Keeping the Wartime Labor Peace: Copper, Workplace Discrimination, and the Warfare State in the Globe-Miami Mining District, 1941–1945

The advent of World War II made keeping the labor peace a national imperative. In an era of “total war,” the government could not allow work stoppages to disrupt wartime production. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR) administration moved quickly to implement a labor strategy to prevent work stoppages in the critical defense industries while improving conditions for its workers. FDR relied on his authority as president to issue Executive Orders (E.O.) to establish and enforce new workplace policies in support of the administration’s wartime labor strategy.¹ These policies prohibited discrimination in the rapidly growing defense industries, empowered investigative agencies, barred substandard wages, and established a special wartime labor board to resolve labor disputes. FDR sought to secure the labor peace by improving wages and working conditions for millions of American workers. Among these workers were some 3,200 copper miners in the Globe-Miami mining district in east-central Arizona, where labor peace was often a rare commodity. For three quarters of a century, Globe-Miami was a pivotal battlefield in the struggle for racial and ethnic inclusion. Victory was finally won in federal court in 1973. That victory owed much to the soldiers of wartime labor peace who fought to end racial discrimination in the southwestern copper industry and the mines of Globe-Miami, Arizona.

International Smelting and Refining Company, a subsidiary of Anaconda Copper, began operations in Miami, Arizona, in the mid-1910s. Courtesy of Bullion Plaza Cultural Center and Museum, Miami, Arizona.

The historical relationship between the southwestern copper industry and racial and ethnic minority workers, especially those of Mexican and Native American descent, has been one of ambivalence and conflict. The fundamental question has been whether women and people of color would participate fully in the industry’s economic hierarchy.² Copper miners organized the first labor union in the Globe-Miami mining district in 1884, and Globe became a strong but conservative union camp. Significant strikes occurred there in 1896, 1902, 1915, and 1917, and internecine conflicts marred many of the intervening years. In 1896, after successfully opposing the introduction of Mexican workers at the Old Dominion Copper Mining and Smelting Company, workers organized the Globe Miners’ Union, Local 60, as an affiliate of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM). The Globe local became one of WFM’s largest and most powerful unions. Much of the district’s early labor strife played out at the Old Dominion mine where the traditional workforce had been comprised mainly of Anglo miners of northern European descent. The union opposed the introduction of lesser-skilled, lower-cost immigrant labor, and desired to exclude Mexicans, Italians, and Slavs from the workplace. It also supported legislation and policies that limited employment opportunities for these immigrants. Always attracted to a source of cheap labor, management exploited Mexican workers by implementing the notorious dual-wage system, which paid Mexican workers less than Anglos earned in the same positions and kept them on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. Nonetheless, during the Progressive era, the idea of ethnic and racial inclusion began to take root with “radicals” in the Globe-Miami miners’ unions.³

At the turn of the twentieth century, new operators entered the district. These companies were enticed by the massive, low-grade copper deposits that prospectors had discovered a few miles west of Globe and north of Bloody Tanks Wash, near where the town of Miami would later develop. By 1915, three large industrial companies dominated the district: Inspiration Consolidated Copper Company (Inspiration Copper), International Smelting and Refining Company (International Smelting), and Miami Copper Company (Miami Copper). The companies soon employed some 3,500 men in their new and highly automated mining and mineral processing facilities. These facilities required fewer skilled workers and more unskilled laborers to move the muck and pour the matte. They also presented an attractive target for labor organizers. Miami Miners’ Union, Local 70, WFM, became a force in labor activism. In 1915, Anglo...