Abstract

"Co-Creating Safety Protocols in Arizona & New Mexico Copper Mines"

Katherine Benton-Cohen, Georgetown University (kab237@georgetown.edu)

This paper uses oral history to show how Mexican-American copper mine workers in the American Southwest co-created new safety protocols. They managed risk, challenged unsafe conditions, and implemented their own safety rules and self-medication to counter indifference, incompetence, and inexperience of their (almost always white) foremen, supervisors, and managers. Danger and discrimination were linked, withMexican American workers in the lowest-tier, dangerous jobs. Their lives were literally cheaper than those of white workers, whose families received larger payouts for death and injuries. This paper is part of my book project on the Phelps Dodge Corporation (PD), one of the world’s largest copper companies (sold in 2006).
Snippets about danger, its management, and its psychological impact bubble up in several oral histories, but this paper will focus on an October 25 interview with Mr. Ruben Rendon. where safety emerged, as the proposal notes, as “a result of antagonistic relationships or rivalries.” Rendon is a 75-year-old Vietnam veteran, rough-hewed, long-haired, truck-driving, second-generation retired copper mine worker and native of PD company town Ajo, Arizona. When Rendon left Ajo because of racial discrimination, he discovered new problems at rival Magma Copper’s San Manuel mine. There, co-creation was forged in the absence of safety practices.
About halfway through a 90-minute interview, Mr. Rendon’s voice and tenor changed as he mentioned he had become a crane operator. “That was a nasty ass job. I mean, nasty….Because everything almost, you know, I got…had some experiences over there, bad experiences.” He began to cry, and said two men who had died on the job; one was 21 years old and expecting a baby. Rendon said he had demanded safety rules like a lookout, radios for crane operators, and better training. After that, they got those things. He had co-created them through anger, demands, initiative, and tragedy.