Tug of War

Historically afflicted by strikes, the U.S. copper industry is now going through one that is undoubtedly the most costly ever. For more than five months, 60,000 copper workers have been idled by a strike of 26 unions, led by the United Steelworkers. All of the industry's Big Four--Kenhecott, Anaconda, American Smelting & Refining and Phelps Dodge--are affected. The unions demand hourly wage increases totaling 990 by their calculation and industry-wide bargaining; the companies have offered about 500 and have insisted on maintaining the same plant-by-plant bargaining system that copper men have always used. Last week, in a desperate effort to break the impasse that has nearly wiped out domestic copper supplies and rocketed the price of the metal bought abroad, Phelps Dodge raised its wage offer to 63.70.

The unions' reply was that they would study the offer--meaning that they would wait and see whether the other companies upped their antes too. Phelps Dodge is the only company that depends solely on domestic production, and its profits are shrinking. Third-quarter revenues were down from $16.3 million last year to $4,400,000, and per-share earnings plunged from $1.61 to 440.

About the only thing certain in the copper states of Arizona, Nevada, Montana and Utah is that this is going to be a bleak winter. The strike has already cost more than $20 million in workers' wages. Many families are subsisting on strike benefits of from $10 to $30 a week or on welfare payments from the states or from the Mormon Church. Menus in the workers' homes have turned to bread and potatoes, stretched out with deer shot during the October hunting season. Businessmen who depend on miners are hurting too. G. R. Harmon, a grocer in the mining town of Granger, Utah, estimates that his business is off 62%. "People aren't buying anything that isn't basic food," says Harmon.

Many union families have begun to suspect that their leaders are more interested in changing the bargaining system than in achieving wage increases. "A lot of us wives," said one worried woman in the copper town of Tears,

Utah, "would like to sit down with the union bosses and tell them what we think of the strike. But we can't. We're afraid we'd get our husbands into trouble with the union." A veteran Draper, Utah miner calls it the "most senseless strike in the world. It's a tug of war for power. And what are they gaining? Nothing." Not surprisingly, when the Salt Lake Tribune polled 696 copper workers on their feelings, 70% favored returning to work while negotiations continued.

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