If the Co-Op workers win, their success will give a boost to the entire UMWA and strengthen the hand of miners everywhere who are fighting for their livelihood and safety on the job. If the company prevails, the bosses will be able to step up their antiunion drive. Some 55 percent of the coal produced in the U.S. is mined west of the Mississippi, but only about a half-dozen mines in that region are union.

The Co-Op miners, most of whom were born in Mexico, are standing up for their rights in response to the brutal drive that the coal barons are waging nationwide to jack up their profits. On top of the regular exploitation through the system of wage slavery, these profits result from longer work hours, increased levels of coal dust miners breathe, refusal to pay black lung benefits, speed-up and other work rules that result in gratuitous deaths in the mines, disregard for the environment, and efforts to weaken or keep out the union. Miners around the country have engaged in struggles such as opposing efforts to loosen coal-dust rules, demanding federal black lung benefits for retired and disabled miners and their widows, and exposing the bosses’ cover-up of last year’s near-fatal mine disaster in Pennsylvania.

The 74 miners at Co-Op are fighting for decent wages, benefits, job safety, and dignity. Most of the workers there earn only $5.25 to $7 an hour and have no health insurance or retirement benefits. They are forced to work under unsafe conditions in violation of federal mine regulations. The conditions at Co-Op were responsible for three deaths in the last half of the 1990s—half of the total coal mine deaths in the state. A UMWA statement notes that in September, as miners were taking steps to organize a union, they were fired en masse after they protested the arbitrary dismissal of one of their co-workers.

The mine owners, the Kingstons, are a capitalist family notorious in the region for their brutality against workers they employ in their $150 million business empire. They are widely despised by working people for their abuse of women. For example, one of the directors of the Co-Op mine, John Kingston, was convicted for savagely beating his daughter who had fled a forced polygamous marriage to her uncle, David Kingston, who spent four years in jail for sexual abuse of the 16-year-old.

The UMWA is backing the fight by the Huntington miners, most of whom have signed a union representation petition (see coverage on page 6).

Solidarity can be won from other unions as well as from immigrant rights organizations, student and church groups, and many others. Collections for the miners and their families, messages of support, food drives, “Adopt-a-Family” campaigns, and distributing the miners’ fact sheet and UMWA statements (see the union web site at www.umwa.org)—all such efforts can help bring needed support to the miners so they can win their fight.

Solidarity with our fighting brothers and sisters at the Co-Op mine!
 
 
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Coal miners in Utah stand firm on picket line  
 
 
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