In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

chapter 6 The Moment of Decision The Empire Zinc Strike, Grassroots Feminism, and Mexican American Liberation, 1950–1953 Confrontation and Response: The Issues and the Union When the Empire Zinc strike began, Clinton Jencks was unaware of what the future held; indeed, the strikers had no idea that their action “would attract attention outside this corner of southwestern New Mexico.” On the fortieth anniversary of the event, Jencks recalled that the workers of Local 890 “only sought what [they] enthusiastically wanted for every other human being in our world, a larger share of the wealth [they] produce with [their] labor under working conditions that do not discriminate against any man or woman.” After a spontaneous walkout and subsequent negotiations, the company refused to consider the workers’ demands, which led to a shutdown on October 17, 1950, that ushered in what would become a sixteen-month strike. The event would become famous worldwide when women assumed responsibility for picketing after a district court injunction forced men off the picket line. Among the miners’ most important demands were collar-to-collar pay, working conditions, wage differentials linked to industry-wide scales, and the burning social issue of ending the discriminatory “Mexican wage.” To one miner the fundamental question was “equality,” for which the Mexican American community had long fought. He argued that contrary to company charges, Jencks “didn’t stir up that strike. The issues were there, and would have been there even if El Palomino had never been born.” Most analyses confirm Empire Zinc’s adamant refusal to engage in good-faith bargaining, which climaxed with the company’s attempt to impose a unilateral five-centper -hour wage hike together with an eight-hour increase in the work week, a move that after three weeks of waiting for an alternative offer, led to the Lorence_Palomino.indd 91 2/19/13 12:12 PM work stoppage. In Jencks’s account of these negotiations, company intransigence is highlighted; he notes that when the federal mediator left the scene, the official shook his head and said, “I have never seen anything like it. The union’s proposals are reasonable, why doesn’t the company start talking?”1 The reason for Empire Zinc’s refusal to negotiate has been the subject of considerable dispute. Jencks maintained that the Grant County Mining District ’s mining corporations created a profits pool and chose Empire as the firm where a settlement could subvert the district-wide wage and benefit pattern, break the union, and discredit Local 890’s left-wing leadership. Like ANMA, both Mine-Mill and Jencks were beginning to pay the price for their embrace of Communist leadership, no matter how indirect it may have been. Moreover, Jencks argued, the corporations “picked one of the smaller companies as the weaker link . . . because it would cost very little to sustain the strike there.” While it is impossible to confirm his interpretation, there was some precedent for such employer machinations in the Southwest, yet there is no credible evidence to demonstrate management collusion, and it appears that Empire “acted independently.”2 It is far more likely that Empire Zinc acted out of fear that a successful strike might enhance the Mexican American unity already encouraged by the policies Jencks had encouraged Local 890 to adopt. The genius of democratic unionism was the empowerment of local union members and their community , which encouraged an immediate and vigorous response to the company’s refusal to negotiate. Once the strike began, local committees were created with responsibility for various functions, including relief, negotiations, publicity, police relations, and fund-raising. To preserve the democratic spirit infused into the organization by the Jenckses, a united community, and Mine-Mill philosophy, committee decisions were subject to membership referenda. The dramatic story of the union community’s organic unity has been well told in other places, so a detailed study of the strike need not detain us here except to note that as the community mobilized, it became clear that the great union advantage was to be its human resources, organizational capacities, and wide-ranging ability to employ external support in both the union family and the Mexican American community. ANMA, for example, became a vital union ally, as did Mine-Mill unions throughout the United States. Alfredo Montoya asserted that the strike was a subject of keen interest to Mexican Americans throughout the Southwest, who understood that Local 890 was raising the fundamental issue of wage parity for all workers. ANMA was fully aware...

Share