A powerful eyewitness account of one of the most important labor struggles of the past half-century. The betrayal of the 1983 Arizona copper miners’ strike by the AFL-CIO bureaucracy played a critical role in the destruction of the trade union movement in the United States.
The strike began on July 30, 1983 against company demands for a wage freeze, elimination of COLA, and lower wages for new hires, in Morenci, Clifton, Ajo, and Douglas, Arizona. The company used scabs to continue production and Democratic Party Governor Bruce Babbitt brought in National Guard troops to quell the protesting strikers.
The Workers League, forerunner of the SEP, led the resistance of Phelps Dodge copper miners to the betrayals of the unions. PATCO striker Ron May, who had gone to jail for four months in 1981, joined WL leader David North in June 1984 at a rally in Clifton-Morenci on June 30, 1984 to mark the first anniversary of the Phelps Dodge strike.
The Workers League played a leading role in many of the major labor struggles of the 1970s and 1980s, which developed in opposition to the AFL-CIO.
