Between the late 19th and 20th centuries, labor unions came and went at Copper Country mines. When the area’s copper mines organized in the early 1940s, they were organized under the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, CIO.

The IUMMSW was an outgrowth of the former Western Federation of Miners, which was essentially wrecked as a union when it struck the Michigan copper mining companies in 1913.

When the Calumet Division of C&H, Inc. (formerly Calumet and Hecla Consolidated Mining Company) was struck in 1955, the union was the United Steel Workers of America Local 4312. The strike began on May 2, 1955, reported the Daily Mining Gazette.

In Daniel Schneider’s 2014 “A Balance Shifted: The Unionization of Michigan’s Lake Copper District, 1935-1955,” Schneider wrote: “The shutdown was total, idling the dewatering pumps in Calumet and Hecla’s mine shafts, even leaving a charge of copper to freeze in a smelter furnace in Lake Linden. Only the company’s water works, which provided Calumet’s municipal water supply, and a steam plant which supplied a local school were left in operation.”

Gene Saari, USWA representative, was the union representative of the IMMSW – CIO when that union organized C&H workers in the 1940s, which ultimately resulted in C&H closing its public library. At the onset of the strike, union local officials authorized that only the C&H “company’s water works, which provided Calumet’s municipal water supply, and a steam plant which supplied a local school, (be) left in operation. To many, the water works was viewed as another company paternal benefit it could hold, not over just the union’s, but the communities’ heads, as well.

In terms of compensation, the union was adamant in its demands, but safety and work regulations that would be enforced in the mines were also a high priority.

Back in the 1940s, when Saari was organizing mine workers and attempted to start negotiations, C&H officials cautioned him that if his demands were met, the company would be forced to curtail many of its paternalistic practices to afford the demands. The union struck and C&H closed its library.

A few years later, in 1953, the union approved a ballot proposal calling for the company to permit financial allowances for medical care of the union workers. C&H responded by closing its state-or-the-art hospital to fund the allowances. Those were just two paternalistic programs C&H ended. Yet, C&H still had its water works, boilers, school and municipal heating – essential services that communities from Osceola to Ahmeek relied on.

As the 1955 strike extended into August, the shutdowns had cost C&H more than a million dollars in sales losses, not to mention the expenses the company would incur in dewatering the mines, rebuilding the smelter furnaces, and other repairs.

When C&H told the union, in May, that it could not afford its demands, initially, the union did not back down. C&H countered the union with a bold threat.

On Aug. 5, as announced in the Daily Mining Gazette, the union had rejected the company’s final offers and the company announced its intention of closing its Michigan mines and liquidating their assets, including all machinery and equipment.

In the end, closing the Calumet Division would not be a severe loss to C&H, Inc. as a whole.

As Schneider points out: “The year of the strike, in particular, was marked by diversification, with C&H purchasing the Canada Vulcanizer and Equipment Company of Ontario, Canada, outright, and acquiring a controlling interest in the Goodman Lumber Company of Goodman, Wisconsin, which

C&H merged with its Upper Peninsula land holdings to form a Forest Industries Division. In fact, the strike had idled only one part of the company’s operations –.”

If the announcement of closing the mines was a ruse, as many union members believed, it worked. The union voted — though not unanimously — to call off the strike and return to work.

Actually, it wasn’t a ruse. The few remaining mines, on both the Kearsarge Amygdaloid and the Calumet Conglomerate lodes, were so near the end of profitability that the Directors didn’t feel continuing mining them was worth the trouble of negotiating with the union. When C&H said they couldn’t afford the union’s demands, they were, in fact, not bluffing.

Not even a year after the strike ended, the North Kearsarge Mine, consisting of four shafts, was closed, in 1956.

Kearsarge was a subsidiary of the Centennial company. The South Kearsarge Mine, consisting of two shafts, was immediately north of Centennial’s mines, was closed in 1931.

Between the South and North Kearsarge mines was the Wolverine mine, which had already shut down in 1925. By 1955, the Calumet Division of C&H, was not producing enough copper to supply its own Wolverine Tube Division. The Wolverine Division was purchasing copper from outside sources.

In the spring of 1964, C&H was operating the Centennial mine’s 2, 3 and 6 shafts; the Seneca No. 2 Shaft (Gratiot mine); Osceola mine’s 6 and 13 shafts, and the Allouez mine, located between the North Kearsarge and the Ahmeek properties.

In 1965, however, the Seneca No. 2 was permanently closed and the Allouez mine’s two shafts were closed permanently in 1966.

Mining and mineral production throughout the Portage Lake district was quickly ending. On May 6, 1967, the Quincy Mining Company beached its electric dredge in a cove on the shore of Torch Lake, and shut down its reclamation plant in Mason. Four months later, the Copper Range Company closed the Champion mine, and shut down its reclamation plant in November.

C&H permanently closed the Centennial No. 2 mine. In December, the Tamarack reclamation plant was permanently closed. In the fall of 1967, mining was stopped at the Centennial’s Numbers 3 and 4 shafts and the company began hauling poor rock from those locations.

By the end of 1967, C&H was only mining from the Centennial Number 6 shaft; Osceola No, 13; and the Allouez No. 3.

On Portage Lake, the smelter complex, in Ripley, was all that remained of the Quincy Mining Company’s once vast operations. There were no operating copper mines south of Osceola.