Sudbury Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Local 598 Struggle Against Noranda/Falconbridge

["Hunter Gray" <HUNTERBEAR@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Readers and participants -- comrades, colleagues, combative friends -- in
Marxism Discussion would certainly be quite sympathetically interested
indeed in the long and bitter strike of 1250 production and maintenance
workers against Noranda/Falconbridge Nickel at Sudbury, Ontario.  The
strike, reaching now to the six months mark, should be of considerable
empathetic interest and concern to any radical, unionist, social justice
advocate.  But there's another noteworthy dimension:  Sudbury Mine, Mill and
Smelter Workers Local 598 was the one significant  local of International
Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers  in both Canada and the States which
refused, in 1967, to merge with that  then  right-wing and  then
traditionally venomous enemy of  the radical, democratic and militant
Mine-Mill:  United Steelworkers of America.   Mine-Mill Local 598 proceeded
very effectively on its own -- hooking up with CAW in 1993 -- and has
maintained its own, very distinctive Mine-Mill identity into our new
Millennium.  The strike at Falconbridge/Sudbury -- conducted in the face of
Company stone-walling and heavy use of "security" forces and scabs, is also
characterized, as always, by very strong and well organized Union solidarity
and effectiveness.  The Union,  among other things, is resisting a massive
Company attack on seniority, health and safety, Union representation on the
job.  And the Company is also seeking, through various devices,  to hire
non-union labor.

Check out the Union's excellent -- state of the art -- website which covers
in detail all facets of this significant worker struggle:
http://www.minemill598.com

Most, but perhaps not all our rambunctious discussion list, are at least
generally aware of the rich and colourful history of the International Union
of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers. It was born, of course, as the Western
Federation of Miners in the sanguinary class conflict -- open warfare -- of
the Coeur d'Alene District of North Idaho in 1892-93.  Spreading rapidly
across the metal mining frontier West, WFM soon took on a socialist
perspective -- and produced a number of notable leaders: e.g., Vincent St.
John, William D. Haywood, Father Thomas Hagerty (a Catholic priest - yes
indeed!) who could shoot a tossed silver dollar with his .45 Colt, the
Cherokee Frank Little. Affiliating with the American Federation of Labor, it
soon found AFL effete and non-supportive and,eventually in 1905, WFM
launched the Industrial Workers of the World.  The hideous Idaho
Haywood/Moyer/Pettibone frameup case and trial soon thereafter (successfully
handled by the always capable defense attorney, Clarence Darrow),
temporarily removed  the consistently radical Haywood from the WFM/IWW, and
the WFM eventually split from IWW (leaving much of its radical leadership
with the Wobblies.)  It eventually rejoined AFL -- changing its name to
IUMMSW -- and, temporarily, became much more conservative -- waning away to
a tiny handful of Western locals in the 1920s and very early 1930s.
Reviving in the States in the Depression/Roosevelt era,  (and then in
Canada) it became very rapidly much more radical and was one of the founding
unions in Congress of Industrial Organizations.   Mine-Mill  consistently
blazed for its membership new trails against great odds and contributed in
many ways indeed to collateral social justice struggles in the United States
and Canada.  During the post-World War II Red Hunt, it was one of the left
unions forced out of CIO in 1950 by CIO's right-wing leaders ( e.g., Phillip
Murray and Steel, and the Reuther brothers.)  Even though Mine-Mill was
attacked  in the States and Canada more ruthlessly and relentlessly than any
union  since the IWW travail in the First War/First Red Scare epoch -- by
mining bosses, Federal and state/provincial governments, right-wing unions,
vigilantes et al. -- it survived as IUMMSW until the merger with Steel
(which had a few new faces in its leadership) in '67.

Many of the old Mine-Mill locals have been able to maintain the traditional
fighting spirit and inherent radicalism.  And Sudbury Mine, Mill and Smelter
Workers Union Local 598 -- its unique Mine-Mill identify very much intact --
certainly has!

People interested in the IUMMSW saga would find these  among the worthwhile
resources:  The super excellent  and enduring film, "Salt of the Earth,"
available via the Net; the fine book,  Mine Mill:  History of the
International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers in Canada -- Since
1895, by Mike Solski and John Smaller [Ottawa: Steel Rail Publishing, 1985.]
Under my "original" name of John R. Salter, Jr., I did a quite long and very
positive review essay on this book -- and Mine-Mill generally -- in "Labor
History,"  Fall 1986.  Ellen Schrecker's recent work, Many are the Crimes:
McCarthyism in America, [Boston: Little Brown, 1998] has a substantial
section on the persecution of IUMMSW in the United States from the late
1940s into the 1960s.  A concise and trenchant discussion  of that
persecution is a page from a long article of mine "IUMMSW: The Good, Tough
Fight"  (under my then name of John R. Salter, Jr.) which appeared in the
Marxist literary magazine, "Mainstream," in October 1960 -- and that page
can be found on my own current website  and specifically  is
http://www.hunterbear.org/repression.htm  For a very interesting discussion
of Mine-Mill in the Canadian West, see the quite recent book, Red Bait:
Struggles of a Mine Mill Local  [note by HG: the smelter local at
Consolidated Mining -- now Cominco --  Trail, B.C.] by Al King [Vancouver:
Kingbird Publishing, 1998.]

Hunter Gray (Hunterbear)