United Mine Workers of America

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The United Mine Workers of America (UMW or UMWA) is a North American labor union that represents not only coal miners, but also clean coal technicians, health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees throughout the United States and Canada. ^[1] The main goal of the UMWA was to provide safety to those not only working in the mines, but also affiliated with the mines. The first goal was safety and the second was fair payment and not being dependent of the company store. The company store was a grocery store that the miners of the town had to use because the wages in which they were paid could only be redeemed at this one store. One famous song was written about the company stores of coal miners entitled Sixteen Tons. This made the owners of the mine rich due to the fact that they could increase the prices and receive back all of the wages of the workers. One of the groups in the forefront of the fight for collective bargaining in the early 20th century, the UMW was founded in Columbus, Ohio, on January 22, 1890, by the merger of two earlier groups, the Knights of Labor Trade Assembly No. 135 and the National Progressive Union of Miners and Mine Laborers. It was modeled after the American Federation of Labor (AFL). When it was founded it was clear to see what the values of the UMWA were because they were so clearly stated in the preamble;

We have founded the United Mine Workers of America fo the purpose of...educating all mine workers in America to realize the necessity of unity of action and purpose, in demanding and securing by lawful means the just fruits of our toil. ^[2]

After passage of the National Recovery Act in 1933, organizers spread out throughout the United States to organize all coal miners.

During the 1930s the UMWA was often thought by many men in the field as being too involved in "Washington Politics" spawning such alternative unions such as the Progressive Mine Workers.

Famous UMWA leaders include John Mitchell, co-founder Phil Penna and John L. Lewis. The UMWA is still fighting hard to protect the rights of mine workers today and the union continues to keep up this job in the future.

History of the Union

In the creation of the UMWA there were twelve key points that were outlined by the constitution which was meant to be a straight forward request of what the union wanted. The first point was to receive a salary that was equal to the dangerous work conditions that they had. Many workers felt that they needed better wages to compensate for the hazardous work environment. The second key point was in correspondence with the first. The workers wanted to be paid fairly with currency accepted in other places than just the company store, or stores and services that were also owned by the owners of the mines. The third point was to provide safety for the operators. This point made it necessary that all operators be able to learn all the new technologies possible so that they could preserve lives and keep the workers in the healthiest condition as possible. The fourth point also had to do with advancing the technologies of the mine by providing better ventilation systems to decrease black lung disease and a better drainage system. The fifth point was to enforce these laws of safety and make it illegal for mines to have inadequate roofing or contaminated air and water in the mines. After the issues of safety were covered the UMWA began to emphasize what benefits that they wanted out of this union. They started with the sixth point, which they would not have any exceptions to,which stated that the workers wanted a eight hour work day. The seventh point also had to do with a common labor right of the time. They demanded an end to child labor and wanted the child labor law to be strictly enforced to promote the well being of the youth and the importance of their education. Next was the eighth point which demanded that they scales used to weigh the coal miner's load were working correctly so that they would be paid the correct amount. This was a big problem for miners because many times operators would try to underpay workers by having the scales off as to show a lighter weight than what was produced. Having this law was very important because miners were paid per pound of coal that they produced. The ninth point was linked to both the eighth and second points, the ninth point wanted the coal miners to receive weekly wages in lawful money. The tenth point wanted an unbiased police force for the mining community. Many operators of the mine would hire police to harass and tournament the mine workers. Because the operators owned all the houses of the miners and the police force, the operators could evict and arrest the workers unjustly. The tenth point was to eliminate this problem by having a police force in the mine that was not employed by the operators that would serve the workers justly. The eleventh point was a statement from the workers to the operators claiming that they would try to come to a reasonable conclusion but that if they thought that they were being treated unfairly, the workers would strike to protect their rights.

Achievements

• An eight-hour work day in 1898. ^[3]The first ideas of this demand were outlined in point six of the constitution.
• The union was able to achieve collective bargaining rights in 1933. ^[4]
• One great accomplishment was to have health and retirement benifits for the miners and their families which was made possible in 1946. ^[5]
• In 1969, the UMWA convinced the United States Congress to enact the landmark Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act which provided compensation for miners suffering from Black Lung Disease.

Violent clashes

WPA poster

Coal miners in Hazleton, Pennsylvania in 1905

The union's history is filled with examples of members and their supporters violently clashing with company-hired strikebreakers and government forces:

• Bituminous Coal Miners' Strike of 1894 - April 21, 1894. This nationwide strike was called when the union was hardly three years old. Many of the workers salaries had been cut by 30% ^[6] and with the demand for coal down, workers were upset that there were not more opportunities for work. The national guard was mobilized in several states to prevent or control violent clashes between strikers and strike breakers. The workers intended on only striking from work for three weeks in the hopes that when they returned the demand for coal would increase as would their wages. They developed the plan that they would continue to strike for three weeks and return to work for a short period of time until the hopes of wages increasing turned into a reality. However, many miners in the union did not wish to cooperate with this plan and did not return to work at all. This made the union seem weak. While many refused to return to work, many workers did not strike at all, and with the demand for coal being so low the remaining workers were able to produce enough to satisfy the demand. By being efficient in the mines, the operators saw no need to increase the wages of all the workers, and did not seem to care if the strike would end. By June the demand for coal began to increase and some operators decided to pay the works their original salaries before the wage cut. However, not all demands across the country were met and some workers continued to strike, which caused harm to the young union. The most important goal of the 1894 strike was not the restoration of wages, but rather the establishment of the UMWA as a cooperation at a national level.
• Lattimer Massacre - September 10, 1897. 19 miners were killed by police in Lattimer, Pennsylvania, during a march in support of unions.
• Battle of Virden - October 1898. Part of the larger mine wars that established Illinois as the leading union state in the country, and the reason that Mary Harris "Mother" Jones is buried at Mt. Olive, Illinois.
• Westmoreland County Coal Strike - 1910-1911, a 16-month coal strike in Pennsylvania led largely by Slovak miners, this strike involved 15,000 coal miners. Sixteen people were killed during the strike, nearly all of them striking miners or members of their families.
• Ludlow Massacre - April 20, 1914. 20 people, including women and children, killed when armed police, hired guns, and Colorado National Guardsmen broke up a tent colony formed by families of miners who had been evicted from company-owned housing.
• Matewan, West Virginia - May 19, 1920. 12 men were killed in a gunfight between town residents and the Baldwin Felts Detective Agency, hired by mine owners. This is depicted in the John Sayles film Matewan.
• The 'Redneck War' - 1920-21. Generally viewed as beginning with the Matewan Massacre, this conflict involved the struggle to unionize the southwestern area of West Virginia. It led to the march of 10,000 armed miners on the county seat at Logan, ending in the Battle of Blair Mountain in which the miners fought state militia, local police, and mine guards. These events are depicted in the 1987 novel Storming Heaven by Denise Giardina and the 2005 novel Blair Mountain by Jonathan Lynn.
• The Herrin massacre occurred in June 1922 in Herrin, Illinois. 19 strikebreakers and 2 union miners were killed in mob action between June 21-22, 1922.
• The Pittston Strike of 1989-1990 began as a result of a withdrawl from the Bituminous Coal Operators Association(BCOA) which led to a halt in the health insurance payments for miners who were already retired. Many miners went on strike only to be realize that the company was hiring new miners to be their replacements. The Pittston mine then cut off all benifits to those miners who were striking and their families. Afraid of another Massey strike, the UMWA became more involved with the strike.

Organized politics

The United Mine Workers ran candidate Frank Henry Sherman under their union banner in the 1905 Alberta general election. Sherman's candidacy was driven to appeal to the significant population of miners working in the camps of southern Alberta.^[7] He finished second in the Pincher Creek electoral district.

BESCO Strike, Nova Scotia

District 26 of the UMWA in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada struck in early March 1925 against the British Empire Steel Corporation (BESCO). On June 4, the union pulled its men from a company power plant in New Waterford. More than fifty company police, many on horseback, occupied the plant on the morning of June 11. An estimated 700 - 3,000 miners and supporters gathered in New Waterford and marched to the power plant that morning. The company police opened fire when the crowd arrived and then charged the crowd on horseback, swinging nightclubs and firing revolvers. Miners fought back with stones and pulled police off horses. William Davis, a miner, was shot dead and several others were wounded by gunfire or trampled by horses. After the riot ended, the miners sabotaged and disabled the power plant for the duration of the strike. Police and company officials that didn't escape the battle were locked up in the town jail. In the following nights, company stores were raided and burned, including the colliery building. The Canadian Army deployed thousands of soldiers to the area in the second largest deployment in history for civil unrest within Canada. The union later suspended the 100 percent strike, allowing maintenance workers to return.

The 1925 strike lasted through the summer and contributed to the bankruptcy and breakup of the BESCO conglomerate several years later. The strike against BESCO by UMWA 26 in the Sydney Coal Field was unprecedented for the violence and militancy exhibited by the company toward the striking miners and changed the labour dynamics in Industrial Cape Breton.

Harlan County War

In the summer of 1973, workers at the Duke Power-owned Eastover Coal Company's Brookside Mine and Prep Plant in Harlan County, Kentucky voted to join the union. Eastover management refused to sign the contract and the union went on strike. Duke Power brought in replacement non-union workers, who were attacked. Hogg, the local judge was a coal operator himself and consistently ruled for Eastover. He was accused of being paid off by the company.^{[citation needed]} During much of the strike the mine workers' wives and children joined the picket lines. Many were arrested, some hit by baseball bats, shot at, and struck by cars. One striking miner, Lawrence Jones, was shot and killed by a replacement worker, Bill Bruner. Bruner served no time for the murder.^{[citation needed]}

Three months after returning to work, the national UMWA contract expired. On November 12, 1974, 120,000 miners nationwide walked off the job. The nationwide strike was bloodless and a tentative contract was achieved three weeks later. This opened the mines and reactivated the railroad haulers in time for Christmas. These events are depicted in the documentary film Harlan County, USA.

Other strikes

On October 21, 1902, the five-month Coal Strike of 1902, led by the United Mine Workers, ended.

In 1993, more than 7,500 United Mine Workers miners went on strike against the Peabody Coal Co., the nation's largest coal producer.^[8]

Women in the mines

Although mining was typically thought of as a man's job women have been in the mines as early as the 1920's and 1930's in some places. However, most women who worked during those times were working in times of war where most men were overseas, they worked for their family who owned the mine for free, or they were operators which was considered to be less of a risk. In the 1970's the amount of women who worked as actual miners and who received wages is the highest percent of women workers in the mines in history. With the help of the UMWA, women were able to receive the same amount of pay as men but they had to deal with more risk factors such as sexual harassment and lack of support from their family. As time went on women began to do more hard labor and did about the same work as a man would do in the mines. In the 19th century there was a relapse in the women's work force in the mines. Many different reasons as to why women were not fit to be miners arose such as health concerns and superstition. The main health concern of the time was that women were not to be seen as strong and able to work in such dangerous conditions, men at the time saw women as submissive and thought that the main job of a woman was to be a mother. All of the hard labor that women did during the war seemed unnoticed and they got reduced back to the roles of just wives and mothers. Another reason why women were not wanted in the mines was due to folk tales. One superstition simply stated that women near mines were bad luck and increased the rate of disaster. Women were seen to be causers of risks rather than as equals. Another folk tale that began in Pennsylvania claimed that women could not work in the mines because a long time ago there were beautiful women who seduced coal miners into betraying there families. So this village of beautiful women was burned down and the remainders of the women were transformed into coal. ^[9] So women being in the mines were trying to set free these women as to cause havoc and destroy the lives of men. It sounds strange but these folk tales did keep many women out of the mines.

Internal conflict

The union's more recent history has sometimes been marked by internal strife and corruption, including the 1969 murder of Joseph Yablonski, a reform candidate who lost a race for union president against incumbent W. A. Boyle. Boyle was later convicted of ordering the murder.

The killing of Yablonski resulted in the birth of a pro-democracy movement called the "Miners for Democracy" (MFD) which swept the Boyle regime out of office and replaced it with a group of leaders who had been most recently rank and file miners. Led by new president Arnold Miller, the new leadership enacted a series of reforms which gave UMWA members the right to elect their leaders at all levels of the union and to ratify the contracts under which they worked.

2008 Election

Many people will agrue that the UMWA is too involved in politics. However, in being a union they need to be as informed as possible to insure that they can have support to help back up their propositions. It is very important that the UMWA be as involved with politics as possible because it is these politcal leaders that they look forward to in the passing of laws that affect the mines in America. That is why in 2008 the UMWA fully supported Barack Obama, because they felt that he was the best canidate to help them achieve more rights for the mine workers. After tapes surfaced directly quoting President candidate Barack Obama as saying "So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”, United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) International President Cecil E. Roberts issued the following statement:

“Sen. John McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, have once again demonstrated that they are willing to say anything and do anything to win this election. Their latest twisting of the truth is about coal and some comments Sen. Obama made last January about the future use of coal in America.

“Here is what the McCain campaign left out of Sen. Obama’s actual words: ‘But this notion of no coal, I think, is an illusion. Because the fact of the matter is, is that right now we are getting a lot of our energy from coal. And China is building a coal-powered plant once a week. So what we have to do then is figure out how can we use coal without emitting greenhouse gases and carbon. And how can we sequester that carbon and capture it.’

“Sen. Obama has been consistent with that message not just in the coalfields, but everywhere else he goes as well. Despite what the McCain campaign and some far right-wing blogs would have Americans believe, Sen. Obama has been and remains a tremendous supporter of coal and the future of coal.

“I noted that Sen. McCain even went so far yesterday as to say he has always been a supporter of coal. I wonder, then, how he can justify his statement at a Senate hearing in 2000 that, ‘In a perfect world we would like to transition away from coal entirely,’ and his leading role in sponsoring legislation in 2003 that would have wiped out 78 percent of all coal production in America?

“Fortunately, UMWA members, their families and their friends and neighbors in the coalfields know all too well what is going on here. They’re not going to fall for it, and we urge others throughout America who care about coal to review what the candidates’ records on coal actually are. We are confident that once they do, and once they see the many other benefits to working families of voting for Sen. Obama, they will make the right choice for themselves and their families."^[10]

Decline of labor unionism in mining

Automation and a general decline in American unions cut heavily into the UMW's membership after World War II. In 1998 the UMW had about 240,000 members, half the number it had in 1946. In the early 2000s, the union represented about 42 percent of all employed miners. The UMW is most powerful in West Virginia, as well as in Montana and other western states.

List of UMWA presidents

The first UMWA presidents. ^[11]

• John B. Rae - 1890-1892 (founding president)
• John McBride - 1892-1895
• Phil Penna - 1895-1896
• Michael Ratchford - 1897-1898
• John Mitchell - 1898-1907
• Thomas Lewis - 1908-1910
• John White - 1911-1917
• Frank Hayes - 1917-1920
• John L. Lewis - 1920-1960
• Thomas Kennedy - 1960-1963
• W. A. "Tony" Boyle - 1963-1972
• Arnold Miller - 1972-1979
• Sam Church - 1979-1982
• Richard Trumka - 1982-1995
• Cecil Roberts - 1995-present

References

External links

Organized Labour portal

• Justice at Peabody current campaign website
• Remember Virden: documentary on the mine wars in Illinois
• West Virginia's Mine Wars