The rally, called "Jam for Justice," featured speakers from the labor movement including United Farm Workers leader Dolores Huerta, as well as a number of local Democratic Party politicians. The event attracted workers from as far away as California and Arkansas. Members of 16 different unions were present, including USWA members from a plant in Rocky Flats, Colorado, whose local has contributed more than $50,000 to the strike.

The strike began on Oct. 3, 1997, when 1,100 members of USWA locals 2102 and 3267 walked out to protest forced overtime, forced job assignments, and unsafe working conditions. "I averaged 72 to 80 hours a week," Rodríguez said. "If I tried to turn it down they threatened to fire me."

The vote was three-to-one to strike at CF&I, which is now called Rocky Mountain Steel. At the time of the strike, the plant produced steel for light rail, nails, wire, and seamless pipe for the oil industry. Many of the workers had been in the mill for more than 20 years and many had parents who worked in the plant. A large percentage of the workforce is Chicano.

"The company tried to divide us," Rodríguez noted. "Young and old, Hispanic and white, but it didn't work."

Martin Santoyo has been an electrician at the mill since 1979. He told the Militant, "People have worked 16 and 20 hours a day, seven days a week, for 15 weeks." This overtime "was the straw that broke the camel's back.… What the company said was, 'We pay you. We will tell you when to work, when to go home, when to see your families.' The overtime was pushing us back into the early 1900s, sweatshop days.

"This conflict is not about money," Santoyo added. "It's about dignity, respect, to be treated like human beings, not beasts of burden."

The company has run the mill since day one of the strike, eventually hiring 600 replacement workers and using 100 USWA members who crossed the picket line.  
 

Company seeks to bust union

On the morning of the rally a full-page letter from Joe Corvin, president and CEO of Oregon Steel Mills, the parent company of Rocky Mountain Steel, appeared in the Pueblo Chieftain. "We have over 600 employees at our mill in Pueblo and we are proud that they have chosen to work for us.… It was the choice of the Steelworkers' Union leaders to reject our offers, causing many of their members to become unemployed.… Rumors have been spread that at some point Rocky Mountain Steel Mills will give in to old demands and re-employ former employees who refused to come back to work when they were offered new contracts. This is not going to happen."

Conditions in the plant are far from safe. This year the Occupational, Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) fined the plant $400,000, the second-largest such fine in Colorado history, for 61 "serious, willful, and/or repeat violations" of health and safety. According to the Colorado Labor Advocate, 218 industrial accidents were registered in the mill in 1998 alone. They included crushed legs, hands, feet, and fingers; burned arms, hands, necks, and faces; and fractured ribs, elbows, teeth, and fingers.

Recently, Rocky Mountain Steel has been forced to close its seamless pipe division because of poor sales. This comes on top of previous decisions to close nail production and to sell off their wire mill.

At the rally USWA Road Warriors — teams of steelworkers who travel this country and Canada to build support for the strike — were introduced to the crowd. Over the last two years these strikers have been stationed in Minnesota, Oregon, California, Colorado, and Canada. They have promoted a campaign to boycott the Wells Fargo Bank, which bankrolled Oregon Steel, and have urged local transit companies not to buy Rocky Mountain's light rail.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the Hennepin County [Minnesota] Regional Railroad Authority have passed resolutions calling on the respective railroads in their area to stop buying rails from Rocky Mountain Steel until the labor dispute is settled.

Denver's Regional Transportation District announced it will require 100 percent third-party inspection of all rail and perform pre-purchase audits before buying from the company.

On Dec. 30, 1997, the USWA members accepted a proposal by their officials to end their walkout and make an offer to the company to unconditionally return to work. The union also filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) calling it an unfair labor practice strike.

The Denver office of the NLRB ruled in favor of the union and ordered Oregon Steel to reinstate all the strikers. The company has filed a counter-complaint. It could be next year before a ruling is issued in this case, and years longer before all the appeals are heard.  
 

Women of Steel support strike

The rally featured a raffle conducted by Women of Steel, an organization of female steelworkers in the mill. Several members of Women of Steel described efforts by the company in the mid-1970s when they first hired women — prior to a national affirmative action consent decree — to push women out of the plant by putting them in the dirtiest, hottest jobs such as the coke plant and blast furnace.

Georgina Daffin, a production worker at the plant, said the strike had revived Women of Steel. "Currently about 100 women work in the plant, about 20 in production." The rest hold clerical, quality assurance, security, and other jobs. The main function of the group right now is "to help each other through the strike." Daffin said she has "never seen such a strong solidarity committee."

A foreman told her crew before the strike that "your jobs should be more important than your families" when workers protested all the overtime. "All that made us stronger," Daffin added. The company "made us one big family."

Paul Romero, who worked in production for 25 years, expressed the sentiment of many, "The union is stronger now," he said. "I believe we're going to win, but I don't know at what expense… the plant may close." Regardless of that, "we went out for the right reasons," he said, "for better working conditions."  
 
 
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