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Fred Sanchez and his ‘First Lady’ Nora. John Hernandez | Nugget
The headline in the local newspaper was bold, telling the entire story in one word, Strike.
In San Manuel, a petition was being circulated to decertify the Mine Mill union as the bargaining representative. Albert Reule an underground miner and former member of Mine Mill was circulating the petition which he claimed had 300 signatures of the 510 needed to obtain a hearing by the NLRB. A Mine-Mill bulletin said that certain business establishments in San Manuel were instigating this “scab” movement. Reule told the Miner newspaper that he had started the petition on his own and was not representing any businesses, competing union or the company. Union workers were gathering in groups at the San Manuel shopping center. Additional Pinal County deputies were called in to prevent any potential violence.
Two Mine-Mill members, Fred Sanchez and E.L. Cooper, were arrested over the weekend for an alleged assault after a complaint was filed by a third party. Another Mine-Mill worker and union negotiator Floyd Zufelt was cited for a misdemeanor for writing obscenities on the first page of Reule’s petition. Fred Sanchez, now 88 years old and living in Mammoth, told the Pinal Nugget his version of the alleged assault. Fred said that he and Cooper had been having a few beers in the Triple X bar in San Manuel. There were two men in the bar “raising hell about the union.” The two men then got into an argument with Cooper and Sanchez and tried to pick a fight. Fred and Cooper knocked both of the men down and then left the bar. At 2 a.m., the police came to Fred’s home, woke him up and arrested him. Nothing ever came of the charges.
Fred Sanchez started working in San Manuel in 1955 with Stearns-Roger surveying the railroad from San Manuel to Winkelman. He then went to work for the mine. He said the General Foreman was a man named Ashby. “I saw some of the injustices and knew we needed a union,” he said.
Fred later became President of Mine Mill. He said that the Steelworkers were “horrible.” They were always trying to raid the Mine Mill membership. “They were always accusing the union of being communist dominated,” he said.
The Steelworkers called Mine Mill the “Mexican Union.” At the time, the majority of Mine Mill membership was Mexican-Americans. The Steelworkers would tell the workers that they should join a “true American union.” Fred believed the Steelworkers were working with the company and causing a lot of the tension.
A group of concerned mothers from San Manuel, Mammoth and Oracle had also written a letter to Mine Mill President Nick Key. The letter protested the strike and reported hardships and suffering of families as a result of the strike. It urged Key “to do everything in your power to bring the strike to an immediate close so that our husbands, fathers and sons can return to work.” Copies were “turned over” to wives of employees in Mammoth, San Manuel and Oracle. Some mothers were gathering signatures for the letter at the shopping center in San Manuel. The Miner reported “that it had relatively few signers” and that “one signer asked that her name be removed from the letter because she feared retaliation upon her husband.”
As this was going on Kennecott announced that they had reached an agreement with the Steelworkers union and it had been ratified by its members. This would not effect the local situation at Hayden and Ray as Mine Mill was still on strike and the Steelworkers would not cross the picket lines. The Miner reported, “The 22.3 cent hourly package in the USW-Kennecott agreement is, however, expected to provide some basis for more fruitful negotiations with Mine-Mill, the predominant union in Arizona copper camps.”
In December, the Relief Society of St. Bartholomew’s Catholic Church in San Manuel announced that many families in the community were in dire straits. Their relief fund was down to only a few dollars. They had provided $1,500 to help needy families of all faiths. The relief took the form of checks to local grocers, utilities, medicines and school lunches. The church had provided 1,354 school lunches. They issued an appeal for contributions to continue the relief work. The Relief Society had raised funds through personal contributions, tamale and rummage sales, and Catholic Youth Organizations (CYO) dances. Other religious, civic and fraternal groups were doing relief work and urged those people still working to join with them in helping those in need.
On Dec. 18, after four months of being on strike, Mine-Mill settled with the companies and the union members ratified the contract bringing the first strike in San Manuel to an end just in time for Christmas. It was reported that workers would receive an eight and a half cent per hour raise with another eight and a half cent increase in the second year of the contract. The contract provided for one extra holiday during the year plus if you worked on a holiday, you would receive double time and a half pay. Changes in health and welfare plans were also included in the contract.
On Dec. 17, nearly all the defendants in the Mine-Mill Communist Conspiracy Trial were found guilty of defrauding the government and sentenced to prison and or/fined. Jack Marcotti, Regional Director in Arizona and Asbury Howard, International Vice-President of Mine Mill would have their charges dismissed. Asbury Howard was an African American and was an activist in union activity and the civil rights movement in the Deep South. The guilty defendants appealed their cases.
Fred Sanchez got to meet Asbury Howard and civil rights activist Ralph Abernathy while Mine Mill President. In 1965, the Mine Mill union was sending representatives to the civil rights march in Selma, Alabama. Fred volunteered to go but the International Union President Clark told him “things are really bad over there and we can’t risk losing you.” Mine Mill was known for its social activism among unions.
Fred remembered seeing the movie Salt of the Earth, he believes in Superior. He said of the movie and the strike and people it was based on: “It was heartbreaking to see what they went through and you can’t help but be proud of the women that held it together.” Fred said a similar thing happened in Superior where the women there helped hold the union together. Fred’s wife Nora (Fred called her his First Lady) and members of the San Manuel Mine Mill Women’s Auxiliary went to Superior to help with the strike there. She said, “They weren’t scared; they remembered Salt of the Earth and when the women kept the union together there.”
Fred knew Jack Marcotti. “Jack represented the worker the way they should be represented,” he said. “He was a good person.” Fred remembered some of the union leaders he worked with and named some of them, Nick Key, Eddie Lomeli, Rodolfo Garcia, Frank Vetro, Charles Wilson “Charlie the Horse” they called him, Lou Cochran and Sylvain Schnaittacher.
After the strike was settled, the Miner reported that homes were rapidly being filled as workers returned to their jobs. In May 1960, it was reported that the unofficial results of the census said that the population of San Manuel was 4,663.
John Hernandez lives in Oracle. He is retired and enjoys writing and traveling. He is active in the Oracle Historical Society. He covers numerous public events, researches historical features and writes business/artist profiles.
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