Peabody Miners: Fed Up and Fired Up

Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts often says: “When you get fed up and fired up, you got to get ready to stand up.” Coal miners are standing up in the coalfields across the country, demanding to be treated with respect and to have a voice to make sure their jobs are well paid and safe.

In recent years, the UMWA has responded to the requests of hundreds of nonunion miners at Peabody Energy’s facilities across the country for assistance in getting a voice at work. In December 2005, workers at 19 Peabody mines in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia launched the Justice at Peabody campaign.

Says John Cox, a miner at Peabody’s Farmersburg (Ind.) mine:
I pay anywhere between $300 to $500 a month in prescription drug costs because of Peabody’s sub-par health benefit package. Only with a union contract will we have better pay and benefits because it’s obvious Peabody is not going to give it to us.

Peabody, the world’s largest private coal company, provides 10 percent of the nation’s electricity and 3 percent of the world’s power and employs some 8,300 miners at 33 mines in nine states. Peabody systematically closed its union mines and replaced production with nonunion mines over the past 15 years, says Bob Gaydos, UMWA’s_assistant organizing director.

Another Peabody miner, Greg Arnold of Indiana, took part in a December rally at Peabody headquarters in St. Louis, where he said his mine shift involves “eleven-hour shifts Monday through Friday, then another eight hours on Saturday—without a lunch break.” Despite this grueling 63-hours-a-week schedule, he receives no sick days. “I’d like a voice about my job—a seat at the table,” Arnold said.

A union contract also goes a long way toward improving safety conditions—with the danger of mines illustrated this year by the deaths of 33 miners, five in Harlan County, Ky., and 12 who were killed Jan. 2 in the Sago Mine explosion in West Virginia. More miners have died on the job this year than in any full year since 2001, when 42 were killed. More than 90 percent of the miners killed this year worked in nonunion mines.

Late last month, more than 1,500 miners and their supporters rallied in Wharton, W.Va., to call for the freedom of Peabody mine workers to join a union.

Roberts says the Peabody miners work in a climate of fear:
Workers have a basic human right to form a union where they work. And they have a right to do that without being subjected to intimidation from the company, without being fearful of losing their jobs, without having to go through a campaign of half-truths and outright lies from the company’s union-busting consultants.

The climate of fear that permeates non-union mines throughout America’s coalfields must end, and end now. Non-union miners are afraid that if they speak up about safety, they’ll get fired. They’re afraid that if they speak up about getting decent pensions and better health care for their families, they’ll get fired.

Cox recently took the fight for a union at Peabody to Dugger, Ind., where the town council was considering a resolution supporting the miners’ quest for a voice at work.
We work long hours and most weekends. When we retire, we have no pension and no health insurance.

After Cox spoke, the council unanimously adopted the resolution supporting the rights of the area’s Peabody miners to organize a union free from employer interference. The resolution, passed July 6, calls on Peabody to allow its employees to choose freely whether to join a union. The resolution requests Peabody remain neutral and not resort to the use of pressure tactics, such as threats to close the mine, if the workers choose a union.

Says June Rostan, lead community organizer for the Peabody campaign:
I think the miners should have the right to decide whether they want to be union. Peabody workers like Cox are using their community ties and political strength to garner strong support from residents and leaders in towns where the mines are located. The Peabody miners are asking elected leaders in every town in which they work and live to pass a resolution similar to the one in Dugger.

The people in these towns support unions because they know the effect a union can have on their communities. Lots of folks in these towns receive Mine Workers health care benefits when they retire [from union mines] and they know firsthand how a union can be good for the town.

Other local councils that have passed resolutions include Kentucky’s Union County Fiscal Court (the equivalent of the county council) and city councils in Morton’s Gap, Ky., Boonville, Ind., Danville Township, Ill., and Nortonville, Ky.

The AFL-CIO and the local religious community is backing the miners’ struggle, and last month, the United Methodist West Virginia Area Conference adopted a resolution urging Peabody “to be truly neutral with respect to employees’ rights to form or join a union and to voluntarily recognize a union when a majority of their employees sign authorizations.”

To level the playing field for workers trying to form unions, AFL-CIO unions, including the UMWA, are supporting the Employee Free Choice Act. The legislation, which has 259 co-sponsors in the House and Senate, would strengthen workers’ freedom to choose union representation through a majority sign-up process. It also would provide for binding arbitration of first-contract disputes and authorize stronger penalties for violations of labor law when workers seek to form a union.

by James Parks
Source: AFL-CIO Blog