Phelps Dodge Breaks Copper Strike Using Permanent Replacement Workers, Destroying Union

Over 2,000 copper miners strike against Phelps Dodge Corporation at its Morenci, Ajo, Douglas, and Bisbee operations in Arizona and El Paso refinery in Texas, seeking to maintain wages and benefits amid the company’s demand for concessions. Following Reagan’s PATCO precedent, Phelps Dodge hires permanent “scab” replacement workers to cross picket lines and continue operations, maintaining production throughout the strike and demonstrating to corporate America that unions can be broken through permanent replacement rather than negotiation.

After 32 months, the strike is decisively defeated: replacement workers petition for union decertification, strikers are placed on a “preferential hiring list” (effectively blacklisted), and many eventually return to work without union representation or their previous wage levels. The Phelps Dodge strike becomes the template for corporate strike-breaking in the 1980s, with companies including Hormel, International Paper, and the Chicago Tribune deliberately provoking strikes to create opportunities for permanent replacement and union decertification.

The Phelps Dodge defeat, combined with PATCO (1981), signals to organized labor that strikes—historically workers’ most powerful weapon—have become suicidal in the post-Reagan environment. Corporate America learns that Taft-Hartley’s permission for permanent striker replacement, previously rarely used, can systematically destroy unions when combined with NLRB’s weak enforcement. Major strikes plummet from an average of 300 annually before PATCO to just 16 per year by the 2010s—a 95% collapse in strike activity reflecting workers’ rational assessment that striking now means permanent job loss rather than collective bargaining leverage.