Three days before the gathering, two more coal miners were killed on the job in West Virginia. Another miner in Alabama died April 10 from injuries received in a roof fall 12 days earlier. This brings this year’s death toll to 24, more than the 22 who died during all of 2005 in the United States. This mine safety crisis and the ongoing fight to force the U.S. government to preserve and expand health care for UMWA retirees and their dependants were prominent in the major presentations to the gathering by UMWA president Cecil Roberts and other speakers.

The convention proceedings also took place as nearly 2 million immigrant workers and their supporters marched across the country demanding legalization of the undocumented.

“Large immigrant rights rallies across the country today are writing history,” said Richard Trumka, former UMWA president and current vice-president of the AFL-CIO in addressing the convention. Noting that AFL-CIO president John Sweeney would be speaking at the Washington rally that day, Trumka said, “The labor movement is not going to let immigrants be treated as second-class citizens.”

Mike Dalpiaz, international vice president from District 22, the union’s western region, said in opening the convention that many immigrant workers “put down their tools and took to the streets. Something we have to do all over the country.”

The delegates discussed campaigns for union recognition and the fight for safety and better wages and working conditions. Coal miners on the Navajo Nation involved in the organizing drive among Head Start workers were featured at the convention. Also highlighted were the ongoing struggle of workers who have fought for the UMWA at the Co-Op coal mine in Huntington, Utah; the campaign to win the union at Peabody, one of the country’s largest and increasingly nonunion coal operators; and the fight of Rockspring miners in West Virginia for union recognition. A special union-organizing presentation gave prominence to these struggles.

A delegation of three miners involved in the Co-Op struggle staffed an information table and sold solidarity T-shirts as part of the convention. UMWA president Cecil Roberts referred to Bill Estrada, one of the leaders of that struggle who was on the stage for the union-organizing session. “The Co-Op mine owners think they can pay underground coal miners $5 to $7 an hour in this day and age because they are immigrant workers,” Roberts said. “That is wrong. We started supporting this struggle three years ago, and we will continue to do so.”

Democratic Party politicians John Edwards and Jesse Jackson addressed the convention.

Joe Shirley, president of the Navajo Nation, also spoke.

Contract battles are looming at two coal operations on the Navajo Nation as agreements with Pittsburg and Midway Coal expire this August, and with Peabody Coal in August 2007.
 
 
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3 miners killed in W. Virginia, Alabama  
 
 
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