The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 70/No. 9           March 6, 2006  
 
 
Two more miners die in Kentucky, Maryland
Toll: 24 in seven weeks
Massey to use immigrants to divide mine workers
(front page)
 
BY PAUL PEDERSON  
HAZARD, Kentucky—Two coal miners were killed February 16-17 while working underground in mines in eastern Kentucky and western Maryland. The toll in coal mines across the United States has now risen to 21 in the first seven weeks of 2006, compared to 22 for all of 2005. Three other miners at rock and gravel operations have also perished on the job this year.

At the same time, coal companies, pushing to increase production in the middle of a boom in coal prices, are attempting to undercut working-class solidarity by trying to pit native-born workers against immigrants in order to weaken prospects for unionization and increase profits.

In December, Charles Bearse, president of Sidney Coal Co., a Massey Energy subsidiary, told the Kentucky Mining Board he had “identified Hispanic workers who want to come to the area and train to become miners.” He asked that the state make an exception to its law requiring all mine workers to be fluent in English so the company can hire non-English-speaking immigrants.

Massey is the largest coal company in West Virginia and Kentucky. All but 3 percent of its workforce is nonunion. Three of this year’s mine deaths occurred at Massey operations.

“It’s common knowledge that the work ethic of the Eastern Kentucky worker has declined from where it once was,” said the document the company submitted to the state mining board, according to the February 7 Lexington Herald-Leader. Stating Kentucky needs an additional 3,500 miners, it continued: “Compounding the worker shortage is that attitudes have changed among the existing workforce, which affects attendance, drug use, and, ultimately, productivity.”

“This is the equivalent of an obscene gesture from Massey to every working man and woman in Eastern Kentucky and Southern West Virginia,” said Cecil Roberts, president of United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), according to a February 16 union press release. “It says a lot about what Massey thinks about the people who live and work there.” Roberts called Massey’s proposal “simply outrageous.”

“The UMWA does not oppose Latino workers in America’s coal mines,” the union statement said. “We’re fighting right now for Mexican immigrants in Utah who are struggling to form a union at their mine after being exploited for years,” Roberts said. “Over 40 Mexican immigrants at C.W. Mining’s Co-Op mine in Huntington, Utah, have been trying to organize with the UMWA for over two years, and are awaiting a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board upholding their December 2004 representation election.” (See also front-page article on C.W. Mining defamation suit.)

“C.W. Mining was paying these workers under $8.00 per hour, with no benefits,” Roberts continued. “Working conditions in the Co-Op mine were terrible, and the workers were subjected to intimidation and harassment if they spoke up…. Now Massey comes along and is trying to set up the same scenario in Eastern Kentucky. We’ve seen this before. Our Union was founded by immigrants who were brought to this country by the coal barons of the late 19th Century. They couldn’t speak to each other. The companies exploited them, playing one group off the other and keeping each suspicious of the other. They courageously overcame all that to form the UMWA in 1890.”

“We welcome diversity in our Union, because we know it makes us stronger,” Roberts said. “And we will fight against exploitation of miners wherever it occurs and to whomever it occurs.”

The big-business press is trying to paint the impression most miners in the area oppose immigrants coming into the mines. “Many eastern Kentucky miners worry that bringing non-English-speaking Latinos underground would force them to accept lower wages and lead to a decline in mine safety,” said an article in the February 20 Los Angeles Times.

Many miners, however, point out the problem is not immigrant workers making it worse for the native-born but the coal companies’ profit drive. “I won’t get in the way of any man working. I don’t care where he’s from,” said a coal miner in McRoberts, Kentucky, who worked in nonunion mines for 20 years and is granted anonymity to avoid retribution by the coal bosses. “They need the union in those mines because these companies are just going to try to keep pushing down the pay and making it unsafe for every miner.”

The miner, who was seriously injured in a roof fall, said, “Ninety percent of injuries and all deaths on the job can be prevented,” adding that “the bosses are the ones endangering workers’ lives.”

On February 16 Timothy Caudill, 33, a roof bolter at TECO Energy’s Hazard #4 mine near the town of Hazard, in Eastern Kentucky, was killed in a roof collapse.

According to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, there have been 18 reported roof collapses at Hazard #4 in the past two years.

Since it was purchased by TECO in September 2001, the mine has received 1,242 citations for safety violations, an average of 281 a year. Of those, 267 were deemed “significant and substantial.” By comparison, the Sago Mine in West Virginia, where 12 coal miners died after being trapped underground following an explosion in January, had 208 citations in 2005.

On February 17, Willard Miller, 35, was crushed between two pieces of equipment at the Mettiki coal mine in Western Maryland. Coal bosses there tried to brush off any responsibility. Adrienne Ottaviani of the Maryland Coal Association said Miller’s death “wasn’t anything to do with any safety violation—it was like an automobile accident,” reported the Cumberland Times-News. Miller is the second miner to die in this mine. Another worker was killed in a roof collapse there in 1999.

Both companies have been pressing to expand production. Mettiki's web site says the mine’s production capacity has been recently increased through two “small-scale third-party mining operations.” TECO boasts on its website it is expanding annual production from 7 million to 10 million tons. The TECO subsidiary that owns Hazard #4 increased coal production by 17 percent from 2004 to 2005. Since 2001, the company has purchased or opened 16 mines in Kentucky—all of them nonunion.

Sam Manuel contributed to this article.
 
 
Related articles:
All workers need union, whatever their language
Solidarity! Mine safety courses in Spanish
65 coal miners in Mexico trapped underground
Alabama: methane buildup forces mine shutdown
Letters
Nickel miner dies in explosion at BHP Billiton in Australia
Appeal to our readers  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home