Edit: Strike hurts Silver Valley

United Steelworkers Union Local 5114 unanimously rejected Hecla Mining Company’s last and best offer. When Hecla went ahead Monday and implemented the wage and benefit changes it had offered, the workers struck.

Hecla, based in Coeur d’Alene, didn’t waste time putting the predicament in perspective.

“The decision by the local union to strike benefits no one,” Phillips S. Baker, Jr., Hecla’s president and CEO, said in a press release issued first thing Monday morning.

Though he might be reluctant to admit it, union president Phil Epler agreed.

“The longer this goes, the more it hurts everybody,” he said. More here.