A high-profile labor dispute that pitted polygamists against undocumented workers and featured a cameo appearance by the Catholic bishop of Salt Lake City has come to a quiet, negotiated end.

In a settlement reached late last week, the United Mine Workers of America, or UMWA, gave up efforts to establish a union local at the Co-op Mine, owned and operated in Emery County by the polygamous Kingston family's C.W. Mining Co.

C.W. Mining agreed, in return, to drop its defamation lawsuit against the UMWA and other supporters of the coal miners, who attempted 32 months ago to join that union in a rebellion against low pay and poor working conditions.

The company also agreed to provide back pay to a few Co-op miners whose U.S. citizenship was clearly established, unlike most of the Latino workers fired a week before a union election in December 2004 because the company said they lacked valid work permits.

Their firings, deemed improper by the National Labor Relations Board's regional director in Denver, were to be the subject of a hearing Tuesday in Price before an administrative law judge. But the hearing was canceled because of the settlement, which was being finalized Friday.

The outcome fully satisfies neither side.

"You never win everything in a settlement. You never lose everything. It was the proper thing to do," said Carl Kingston, an attorney representing C.W. Mining, which has maintained that the case centered on protecting employer rights.

"The employer has a right to determine who works for the employer. Obviously, if some of the [miners] were not legally entitled to work, the company should not be punished for not allowing them to work," said Kingston, referring to 27 miners dismissed days before they voted on whether to affiliate with the UMWA or an in-house union controlled by the company.

For the miners and their UMWA supporters, disappointment over not being able to establish a legitimate union presence at Co-op was offset by a belief they prevailed in the court of public opinion, generating enough scrutiny of C.W. Mining that the company can no longer exploit foreign-born workers, they said.

"These three years, we've accomplished something," said Alyson Kennedy of Price, a Co-op miner the NLRB contended was disciplined unfairly for being a UMWA advocate. "The point was made that this mine, how they treated people - the low pay, no benefits, lack of respect, no dignity on the job - we had to make a stand against that. None of us have any regrets."

Still, UMWA organizer Bob Butero would have liked to have gotten more for Co-op Mine workers.

Even though it was illegal for C.W. Mining to fire its Latino employees for their union activities, he said, it was nearly impossible to get them their jobs back because they didn't have the proper paperwork to be in the United States - particularly at a time when Congress is considering punitive measures against undocumented immigrants.

"I wouldn't look at it as a victory. We fought for them. We stayed with them to get them workplace justice," said Butero, a regional UMWA director. "But without these people having legal status, we'd just be bargaining [at Co-op] for two miners. . . . The other people had no chance of going back to work there.

"We fought the good fight," he added. "We've shined a light on C.W. Mining and their work practices and, hopefully, anybody who comes into C.W. Mining from this point forward will be better off for it. Only time will tell. A moral victory might get you some comfort, but that's about all."

Bill Estrada, whose efforts to bring the UMWA into the Co-op Mine precipitated this dispute in September 2003, also was left with mixed feelings.

"The fact we were able to do away with that operation, that it's not there anymore, is in itself an achievement," he said. "No coal miners should get paid $5.50 an hour working under those conditions."

At the same time, he says existing U.S. labor laws make it difficult for workers to prevail.

They just can't afford to wait patiently while the system grinds through its bureaucratic procedures, not while trying to feed families, he said.

"You have to wait so long it makes it almost impossible to do this," said the 39-year-old Estrada, who does odd jobs around Carbon and Emery counties. "But we can hold our heads high and can feel good about it."

He was especially pleased that the settlement ended the defamation lawsuit against the UMWA; the Socialist Workers Party, the newspaper, The Militant; and the advocacy group Jobs with Justice.

Earlier this month, in a move that accelerated settlement negotiations, U.S. District Judge Dee Benson had removed individual miners from the lawsuit, as well as newspapers that had written about the fight, including The Salt Lake Tribune.

"We knew all along this lawsuit had no merit and [C.W. Mining] was just using it to harass people, including the miners, to tie up people in the courts and make them spend money," said Estrada. Nevertheless, by this point, "most people have moved on and we don't have anybody to go back to work at the mine."

This saga began in September 2003 when Estrada was fired. He claimed the company dismissed him for trying to bring the UMWA into the mine to represent its work force. C.W. Mining officials contend Estrada was insubordinate and falsified a safety-inspection record.

Roughly 75 miners backed Estrada and joined him on a picket line at the entrance to the Huntington Canyon mine (they claimed they were locked out of the work site by the company; C.W. Mining contended they walked off in support of Estrada).

Their cause generated considerable publicity and an outpouring of support from local and national unions, worker-advocacy groups and the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City.

George Niederauer, then the Catholic Bishop of Salt Lake City and now an archbishop in San Francisco, even joined the picket line in May 2004, two months before the NLRB's regional office negotiated a settlement that resulted in Estrada and the supporting miners regaining their jobs without C.W. Mining acknowledging any culpability.

A unionization election also was set for Dec. 17, 2004.

But in the run-up to that vote, the NLRB ruled that 108 Co-op Mine workers were ineligible to cast ballots because they technically were management, being members of the Kingston family or its affiliated Davis County Cooperative Society Inc.

Then, four days before the vote, C.W. Mining fired the UMWA-leaning Latino miners for failing to submit proper work-authorization documents to the company.

Everyone voted. But with the NLRB tossing the Kingston family votes and C.W. Mining challenging the fired miners' ballots, only seven of the 142 originally cast votes were counted. C.W. Mining's in-house union got five votes and the UMWA two.

But the UMWA clearly stood to gain if the fired miners' votes were deemed legitimate, as the NLRB regional director previously ruled, in Tuesday's now-canceled hearing.

So now C.W. Mining can focus on restoring production that slipped from 713,000 tons in 2003 to 339,000 tons in 2004 and 416,000 tons last year. "We have been meeting all of our current contracts," said mine manager Charles Reynolds.

And the miners are planning a June 3 celebration to thank their supporters.

"We couldn't have done this without the support we got from all over the West, especially Utah. Whoever would have thought the Catholic Church in Utah would organize a fund that people from all over the state contributed to?" Kennedy said. "We want to say, thanks."

mikeg@sltrib.com