Labour War in the Mojave
The biggest hole in California, with the exception of the current state budget, is Rio Tinto’s huge open-pit mine at the town of Boron, near Edwards Air Force Base, eighty miles northeast of Los Angeles. In last year’s contract negotiations, Rio Tinto (the British-Australian multinational acquired its Boron facility, U.S. Borax, in 1968 and renamed it Rio Tinto Borax) stunned members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, ILWU, Local 30 (Boron), by demanding abolition of the contractually enshrined seniority system and the surrender of any worker voice in the labor process.
See http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100329/davis.