Overexposed
81-year-old man waits for uranium workers compensation
Part
two of three
by Kathy Helms
Diné Bureau
GRANTS — In 1963, workers at Kerr-McGee uranium mines
in the Ambrosia Lake region went on strike. Margarito Martinez of Grants was
president of Oil,
Chemical
and Atomic Workers union at the time. Martinez said the company tried to take
away the workers' benefits, so they walked out.
"But the strike wasn't really about money. It was about radiation. But I
couldn't tell the men that we were being contaminated because they wouldn't listen.
They had to feed their families. That was the only jobs in the area. We were
all making big money. So they kept on working and they kept on getting contaminated
including me," Martinez said. He now has silicosis.
"Kerr-McGee tried to take everything away from us, and that wasn't going
to happen. We stayed on strike for eight months. The whole town was in an uproar
here for a long time. But the union prevailed. I had to go all the way to Washington
to sign the back-to-work agreement."
The company hired scabs to take the place of the unionized workers. The scabs
showed up for work "all tough, with guns," saying no one was going
to stop them, according to Martinez. "We let them cross the picket line.
We didn't care. Everything has its justice," he said.
"It's just like Paul Hicks," former president of the New Mexico Uranium
Workers Council. Martinez alleges that when Hicks learned that adding Post
71 uranium miners to a 1999 proposed Radiation Exposure Compensation Act amendment
would drag out the process, Hicks dropped his support for House Bill 1516 which
covered everyone and doubled the amount of compensation per claim and lobbied
for passage of Senate Bill 1515. That bill, which gained approval, excluded
men
and women who worked the mines after 1971.
"He didn't want to add the Post 71 miners because it was going to slow down
compensation, and that was wrong. I walked out of a meeting one time, I told
him: 'They made you a boss and you doctored the readings so the men could go
get contaminated more.'
"That's all right. God works in different methods. He died of cancer. I
don't won't nobody to die of cancer but I hate for somebody to be lying. ...
But he lived long enough for me to tell him what I thought, and what I knew
was right and what was wrong."
Building solidarity
A coal miner for 32 years, Martinez first went to work for the uranium industry
in 1959 when he landed a job with Rare Metals. A union man, Martinez and
several others tried to organize the workers.
"We even drew it to a vote, but it didn't pass because of the company. So
as a result, they fired me and my buddy on Mother's Day. I didn't tell my wife," he
said.
In 1960 he went to work for Kerr-McGee at Ambrosia Lake. He also joined the
union and was appointed a committeeman. After two failed attempts, he was
elected president.
"Kerr-McGee had eight or 10 mines and a mill. That was the biggest operation
here, the uranium thing," he said. "These guys were paying big money.
Most of us were contract miners, so the more we did, the more we got paid. We
cut base pay off at $4 an hour." By the time he retired in 1985 at the
age of 62, base pay was nearly $10 an hour.
Martinez was an underground miner who worked graveyard shift. All of the
Kerr-McGee mines at Ambrosia Lake were shaft mines, he said.
"Straight down ... 1,000 feet. I was the one that used to drive the tunnel.
We called them track drifts. From the bottom you drive the tunnel to get under
the ore bodies. You lay track, ground support you do everything. You get paid
by the foot. I used to make all the time like $20 an hour. The most I made was
$32 an hour," he said.
Martinez's father showed him how to mine in the coal mines. All mining is
based on the same theory, he said, but there is one big difference.
"In the coal mines you have to pump the water in. In the uranium mines,
you have to pump the water out. If you didn't you'd drown. If the water table
is 30 feet down, you can imagine at 1,000 feet how much water you've got to get
rid of," Martinez said.
"The best helpers I ever had were two women. I treated my helpers good.
I made it easy for them and they made it easy for me and we made all kinds
of money."
At the underground station, Martinez and his helpers would load up their
supplies, including dynamite, and take it back to the tunnel in which they
were working. "We
all had wet suits. They were yellow. That didn't keep you from getting wet. You
know why? Because your own body sweated so much, you got wet from inside and
from outside," he said.
Martinez and crew would prepare their ground support and then he would drill
enough holes to hold a case of dynamite.
"On graveyard you could blast any time. So as soon as we were ready, we'd
blast. The lunchroom was the central blasting area. Everybody has got to be checked
off the board before they blast," he said. In accordance with federal law,
they were not allowed back in the tunnel until half an hour after they blasted. "The
ones that drilled the tunnels, they didn't have too much radiation, but we did," he
said.
The dynamite wouldn't bring everything down off the tunnel wall, so while
Martinez's helper ran the locomotive and hauled five carloads to the station
by herself,
Martinez stayed behind and scaled the rough edges with a bar or pick.
"By the time she came back, I was ready to put a tie in. I had to push the
rails ahead," laying track as he went, he said.
"When she'd come back, whatever I needed, she brought it from the station.
We'd clean all of the blast out and then we'd start the ground support. We would
drill up they called it 'pin timbering.' We had wire mesh that was like regular
link chain. We used to put 50 feet up every day overhead. We bolted it to the
ceiling and then to the walls and then we were ready to start drilling again," he
said. The mesh kept the ceiling from collapsing in on them as they worked.
Respirators were basically worthless at protecting against the damaging effects
of radiation, according to Martinez.
"You don't breathe radon daughters. They go through you. They go in you.
You know where they settle? Right in your bones. You can't see them, smell them
or taste them," he said.
"We had a chip in our helmet that said how much exposure we had. They used
to change them about every two to three months. Then all of the sudden, they
disappeared."
Set up
Martinez recalled one man who allegedly was asked to "doctor the radiation
readings" because they were too high. The man refused.
"Guess what happened? They set him up. They put two rolls of toilet paper
in his lunch bucket, and they fired him. They accused him of stealing.
"You know what Kerr-McGee and Homestake used to do?" Martinez asked. "If
you were overexposed, they used to take you to the surface and say, 'You work
on the surface.' Then they would try to cut your wages. They're doing you a
favor? No! They're giving you a cut in pay."
Now 81, Martinez has applied for compensation three times since 1985.
"The first time they called me and told me I was approved. My late wife
was still alive. I said, 'OK, we'll just let it happen.' Later, they sent me
another letter: No." It was denied. "Then here not long ago, my lawyer
said I qualified, and we were all happy. But some (woman) there in Washington
found a little flaw in the application and they said 'No.'"
On Feb. 13, Martinez got another OK from the U.S. Department of Justice.
"All I'm waiting for is the money. But I won't believe it until I see the
money in my account. My lawyer says the way they drag their feet, it's like
they think the money's coming out of their pocket," he said. (back to top)
|
Weekend
March 27, 2004
Selected Stories:
Overexposed
Navajos
go on defensive against mad-cow disease
Assessments
may mean more testing, better results
Navajo D.C. office gets reprieve
Gallup
man discusses close encounters of the love kind
IHS
official to speak on health care needs
Local
returns to Gallup as hospital chaplain
Deaths |
