"The fight of miners to defend our union deserves the support of all working people," Forrestal told the audience, which included garment and meatpacking workers and a worker from New Jersey who had been a gold miner in Ecuador before coming to the United States. For working people in this city, the discussion on the broadening struggles of working people in coal mining regions who are resisting the antiunion assaults by the employers and worsening social conditions was welcome, since this aspect of the class struggle gets little coverage in the press here.

Forrestal described the struggle of members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) at mines owned by Robert Murray, who owns nine mines, seven of which are nonunion. It is one of the central struggles in the UMWA today. "Murray's goal is to make all nine mines nonunion," Forrestal said. "Our goal is to make all mines union." Murray is the largest family-held independent coal producer in the United States. Like other capitalists who employ miners to extract coal, Murray "is on a concentrated push for longer hours, ever more production, more nonunion mines, and more use of contract miners," Forrestal explained.

Union members have called off work recently to hold union meetings on two Memorial Days as part of their protest of speedup and unsafe working conditions in the mine where he works. Forrestal said the mine has been shut down several times in recent months by the government agency responsible for enforcing health and safety regulations in the mines due to the presence of high levels of explosive methane gas and other safety violations.

"When Murray holds 'awareness days'--such as a recent one where he and a manager assembled miners in the bathhouse and lectured them for two and a half hours--the union responds with our own 'awareness days,'" Forrestal said, which are the Memorial Day events. As part of their fight against the company, local union members recently voted 335-10 to reject a contract offer presented by the company.

"When the bosses call us 'cowards' and 'sheep' and say we must have low IQs to have voted the current union leadership into office," Forrestal said, "you feel like you're being abused and treated like trash." Forrestal recommended that listeners read The Changing Face of U.S. Politics by Socialist Workers Party leader Jack Barnes, which explains how this disdain for working people expressed by the employers generates resistance.

"The mine owners' total disregard for the life and limb of miners," Forrestal said, "is matched by how they destroy the air, land, and water." One frequently-used technique of mining is "mountain top removal," Forrestal said, in which the peaks of mountains are bulldozed off and processed to remove coal. But because of the drive for profits, the coal companies leave behind devastated valleys, destroyed river basins, and land subject to erosion.

A by-product of coal mining, a sludge called slurry, is stored in ponds, many high in the mountains, Forrestal said. When their containing walls break, as happened last year near the town of Inez, Kentucky, he said, "you get a 14-foot tidal wave of slurry coming down the hills."

Forrestal said the socialist mayoral campaign in Pittsburgh has been speaking out against attacks the capitalists and their allies have launched against a local "living wage" ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage. He noted that Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan recently called for abolishing the minimum wage, claiming this will stimulate the flagging capitalist economy.

Some of the backers of the living wage campaign have made the statement, "I want my taxes invested to pay workers minimum wage," Forrestal said. His campaign takes a different approach. "We're not for investing workers' taxes, but for ending all taxes on working people," he said. Instead, socialists demand a single tax--a sharply graduated income tax on those whose income is above that of working people.

His campaign for mayor, Forrestal said, has aided socialist miners in expanding their political discussion and debate among co-workers and winning more miners to subscribe to the socialist press. For example, a co-worker said he thought the U.S. government is justified in building up military capacity aimed at "foreign countries dumping their products" on U.S. markets. Forrestal said he was able to discuss why "the most protectionist government is in Washington." Overall, he said, miners are giving the campaign a positive response.

During a lively discussion period, one participant described his experience as a gold miner in Ecuador, where miners' health and safety is endangered by some of the toxic chemicals used in mining and refining gold and by the collapse of tunnels. "What is involved is the same all over the world," he said. "It makes it more important for workers and peasants to be united."
 
 
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