mining
News and articles about work, policy and workers' struggles in manufacturing, research and development, mining and materials around the world.
Precious metals - struggle and repression in Papua
The battle over Papua’s copper and gold deposits is heating up as locals fight back against their exploiters, reports Rob Ray
Mining giant Freeport-McMoran have violently cleared roadblocks thrown up by locals in protest at the company’s exploitation of Papua’s vast mineral resources and treatment of the indigenous population.
Mexico: Nationwide wildcat miners’ strike
More than a quarter of a million miners and steelworkers walked off the job between March 1 - 3 in wildcat strikes at 70 companies in at least eight states from central to northern Mexico virtually paralysing the mining industry.
While the strike has ended, there are reasons to believe that this could be the first act in an unfolding drama that could challenge Mexican employers, the corrupt “official” unions, and the conservative Mexican government. Stay in your seats, the play has only begun.
By Dan La Botz
Mining communities, unemployment and incapacity benefits
As the government prepares to slash incapacity benefits, Rob Ray looks at a report brought out last year which is amongst the starkest examples of how incapacity has been used in recent years to hide much of the country's unemployment problems.
'20 Years on: Has the economy of the coalfields recovered?' examined communities where over 10% of the population had been employed in the mines before the mass closures.
The report, brought out by the Centre for regional and social economic research at Sheffield Hallam university, said:
1917: Recollections of a Bisbee Deportee: Still on strike!
An account by a striking miner and Wobbly (Industrial Workers of the World member) who was deported with 1,185 other strikers to New Mexico by armed vigilantes hired by copper bosses to defeat the strike
Outside and Against the Unions
Focusing on the example of the NUM in the UK miners strike of 1984-5, Wildcat argue that far from helping workers, unions actually act as a barrier to workers' struggles.
OUTSIDE AND AGAINST THE UNIONS
A communist response to [URL=/tags/Dave-Douglass] Dave Douglass' [/URL] text "Refracted Perspective"
by Wildcat (UK)
INTRODUCTION
Goodbye to the Unions! - A Controversy About Autonomous Class Struggle in Great Britiain
A debate between Dutch Council communist Cajo Brendel and NUM official Dave Douglass about the nature of trade unions.
CONTENTS
- Introduction (Henri Simon)
- Summary of the book "Autonomous Class Struggle in Great Britain" by Cajo Brendel (Cajo Brendel)
- Some thoughts as I read the pamphlet "Autonomous Class Struggle in Britain" (Dave Douglas)
- Answer to Dave Douglas (Cajo Brendel)
- Rise and Decline of the Shop Stewards Movements as a Mediating Force (Theo Sander)
1912: The Miners' Next Step
A document produced in 1912 by the South Wales Miners Federation, which was one of the high points of syndicalist organising in the UK.
Being a suggested scheme for the Reorganisation of the Federation.
Issued by the Unofficial Reform Committee, Tonypandy, 1912
