LABOR: Strike Town

Winter always clamps an austere hand on the little mining town of Kellogg, Idaho (pop. 5,000), where most homes are heated by wood stoves. The encircling, mile-high mountains of the Coeur d’Alene mining area, rich in lead, zinc and silver, curtain off the sunlight except for a few midday hours. This year the 5,000 people of Kellogg await winter’s arrival with a new dread: life in a town with its only industry shut down.

The Bunker Hill Co.’s lead and zinc processing plant, where 80% of Kellogg’s breadwinners earn their livelihood, has been shut by a strike since last May. More than 2,000 wage earners are out of work; the town is going broke, its population bleeding away to find other jobs elsewhere. On the brink of winter last week, negotiations for a settlement came to an abrupt, bitter halt.

No Common Sense. Kellogg and Bunker Hill had few labor difficulties until 1958. Then a depression in the lead and zinc industry forced Bunker Hill, the nation’s second largest lead producer (first: St. Joseph Lead Co.), to cut its work force in Kellogg—the first time management had had to exercise the layoff clauses in the contract with the Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers’ Union. When the contract expired May 6, 1959, a deadlock ensued over job security, grievance procedures, seniority, safety regulations and shift schedules.

Union members continued working while union and company negotiators haggled fruitlessly in 100 bargaining sessions. One day short of a year after the contract expired, the Mine & Mill union struck. The union’s members, having been warned to prepare for the strike, had a good backlog of savings. Three “strike stores” were set up to supply free food and clothing to union members; a soup kitchen was set up for picketing bachelors. Idaho Governor Robert Smylie approved state welfare for the striking families over management objections.

But the town of Kellogg was not prepared for a long strike, and the results were grim. Bills went unpaid, new purchases trickled off, most of Kellogg’s merchants began operating at a loss—and some closed down. Young businessmen, who formed a Common Sense Council, argued common sense to both sides. Now the council goes on the local radio station three times a week to castigate the union’s unyielding stand. The dormant Shoshone County Anti-Communist Association awakened, charged that the union was Communist-led. The Mine & Mill workers were ousted from the old C.I.O. in 1950 for Communist leanings, but Mine & Mill Negotiator James L. Daugherty now denies the charge. Why then had he refused to sign a non-Communist affidavit in 1947 as then required by the Taft-Hartley Law? Because, explained Daugherty, he had been instructed not to by the union he was then representing.

Teachers organized an “I Am an American Youth” group of high school students to parade against the union. Some 1,400 people have moved out of the Kellogg area to other communities to find jobs, and the town is afraid that, even when the strike is over, they may not come back. The Washington Water Power Co. has cut off electric power to 10% of its prestrike customers—at the customers’ own request—and the telephone company, which has already taken out scores of phones, fears that the 2,095 phones in Kellogg will be cut by 25% overall if the strike lasts much longer.

Fed Up. Sick of the bitterness the long strike has engendered in the town, some Bunker Hill workers have got together and formed a new union, the Northwest Metals Workers. The dissidents claim to have more than the necessary one-third of Bunker Hill’s 1,875 hourly workers signed up, and last month petitioned the NLRB for a bargaining election to see which union should represent the company’s employees. When time came for last week’s mediation session with the Mine & Mill officials, the company refused to participate until a decision is made about which union will represent the workers. Union Boss Daugherty promptly repeated the union charge that management is happy to have the strike go on, since zinc prices are depressed. Bunker Hill President Charles Schwab angrily replied: “It cannot help us to shut down or be shut down. In the first quarter of 1960, Bunker Hill was beginning to get on the black side for the first time in two years.” Last week the company was draining pipes and preparing its idle equipment for a long winter. Outside the town, the idle workers are busy cutting wood and gathering it into huge piles to heat their homes during the winter. In strike-hit Kellogg, the daily few hours of sunlight will be more welcome this year than ever before.