Immigrant Miners Brave the Utah Winter
in Strike Against Unfair Labor Practices

"These miners, mostly Mexican-born, provide a powerful
example of how immigrant workers, bringing with them
their own histories and traditions of struggle, strengthen
rather than divide and weaken the working class in the
United States. They have already shown, after three months
on the picket line, that they are determined to persevere."

The mostly Hispanic coal miners of the C.W. Mining Company (also known as the "Co-Op") have been holding firm in their struggle for better wages and safe working conditions. These brave workers have been in an unfair labor practice strike for over three months now in the bitter cold of a winter in the Central Utah Mountains.

The miners are paid wages from $5.25 to $7.00 dollars an hour where the average wage in the mining industry hovers around $20 dollars an hour. Many of the miners have worked there for more than a decade.

• Workers are forced to work with injuries (sometimes with broken bones)
• Workers have been denied access to workers' compensation.
• Abuse and mistreat of workers is commonplace. Under threat of discipline, they are forced to work under unsafe working conditions in violation of the law and Mine Safety and Health Administration rules (MSHA).
• Miners are forced to use defective and unsafe machinery. The company promotes safety violations by refusing to punish the bosses who violate MSHA rules.
• Miners do not have any medical insurance to speak off and no retirement benefits.
• There is no bathhouse for the female workers.
• Three of the last six mine fatalities in Utah have been at this mine.

The mainly immigrant workforce at the mine has been fired for standing up to the owners over union organizing and safety issues. More than seventy miner families are without work.

The mine is owned by the Kingstons, a family notorious for worker exploitation across six western states and for the convictions of prominent members for abusing young women forced into polygamous marriages.

These brave coal miners have maintained a peaceful, legal presence at the mine entrance and have, with the indispensable help of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), organizeed a food bank and set up an emergency fund to meet their families' needs.

Even with support of many Utah local unions, the Catholic Church, UMWA union miners at Deer Creek, Utah Jobs with Justice, Buddy Beck and Kyle Wulle of PACE, The Salt Lake Solidarity Committee, the Central Utah Federation of Labor, CWA Local 7704, KRCL Radio, and many other community organizations, these families NEED YOUR HELP TO SURVIVE! !

WE CALL ON ALL WORKING PEOPLE TO PROVIDE THE
SOLIDARITY THAT WILL MAKE IT POSSIBLE TO TAKE ON
THE GREED OF THE KINGSTON EMPIRE.

Please send donations to:

Coop Miners Family Fund
PO Box 731
Huntington, Utah 84528

Today, this strike in Huntington, Utah, is one of the most important strikes in the United States! We can not let these strikers be broken. Our grandfathers and great grandfathers formed the industrial unions. They built those unions by overcoming language barriers and racial prejudice.

These immigrant workers are fighting the same battle our ancestors fought. Defending these workers and helping them fight goes to the heart of the labor movement. Race baiting and immigrant bashing is the bosses’ game--not ours.

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Contact us c/o CUFL, 2261 S. Redwood Road, Suite M, SLC, Utah, 84119 or [email protected]