Word: coppers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Arizona's copper towns, a long strike tears families apart...
Today the two couples no longer speak. Their friendship has been rent by a bitter three-month-old strike against Phelps Dodge that has divided friends and kin throughout Morenci, Clifton and a string of other copper company towns in southern Arizona...
...couples were once the closest of friends. Buzz Cole, a truck driver for over 13 years at the Phelps Dodge Corp. copper mine in Morenci, Ariz., and his wife Beverly live in a small frame house on one side of Linden Street. On the other side, in a mirror-image home, are Joe Imrich, a crusher operator at the mine, and his wife Lolita. Beverly and Lolita were on the same bowling team and shared coffee every morning after their husbands left for work. For five years, the families, both with teen-age children, socialized and vacationed together and helped...
Strikes have punctuated life in Arizona's copper-mining towns for over a century. An epitaph on an old tombstone in Morenci reads, KILLED BY A SCAB. But this strike is different, redolent of the new bargaining climate in the U.S. that has put some unions on the defensive. In the past, when even the coalition of 13 unions at Phelps Dodge, led by the United Steelworkers of America, routinely went out on strike at the expiration of a three-year contract, the company would close down operations until a new deal had been negotiated. This year, racked...
Ordinarily, the rugged mountain towns of Morenci and Clifton are close-knit in an almost feudal way, drawn together by their common employer. Morenci (pop. 2,700), dominated by the huge white pit of the copper mine and the two monster smokestacks of the smelter, is the archetypal company town. Phelps Dodge, which has enjoyed a reputation as a generous employer, owns the water and electric utilities, the county hospital, the gas station, the motel, the bowling alley, the high school and a new Spanish-style shopping center featuring the Phelps Dodge Mercantile Co. (easy credit terms). Workers earn...