PETER MONAGHAN highly recommends an exhibition of work that highlights the plight of female precarious workers.
Miners’ strike: the US story
SUE TURNER is fascinated to read of another miners’ strike of the 1980s, told through the voices of women
Morenci Mine in Arizona, United States. Morenci represents one of the largest copper reserves in the world, with estimated reserves of 3.2 billion tonnes. From 1983 to 1986, workers at Morenci and three other mines went on strike due to layoffs impacting most of the workers at the mine following a large drop in the price of copper. The strike involved numerous violent confrontations between workers and hired strikebreakers. The strike completely failed in 1986 after the NLRB rejected appeals by the unions to halt the campaign of decertification against them.
[Stephanie Salisbury/CC] 
EWAN KOTZ praises a lovingly produced, if bleak offering from the post-punk Brooklyn quartet
CHRIS SEARLE welcomes a new book that makes working class history come alive in a true story of human flesh and aspiration
GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a contemporary update of a problem play that raises more questions than it answers
New releases from Alice Di Micele, Tim Grimm, and Tereza Catarov
MARY CONWAY is frustrated by the stylistic muddle that arises when you apply a pub theatre sensibility to a towering Greek tragedy
ALAN McGUIRE welcomes a biography of the French semiologist and philosopher
Holding the Line – Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike
Barbara Kingsolver, Faber & Faber, £16.99
THE 1983-84 Phelps Dodge Coppermine Strike may not be well-known here but it gained a significant place in American labour history.
Phelps Dodge ran four copper mines in Arizona; Morenci and Ajo were company towns where all municipal functions, services and housing were run by the company, who even vetted the books in the library.
Mexican-Americans comprised about 40 per cent of the population of Morenci. Hispanic miners could only achieve the status of “labourer,” earning less than their non-Hispanic workmates. The segregation of Mexicans was felt in housing, education and social venues; Ajo’s swimming pool was only open to them late on Wednesdays just before the weekly change of water.
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SUE TURNER is appalled by the story of the only original colonising family to still own a plantation in the West Indies
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
A book whose positive message and clear-eyed sense of purpose make it an inspirational read is recommended by SUE TURNER
SUE TURNER recommends the first ever English edition of a memoir of Abraham Sutzkever, a poet turned resistance activist in the Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania
