"Frozen pay and frosty relations: ASARCO's copper mine strikes", 17 April 2020

... [A] dispute over stagnant pay has snowballed into five months of industrial action at the world’s fourth-largest copper producer. The United Steelworkers (USW) union has called for strike action at five copper facilities in the states of Arizona and Texas owned by ASARCO, a subsidiary of international mining firm Grupo Mexico...

Close to 2,000 workers have been away from work since October last year... [M]any... workers... are angry at the firm’s constant financial growth, none of which seems to make its way down to them... Union workers are currently working under a pay scheme that has been frozen since February 2010, which has seen health care benefits cut and new workers ineligible for the company’s pension plan...

ASARCO’s refus[es]... to negotiate on employee pay... Last October... the US Supreme Court upheld local court rulings that ASARCO owed its employees up to $10m in bonuses that were wiped clear as part of a 2011 contract renegotiation, which saw workers’ pensions cut in exchange for better bonuses, worth up to $8,000 per employee.

ASARCO’s latest contract offer, which it dubbed its “last, best and final” proposal, drew criticism from the USW, with 77% of employees “insulted” by...[the] deal [which] would see no wage increases for two-thirds of employees, no pension increases for workers hired before July 2011, and a total absence of ... “successorship provision” to protect employees should ASARCO sell its facilities...