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Hundreds of Sweetwater County trona workers negotiate a new contract and avoid a strike

A crowd of people stand with pro-union signs saying things like, “solidarity.”
Hannah Romero
/
Green River Star
Union President Marshal Cummings uses a microphone to lead calls for a fair contract during a recent rally, prior to reaching an agreement with their employer Genesis Alkali.

A union strike in Sweetwater County’s trona industry was avoided in the eleventh hour this weekend. 

About seven hundred Genesis Alkali union workers are starting the week with new contracts signed Sunday evening, just hours before the old contracts expired. It includes wage increases, but the main theme is upping safety standards. 

“We're not looking to ask for anything more than just to go home the way we showed up – healthy and safe,” said Marshal Cummings, local union president and Genesis Alkali employee. 

He said mining trona, a mineral used in everything from glass and detergents to food additives, often means exposure to high heat and dust. 

“I don't want my lungs to turn to rock because I got silicosis,” Cummings said, referencing the incurable lung condition often found in miners.

Cummings said the new contract requires monthly safety meetings and giving workers a seat at the table during accident investigations. He added that’ll help safety issues from falling into what he calls, “the deep dark hole.”

“The number one thing is you don't want these things to disappear and be forgotten,” Cummings said.

It’s a five year contract. Next time, Cummings said he hopes they can negotiate paid sick days.

“If you don't have (paid) sick and personal days, you get dinged for not coming to work, because you had to fulfill your duties as a father or mother,” Cummings said. “We felt like that's unreasonable.”

But he said pushing for that would’ve likely meant a strike.

“You have to balance the livelihood of the community against having these personal days,” Cummings said, referencing that 700 employees would’ve gone on strike without pay. “The cost of these personal days that the company wanted to bargain in was too great.”

The agreement came after a month and a half of talks. Over the last couple weeks, union members and the community came out for several pro-union rallies, including at the company’s headquarters near Green River.

Cummings said he’s taken classes on the art of union negotiations. He’s learned negotiations are usually a success when “both sides feel like they got beat up. And both sides feel like they didn't earn enough. And I feel like that is probably what happened here.”

Genesis Alkali declined comment on specifics about the contract.

“The dust is still settling, the ink is still drying from last night,” said David Caplan, Genesis Alkali director of communications. “But it really does represent a win.”

The majority of Genesis’ 1,000 employees are unionized, so reaching an agreement and preventing a strike was key for keeping operations smooth.

“Our customers really want above all else reliability of supply,” said Caplan. “They learned to rely on us for product throughout the year. That'll be uninterrupted, if you will, going forward.”

The company is one of the largest producers of soda ash in the world. Soda ash is made from trona and is used for things like glass and baking soda. Notably, southwest Wyoming is home to the globe’s largest natural reserves of trona.

“We have literally 100 years or more of mineral to mine, and then manufacture into finished products and so on,” said Caplan.

Soda ash is actually Wyoming’s largest export. The industry employs more than 2,300 workers in the state.

Caitlin Tan is the Energy and Natural Resources reporter based in Sublette County, Wyoming. Since graduating from the University of Wyoming in 2017, she’s reported on salmon in Alaska, folkways in Appalachia and helped produce 'All Things Considered' in Washington D.C. She formerly co-hosted the podcast ‘Inside Appalachia.' You can typically find her outside in the mountains with her two dogs.

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