Stop-Work Actions in Mexico for US Miners

The 1,550 USW copper-mining members who are on strike in the states of Arizona and Texas against Grupo Mexico’s Asarco got a boost last month when thousands of Mexican mining and metallurgical workers engaged in hour-long stop-work actions in support of both the American trade unionists, as well as Mexican steel mill workers on strike in Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán state. The US copper strike, begun at different locations in late June and early July, has now been complicated by the Mexican subsidiary filing bankruptcy in US federal court in Texas. That action, the USW says, is result of non-investment in facilities while copper prices were low, thus restricting Asarco’s ability now “to reap the full rewards of the ongoing copper boom.”