Mining Games, Part 5

I’ve probably never been happier than when I was in Oreflow. Granted, that doesn’t mean that I was always happy with what boss we had, that I did not have rough patches; it means that I was more content and enjoyed what I was doing more than I ever had before. There was advancement. There were code increases, there was more money. There were twelve-hour shifts, as well. I could have done without them.

It did take a couple years to get over the anger I harboured from past years. Those of us on Capital Development suspected that we were being harassed out of a job; that takes some getting over. And for years prior, I had been chasing the unattainable carrot of Code 5, even though I was doing the expectations of that Code, and more.

Things changed when I approached one of my shifters.

“Joe,” I said, a little nervous, “what can I do to help you help me get my code?”

Joe paused, and then said, “What do you got and what do you need?”

That set the wheels in motion. I needed to get my cage and crusher licenses, for 2 Mine specifically. I already had the 3 Mine equivalents. My shifts were busy after that, first with training, then with gaining the hours I needed to “prove” that I was a competent operator. All that remained was for me to get my cutting license, and I got that in short order. I discovered there was a proper way to refuse work that sped up the process of getting what training I needed. I would never say that I couldn’t do the job because I wasn’t trained; I said that I’d love to do that for them, but I didn’t have the license, and could you line me up for the training, please? Mutual back scratching required follow-up, though. Once I had the training, I didn’t have a reason to not to get the job done. So, I got the job done; and in time I began to be a “go-to” man. “I need you to do something for me.” “Sure thing,” I’d say, so long as it wasn’t against the law or company policy.

Then Joe left, and so did my superintendent, Wayne. And I had to start the process all over again. And unfortunately, my supervisor while in Capital Development was my new Captain, and he “lost” my code application. Months past.

Long story short, I went to see HR and they made it happen. My Captain was running by the end of the day to get my “new” application signed. He left, much like many of our bosses did, and for a while, we had a continuous turnover of shift bosses.

We never seemed to have enough crew mates, though. When I was a student, four people were required to operate the crusher: the Leader (who operated the system), the Spare (who was supposedly in training to replace the leader, but usually kept the muck flowing through the chains), the ore pass man (who kept the muck flowing through the passes, transferring the required ore types from C and A passes to the crusher feed), and the picking belt man (who moved the shuttle from bin to bin, and pilled scrap metal from the muck before it fell into the bins), code 6,5,4,and 3, respectively. When I worked there, there was only three, one of us acting as both the ore pass man and the spare. He could be gone a lot, necessitating the operator to bound up and down the steps from the pass to the operator’s booth, keeping a close eye on bin levels and pass levels, ensuring that there were few, if any, delays for either the Kiruna Pass, that fed the crusher passes, or the skips below. Delays cost no less than ten thousand dollars an hour. It was quite a balancing act.

We’d begin. I’d note what the skip ore bin levels were at, start the conveyor belts and the crusher, then open the gate for the pass we were pulling. If the ore did not hang up, life was good. If it did, the spare undercut the ore with either a blowpipe or a water hose. If neither worked, we had to blast. If he had to leave to take care of a hang up on 4600, I was alone for as long as he was gone. I’d open the gate, rush up the flight of stairs to the pass and wash the hang-up down, then slide back down the hand rails to the crusher to close the gate before the crusher bin was over full and hung it up. Repeat with each bowl full.
If the spare could not get the hang-up down on 4600, we’d have to shut down, take the cage up and blast. Repeat. Be quick. The Kiruna ramp had best not be idle. Therein lay the potential loss of ten thousand dollars an hour.

When our bins were full, we cleaned up. When we’d pulled the Kiruna ramp low, we cleaned up. We cut up scrap, placed it in rail cars, and pushed them to the station, calling the cage tender to come get them and bring us empty ones if we needed them.

The cage tender had to do two jobs, too. There was no yard man, anymore, not on night shift or weekends, so the cage tender had to collect the materials for transport underground and keep an ear out for shaft bells, in case there was an emergency. He had to troubleshoot the skips, he had to pick up full scrap bins and bring them to surface, returning the empty ones. All this had to be done between advertised cage times. You were never excused from doing those. Should you miss one, warning slips awaited.

It sounds busy, and it was; but keeping busy made long shifts short. And keeping busy and getting the job done made me a go-to man, and before long I was asked to be a hoist man, and in time, the spare shift boss.

Twelve-hour shifts were rough, though. I found it impossible to get enough sleep on night shift; and that began to creep into day shift, too.

But all in all, things were good; things were looking up.

At least until I feel asleep at the wheel and wrapped my Jimmy around a telephone pole.