Union in Their Blood
By Susan Ellen Holleran
Fifty years ago, a miners' strike was memorialized in the movie, Salt of the Earth, which became part of labor lore. Today, the strikers' descendants are making their own labor history.
BAYARD, NEW MEXICO
Eugene Rodriguez and Joe Chavez were ready to organize as soon as they learned that collective bargaining rights had been restored for state workers here. Both had been carpenters at Fort Bayard Medical Center for many years. They didn't like the hospital's double standard regarding policy and pay.
Neither man had any union experience, but they had labor history in their families. Their relatives had been part of the 1950 zinc miners' strike memorialized in Salt of the Earth (see box below). Many of them had acted in the film.
BLIZZARD OF CARDS. With the return of collective bargaining, AFSCME reached out first to workers represented before the "sunset" of the original law. Chavez and Rodriguez kept meeting with co-workers like Budget Analyst Lydia Roybal and Tina Pas, a recreation worker. Pas helped develop the campaign slogan: "We are born of the salt of the earth, fighting in the cause that will not die." When they received the go-ahead, "We got over 60 percent of our unit — about 275 people who hold blue-collar and support positions — to sign union cards within three days. The hospital administration never knew we were organizing until the day our petition came down from the Public Employee Labor Relations Board." Theirs was the first "new" group of state workers to be organized.
Chavez now serves on the statewide bargaining committee, where negotiations are moving along productively.
REACHING OUT. The Fort Bayard victory only whetted their urge to organize. When they learned that workers at Western New Mexico University wanted to join AFSCME, they got busy. "Those workers had tried to win a union before and lost," says Chavez. "But the energy of our efforts seems to have spilled over to them."
They started getting cards signed even before an organizer was available to help. "We had our first meeting in August," Chavez says. "We hope to get card check — recognition based on cards signed by a majority of the bargaining unit." But even if a union election is ordered, he is sure of victory. "A lot of the people working there are sons and daughters of the strikers and grandchildren of people who were in the movie. They know the union works."
The movie Salt of the Earth was made during the McCarthy era by a group of blacklisted filmmakers. The federal government tried to prevent production and then blocked the film's distribution and showing.
It follows the story of the Silver City strike against Empire Zinc Corp. The cast is composed almost entirely of the strikers and their families. The union was trying to end the dual-wage rates that paid Anglos more than Hispanics. At one point, when an injunction stopped the strikers from picketing, their wives took their place.
Selected by the Library of Congress as one of 100 films to be preserved for posterity, Salt of the Earth is now widely available in VHS and DVD formats.
