On January 30th, the Rio Tinto company locked miners out of their jobs mining borax in the California desert city of Boron, CA. Rio Tinto is a large UK mining concern, and is the main company in Boron.
Article on WSWS has information about the situation, and global issues:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/bora-f06.shtml The Bakersfield Californian has local details on the ground as workers were locked out:
http://www.bakersfield.com/news/business/economy/x113241726/Lockout-Hundreds-of-miners-turned-away-from-U-S-Borax Other stories:
http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/02/02/california-borax-miners-locked-out/ http://www.goldenpoppyav.com/2010/02/rio-tinto-materials-lockout-shuts-down.html http://www.tehachapinews.com/content/lockout-expected-borax-sunday http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-boron31-2010jan31,0,3641146.story
The company that sells Turkish borates in the US:
http://www.americanborate.com/ Borax on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borax Comment:
In an ideal situation, the ILWU would have a strong relationship with the Turkish workers union, and would help them strike to raise their wages and work conditions. That would prevent Turkish borate companies from being able to undercut Rio Tinto products on price (if that's the issue).
That situation doesn't appear to exist.
Rio Tinto has a huge fraction of the borates market share. They can afford the good wages paid to borax miners. The Turkish miners can also be paid well.
The company, however, doesn't seem to be interested in that. They want to break the union, break the workers, and weaken the community of Boron, CA.