The United Mine Workers Union was at the center of violent conflict with coal mining companies described in the book “Killing for Coal” by Thomas G. Andrews.  District 50 of that union was certified to be the sole bargaining agent for over 1700 workers at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado in 1964. The union merged with the United Steelworkers in 1972, and that organization represented the workers until the site was closed.

Many of the “bargaining unit” (union) people I worked with at Rocky Flats were in the area because grandparents or other relatives had immigrated to Colorado for jobs working in the coal mines in and around Lafayette and other nearby towns. “The Coal Mining Heritage of Lafayette,” says that that Lafayette was a “major coal town from the late 1880s to until the 1930s.” My coworkers in the Rocky Flats production areas occasionally told stories about how easy we had it and how safe our jobs were compared to what their Grandfathers and other older relatives described about working in the mines.

There was a strike that began a few months after I began working at the plant, and it did not go well for the union. Dow Chemical was managing the site for the Atomic Energy Commission, and they assigned salaried workers to perform the functions required to meet schedules. They also announced that the union had voided the contract, and any worker who crossed the picket lines would be given seniority. As I wrote in “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats,” the union released reports to the news media that stating that salaried workers were ignoring safety rules and charged that Dow was “…letting radioactive pollution into our state.” The strike was eventually settled, but, in my opinion, conflict among the workers was much more frequent and the reputation of the plant was damaged.

News reports about the dangerous working conditions at Rocky Flats began to be published or aired with increasing frequency, and union officials soon learned the issue of safety gave them tremendous leverage. I always found that to be quite puzzling, since I had been impressed about the continual focus on safety of operations since my first days in the research and production areas after receiving my clearance. I didn’t notice that the new focus resulted in improvements in safety, but there were obvious changes in union-company relations. No manager dared rule that a complaint was baseless without the risk of seeing a headline, “Rocky Flats Management Ignores Safety.”

Of course people performing operations should always be listened to carefully when they suggest safety or efficiency or both can be improved. However, forgive me if I was sometimes skeptical that the purpose of the concern was always improvement. I was in the position of building superintendent when a safety concern shut down the movement of material from one floor to another on an elevator. The concern was that the elevator didn’t have an emergency light. I thought that was a good suggestion, and had a flashlight hung on the wall of the elevator. Another safety concern was filed that it might be difficult to find the flashlight if the lights went out. I had more flashlights placed in the elevator and the material was moved about a week after the project had been suspended while the issue was resolved.

I often thought of the contrast between what I and my coworkers were experiencing working in clean, cool rooms with gloveboxes protecting us from the hazardous materials, including plutonium, and the men of the coal mines breathing toxic dust and chemicals while fearing the next collapse of a wall that would crush them. Many of the miners who survived explosions had “coal tattoos” created by the blast force that drove small particles of coal into their skins. I can only guess what the older relatives who worked the Lafayette coal mines would have thought if they could have seen the contrast. I believe they would have been proud of the many union people I worked with who had a strong work ethic and who often made suggestions that made out work safer and more efficient.