Talk:Calumet and Hecla Mining Company

message: I am deleting the following sentence: 
:"It is important to note that the Western Federation of Miners did not represent the miners of the Michigan Copper Country; they had not yet have official support of the miners." 
Legal union representation elections did not come into being until many years later, so at the time there was no way possible for the WFM to have the "official support of the miners."  At any rate, divisions among the miners are noted in the following sentence: 
:"... the workers were said to be sharply divided on the strike question."
Plazak (talk) 23:32, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that there is a kernel of truth in that sentence. Most Copper Country miners were not even members of the WFM when the strike was called -- many joined during the strike instead. It may be worthwhile to mention that, even though formal representation was decades in the future. -- dcclark (talk) 03:48, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: According to contemporary accounts, workers were highly divided on the strike, which should be (and is) noted in the article.  My point was that it is meaningless to say that WFM lacked the "official support of the miners" when there was no such legal mechanism at the time.  If there are any reliable numbers on union membership during the strike, that should certainly have a place in the article.Plazak (talk) 13:41, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

text: To elaborate on my previous comments, these days it is easy to determine the level of worker support of unions:  there is a federally supervised representation election, and so many percent support the union, and so many do not.  Back then, however, nothing was so straightforward.  Union membership is one gauge, but many may have not joined the union for fear of being blacklisted.  If there are any reliable estimates of union membership at the time of the strike, it would certainly be worth mentioning in the article, but I suspect that the WFM kept membership lists secret for fear of blacklisting, and of course both sides would have incentives for skewing the numbers one way or another.  Perhaps a more accurate gauge of union support would be the numbers that stayed out after the National Guard moved in to prevent violence against those reporting to work - this would be another valuable addition to the article.  But even this is a not perfect measure of union support, as some union supporters may have gone back to work because they saw it as a lost cause once the Guard moved in.  To sum up, there are a lot of useful facts that could be added to the article on this topic, but a flat statement that the union lacked "official support of the miners" is misleading, and imprecise to the point of being meaningless.Plazak 15:55, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think that the current article with "The workers were said to be sharply divided..." is good. It's interesting to note that, before the strike ended, the mines were working at nearly full capacity again. -- dcclark (talk) 16:41, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Union representation

message: In certain places especially, this article has a serious POV problem.  However, Rome wasn't built in a day.  For now, I'm making an appeal to anybody interested, if there is material in this article that has been tagged for years for lack of citations and you want to keep it here, please provide citations.  This rule is not negotiable--not subject to consensus.  It's one of three cornerstones of WP. 
One especially troublesome statement IMO is, 
:"Calumet and Hecla was a pioneer in providing employee benefits.  The company built and ran a hospital for employees.  It established an Employee Aid Fund for disability and death benefits; each employee paid in 50 cents per month, and the company matched the amount.  The company maintained employee clubhouses and free libraries, and donated land and funds for churches.  However, the all-encompassing company presence also led to charges of “paternalism.”
Even if there are cites for this, and there certainly IS for at least part of it, it needs to be told in an accurate and reasonably complete way.  For instance, "the company maintained .... clubhouses ...free libraries...",etc., while technically true, lacks sufficient detail to inform how things actually operated with C&H.  Paavo273 (talk) 05:13, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Long uncited material is overdue to be sourced or removed