted fight with one of the world’s largest
copper producers. _

Thaland Roberts, Pat Montaño, Zack Roberts, Jerry Andrews, and
Tannen Andrews outside the Asarco copper refinery in Amarillo, Gus
Bova

 

It’s a February evening in the Texas Panhandle, and it’s cold as
hell. Five men stand on the shoulder of Highway 136 northeast of
Amarillo, huddled around a fire in a 55-gallon oil drum. Patches of
snow linger from a morning flurry, and barren fields cut none of the
whipping wind. In the distance, a power plant and a copper refinery
dot the sparse horizon.

On a normal day, the men might be working at the refinery, turning
2,000-degree molten metal
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coils suitable for manufacturing. Instead, for the past four months,
they’ve taken shifts standing along that highway, cheering as
passing tractor-trailers honk in support, or jeering as a few
colleagues arrive to go to work. In the GOP stronghold that is the
Panhandle, these are union workers, and they’re on strike.

“Whether we’re out here two more months or five more months,
we’re all gonna stick together,” says Thaland Roberts, a
55-year-old bear of a man who’s put in 31 years at the copper
facility. Roberts’ father-in-law and uncle worked at the plant, and
now his 30-year-old son does too. “I love my job,” he says. “I
hate the company that owns it.”

Roberts is one of about 150 United Steelworkers (USW) members on
strike from the Amarillo copper refinery, which is owned by
Tucson-based Asarco LLC. More than 1,500 additional workers are on
strike at the company’s mines in Arizona. In 1999, Asarco was bought
by Grupo Mexico, a massive Mexico City-based mining and railroad
conglomerate that’s played hardball with its unionized American
workers. Roberts and his coworkers haven’t seen a raise in a decade,
and now, the company wants to freeze pensions and hike employee
contributions to health insurance. That decision led to the October
strike, a labor conflict that’s now squeezing hundreds of working
families.

“It’s tough,” says Tannen Andrews, a baby-faced 23-year-old who
monitors acid and chemical mixtures at the refinery. Andrews has
picked up part-time work at Walmart, and the union helps him pay
monthly bills and provides emergency-only health insurance after
Asarco cut off coverage. Still, it’s hard to support his 3-year-old
daughter and fiancée, who’s in school studying physical therapy.
“Kids need clothes, and I can’t afford that right now,” Andrews
says, jamming his hands into the pockets of his insulated coveralls.
“She’s eating more too, and I can’t spend what I’d want on
groceries.”

Standing next to Andrews is his father, Jerry, who also works at
Asarco. (The company gives hiring preference to employees’ family
members.) Four years ago, when Andrews found out his fiancée was
pregnant, Jerry encouraged him to apply at Asarco. “Now I look back
and it’s like, ‘Damn, did I lead him in a wrong direction?’”
Jerry says. After years in construction, driving a forklift at Asarco
for $20 an hour is the best job Jerry’s ever had—but he thinks the
company’s owners want to change that. “It’s just greed,” he
says, lighting a cigarette. “They want to break the union and bring
in new people they can pay less.”

[Tannen Andrews on the picket line outside ASARCO's copper refinery.]

Tannen Andrews on the picket line outside Asarco’s copper
refinery.  Gus Bova

Asarco is an institution in Amarillo. For 53 years, the company ran a
zinc smelter in the area, before closing that facility in 1975 and
opening the copper refinery the following year. The firm’s
environmental record is atrocious: In 1992, Asarco settled
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a lawsuit over emissions from the former zinc plant, and for a
century, the company ran a smelter in El Paso that spewed
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lead, arsenic, and other contaminants over residents and their
neighbors in Ciudad Juárez. Still, the company provided middle-class
wages and benefits to working Amarilloans for decades.

“This was a top place to work in the whole Panhandle,” says David
Devore, who’s worked 25 years at the copper refinery. “Ever since
Grupo took over, everything changed.”

Grupo Mexico is Mexico’s largest mining corporation and one of the
biggest copper producers in the world. Its majority owner and CEO is
Germán Larrea Mota Velasco, whose net worth
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of nearly $17 billion makes him Mexico’s second-richest man. In
1999, Larrea bought Asarco, but he temporarily lost control in the
mid-aughts when the company entered a long and complex
[[link removed]]bankruptcy
proceeding. When the dust cleared in 2009 and Larrea regained
ownership, the company had shed millions in asbestos and environmental
liabilities, and Asarco’s highly profitable copper mines in Peru had
been spun off into a separate entity under Grupo Mexico. In the first
nine months of last year, Grupo declared a whopping $1.2 billion
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in profits. But the company is producing copper more cheaply
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South America than in Arizona and Texas—something the firm aims to
remedy.

During contract negotiations last year, union officials say, the
company went to war on workers’ pay and benefits. Asarco, which
offered a minuscule wage increase for a minority of workers, moved to
more than double health insurance costs and gut so-called copper
bonuses—a quarterly pay-out that workers receive based on the
metal’s selling price. Asarco also wants to freeze pension
contributions without a compensatory 401(k) match. The union refused,
but officials say the company hasn’t seriously considered any
counter proposals.

John Saavedra, a furnace operator who’s worked 13 years at Asarco
and serves as the USW local president, says that in the last round of
negotiations in November, the company dismissed the union’s offer
after about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, Asarco has implemented the disputed
contract and is using strikebreakers—“scabs,” in union
parlance—to run some of its Arizona mines. (In Amarillo, a handful
of scabs are working, but strikers say it’s too few to produce
much.) José Loya, the USW’s district representative, calls the
process “the worst negotiations [he’s] ever seen.”

Thanks to the company’s intransigence, there may not be any progress
until the federal National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rules on the
union’s complaints alleging unfair bargaining practices. That
timeline is uncertain.

In Arizona, multiple members of Congress and local officials have
voiced
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support for the strike. Politically, the Texas workers are on their
own: Amarillo city officials, along with retiring Republican U.S.
Representative Mac Thornberry and both U.S. senators, have stayed
silent.

Asarco and Grupo Mexico did not respond to the _Observer_’s calls or
emails, but a recent presentation
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for investors helps explain the company’s views. To stay
sustainable, the document reads, Asarco “must modify its current
labor practices.” The company goes on to lament that the union
called a strike “despite the offer of salary increases for qualified
workers and ongoing training for workers to increase their skills and
knowledge to grow within the industry.” The firm says it remains
committed to its “long history of boosting the economies of Arizona
and Texas.”

Bullshit, labor advocates say. “You’re looking at a very militant
employer—an employer that doesn’t appear interested in reaching a
deal,” says Rick Levy, president of the Texas American Federation of
Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Levy
cautioned that Trump’s NLRB
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may rule against the union, opening a pathway for the company to
legally hire permanent replacement workers.

Still, Levy’s heartened that the union dared to strike at all. He
sees the fight in Amarillo as part of a larger trend in labor: In
2019, there were more major work stoppages
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than in any year since 2001.

“You can’t look at this in isolation from thousands of teachers
walking out in places like West Virginia … The level of worker
activity is many orders higher than it’s been in any recent
period,” Levy says, adding that donations for the USW have been
pouring in from other unions, including the United Auto Workers who
struck in Arlington last year
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“There’s this real understanding that when they’re standing up
in Amarillo, they’re really standing up for all of us.”

[Kerri Wilkinson organizes the food pantry at the local union hall.]

Kerri Wilkinson organizes the food pantry at the local union hall. 
Gus Bova

Kerri Wilkinson is standing up for three generations of her family.
One of few women working at the copper refinery, the 26-year-old was
preceded by her grandfather and father, who retired after 40 years at
Asarco. Her dad participated in both of the most recent strikes at the
copper plant, in 2005
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and 1980
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Though it’s her first strike, Wilkinson’s among the leaders:
She’s running a food pantry for strikers at the local union hall,
doling out canned goods, diapers, and baby wipes. “We’re not
asking for unreasonable things,” she says. “We’re asking that
they don’t take what we worked for.”

For Wilkinson, getting hired at Asarco was a springboard into
something like a middle-class lifestyle. “I never thought I could
have a job like this, making what I make, without a college degree,”
she says. Before, Wilkinson worked as a bartender at trucker joints
off I-40—jobs that offered inconsistent pay and no benefits. Now she
makes $19 an hour. Even with three elementary-age sons to care for,
it’s enough to support ambitions: This year, she planned to use six
months’ savings plus her tax return to put a down payment on a
house. Then, the strike happened. Her savings are gone now, and she
expects the tax return will vanish too. She’ll just have to keep
renting.

Still, when I ask how much longer Wilkinson’s willing to strike, she
gives the same answer as every other worker I spoke to. “As long as
it takes.”

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