Life Underground Episode 14 - Strikes
Life Underground Episode 014 - Strikes
This is Life Underground and I’m Clark Grant. The history of unionism in Butte, Montana is well documented. We refer to it as the Gibraltar of Labor because union roots run so deep here. In today’s show, we look back at how strikes affected families and community, and how the town often pulled together to support strikers.
Then later in the show, we’ll hear from former Anaconda Company managers and get an insider’s look at how the Company responded to strikes.
Historian Teresa Jordan put together a chronology of strikes and relevant events in Butte during her extensive work recording miners’ stories in the mid 1980s; it runs over 120 pages. Before the city of Butte was even incorporated, there was already a strike at the Alice & Lexington mines, which spurred the formation of the Butte Workingmen’s Union in 1879. Just two years later, the Butte Workingman’s Union became the Miner’s Union of Butte City and welcomed all laborers into its ranks. By 1887, the Butte Miner’s Union had a closed shop. Joined under the umbrella of the Silver Bow Trades and Labor Assembly, 34 separate unions now represented nearly all of the camp’s 6,000 workers. IWW co-founder Big Bill Haywood called it “the greatest single social force of the working class in the western part of America.”
There were significant strikes in Butte in every decade from the 1880s through to the 1980s, though they were not always led by the miners. In 1907, there were strikes by the Telephone, Telegraph & Street Railway employees, janitors, meat cutters, teamsters, waiters, drug clerks, machinists, printer’s pressmen & stereotypers. These types of actions would essentially shut down whole portions of the economy for the duration of the strike, often to improve pay or working conditions. When miners struck, especially during times of war, the response could be more dramatic.
Federal troops were ordered into Butte to patrol streets leading to the mines in 1917, at the height of World War 1. Troops guarded mine entrances with machine guns, broke up groups of three or more congregating in public, and forced miners to work at the end of the bayonet. The United States War Department had a direct interest in continuous production by the Butte mines, and they were willing to use the military to get it. Martial law was the rule of the day in Butte.
These early, dramatic conflicts between organized labor, the forces of corporate capital that controlled the mines, and the federal government serve as the backdrop for a culture of solidarity and unionism that took hold in Butte for the better part of the 20th century. Though Butte’s union ranks are severely diminished these days, and Montana Resources operates the mine as a ‘union free’ enterprise, the spirit of collective struggle is alive and well in Butte. To this day, people cite the union influence on their parents and grandparents when times get tough and people have to show up and support each other.
To understand a bit more about how those union roots formed in Butte, we’ll start with an interview conducted by Mary Murphy in 1980. In April of that year, she spoke with Maurice ‘Sonny’ Powers, whose oral history is held at the University of Montana’s Mansfield Library in Missoula. Sonny was born in Butte in 1909, one of five children. His father died young and his mother worked in restaurants and boarding houses. Sonny went to work when he was nine, setting pins in a bowling alley, herding and milking cows, chopping wood and shoveling coal. When he was 16, he got a rustling card and went to work at the Tramway mine.
[Sonny Powers]
Sonny Powers describes several major strikes over the course of his career working in the Butte mines. World War 1 made the demand for copper skyrocket, and of course demand for domestic use was steady in the interwar period as well. May 8th, 1934 was the start of one of the most important strikes in Montana’s history, when over 650 Mine, Mill and Crafts Unionists walked off the job. The ’34 strike ended on September 17th with major union victories including wage increases, a 40-hour week, and full recognition of the union. It was the first time there was a closed shop in Butte since World War 1. But it was a constant give and take between the Company and the workers. Sonny Powers says the sacrifices made by Butte miners during World War 2 set the stage for the big strike of 1946, when 7,000 men walked off the job in four Montana cities. Violence erupted in Butte when bands of men and women sacked the homes of non-union scabs.
[Sonny Powers]
That was Maurice ‘Sonny’ Powers, interviewed for the Butte Oral History Project by Mary Murphy in 1980. He was just pointing out how the local grocery stores would sell to miners on credit during strikes, a prime example of that community solidarity that kept families going during times when miners weren’t getting paid.
Next we’ll hear from another Teresa Jordan interview. She spoke with Ron Garbarino in 1987 about his take on unionism and the challenge of redeveloping Butte’s economy after the major mine closures of the late 1980s. They discuss the strike of 1967 and development efforts in Butte going on at the time of the interview, again 1987.
[Ron Garbarino]
This is Life Underground. I’m Clark Grant. That was Ron Garbarino discussing the state of unionism in Butte in 1987. Today we’re looking at the history of strikes in Butte, Montana, a long battle for better wages and working conditions that stretches almost a century. Up next, we’ll take an insider’s look into the Anaconda Company’s side of a labor dispute, starting with recollections from Alan Brown, longtime labor relations manager for the Company. Stay with us.
We heard a bit from Alan Brown in a previous episode of Life Underground, where he told the story of how he threw the switch that turned off the pumps in the underground mines of Butte, resulting in the flooding of 10,000 miles of tunnels and eventually the Berkeley Pit. Alan worked for Anaconda most of his life, and he started out with labor relations at their lumber mill in Bonner, which for a period of a year in the early 1970s was manufacturing the most plywood of any facility in the world. In a nearly three-hour interview at a friend’s home in Missoula, I asked Alan Brown about his time at Anaconda, and what it was like being the man on the other side of the table in the union negotiations.
[Alan Brown]
In 1972, Champion International Corporation purchased almost all of the assets of Anaconda Forest Products. Alan Brown eventually went to Butte and continued working in labor relations for Anaconda. His stories from all his years working against the unions range from the tragic to the absurd, including this one he shared near the end of our interview.
[Alan Brown]
That was Alan Brown, longtime labor relations manager for the Anaconda Company, telling some tales from his time working in Butte. This is Life Underground and today we’re talking strikes. To finish out our show today, we’ll hear more from the Company side of strikes by talking with Frank Gardner. Stay tuned.
For those who have lived and worked in Butte, Montana, the name Frank Gardner might be familiar. He had a 48 year career in mining that culminated with him as president of Montana Resources and its open-pit mining operations in Butte. But his roots in Butte go deep, and he wasn’t always a mining executive. Frank’s approach to management was shaped in large part by an early childhood experience. When he was 11 years old, Frank saw firsthand that that legendary strike in 1946 where people destroyed the homes of scabs.
[Frank Gardner]
Guess what, Frank became the boss of Butte mining later in his career. After a sojourn to Iran and then Canada, Frank Gardner and the family eventually made their way back to Butte in November of 1979.
[Frank Gardner]
Frank had told his counterparts at Anaconda that he would only consider returning to Butte if he could be given the authority to do what had to be done. What did he mean by that exactly? Well, as the mines in Butte were recently purchased by Atlantic Richfield and Anaconda was becoming a thing of the past, Frank wanted the authority to shut the mine down if necessary.
[Frank Gardner]
So after being back in Butte a couple of years, Frank Gardner was in effect in charge of selling off Atlantic Richfield’s mining assets in Montana. Looking around to all the big mining companies, it didn’t seem as though the Butte mine was going to sell easily. Not only was it not profitable at that time, Frank Gardner cited environmental regulations as a big barrier to selling off ARCO’s mining assets. But then, they found a buyer, Dennis Washington. We covered the whole negotiation of the mine sale in episode 11 of this series, called The Deal of the Century. Since today we’re focusing on the labor aspect of it all, let’s hear Frank Gardner discuss that portion of it.
[Frank Gardner]
Barney Rask died in 1992 at the age of 69, so he would have been around long enough to see the new incarnation of mining on the Butte hill, led by Frank Gardner, and free of unions. As Montana Resources infamously said, they are not anti-union, but union free. No more strikes. No more negotiations.
[Frank Gardner]
Frank Gardner is proud to say that unionism in Butte is seriously diminished, and absent entirely from the mining that goes on here now. I tried to help Frank see a connection between the decline of industrial unionism in Butte and rise in everyday hardships that Butte sees today, with above average rates of poverty and addiction, a mile wide poisonous lake on the edge of town, and a boarded up central business district.
[Frank Gardner]
That’s Frank Gardner, former president of Montana Resources, recorded at his home for an oral history as part of the Verdigris Project by Aubrey Japp and myself, Clark Grant. There are plenty of interesting part of his oral history that were left out of this program, including Frank’s more in-depth explanation of the big tax breaks Dennis Washington received in the first years of operating the mine at Montana Resources. Frank said we wouldn’t believe the amount of money they made in those first years, thanks to city and state officials who were eager to have a mine going again in Butte, even one that employs only a fraction of what they used to.
Given the looming environmental burdens this new open pit poses for Butte with its inevitable closure, we can only guess what the future holds for residents of this valley. A tale as old as corporations, Frank Gardner’s part in reopening the Butte mines follows that classic capitalist mantra: privatize the profit and socialize the costs. As he might say, that’s life.
And this is Life Underground, a program of the Verdigris Project. Thanks for listening.