Copper Crucible: How the Arizona Miners' Strike of 1983 Recast Labor-Management Relations in America

Jonathan D. Rosenblum describes the resurgence in 1996 and 1997 of union activism at Steelwarkers Local 890 in Silver City, New Mexico, the famous "Salt of the Earth" union. Phelps Dodge obliterated all the unions at its Arizona properties in the devastating 1983 campaign of permanent replacement documented in Copper Crucible. The company later acquired the China mine in wetern New Mexico; with the copper ore came the elements of union rebirth. Local 890 beat back Phelps Dodge's 1996 decertification campaign and, inspired by the union president's admonition that "We are still the soil of the earth, " launched a community -wide campaign to resist the antiunion tactics of Phelps Dodge.