Strike unites would-be antagonists
Down Alabama way, a coal miners’ strike, now in its fourth month, echoes strikes in the coal fields of Western Pennsylvania in the 20th century.
It’s eerie, and sad. Strangely, it’s also hopeful.
The strike by 1,100 members of the United Mine Workers at the Warrior Met coal mine in Brookwood, Alabama, began April 1. Five days later, union negotiators reached a tentative settlement with the company.
Not liking the deal, the membership voted it down.
The two sides are now stalemated.
“If Warrior Met is waiting for our members to quit and run back to work, then the company needs to quit waiting,” proclaimed UMW President Cecil Roberts. “I know we are going to win this strike, because we are never going to quit.”
These are brave words from the head of a union that is a faint shadow of its former self. Roberts presides over a union that lays claim to some 40,000 active miners.
In its heyday, the UMW was huge. Its half-a-million members terrorized presidents. Back when coal was king, a strike or company lockout could paralyze whole industries.
Its charismatic president, John L. Lewis, thundered the union’s demands. He was a national figure.
Roberts is pint-sized, by comparison.
Nevertheless, in the strike against Warrior Met, Roberts is making himself heard.
“Warrior Met seems to believe that it is all right to strike people with cars as they engage in legal, protected activity,” Roberts has charged.
By way of explaining injuries to several striking miners while on the picket line, the company noted, “This is a stressful situation for all individuals… (The) continued violations of (a court) injunction has resulted in recent incidents.”
Warrior Met, which sells coal to foreign steelmakers, went to court hoping for a cease and desist order to stop vandals from wrecking their property. The Tuscaloosa County sheriff is investigating.
The company’s resort to the courts and police sounds familiar. Coal companies such as H.C. Frick routinely sought injunctive relief. The intervention of the county sheriff (at a time when Pennsylvania sheriffs were armed with real power) was commonplace as well.
The UMW’s Roberts claims the stalled negotiations with Warrior Met are the result of one of two things: either the company’s negotiating team is being undercut by higher-ups who refuse to give negotiators the power they need to conclude a contract, or it wishes to “punish” miners.
Warrior Met sounds like Frick (and later U.S. Steel) when it comes to its own defense. The Alabama company says it “puts safety first in everything we do.” The company claims it is protecting coal jobs and “the longevity” of Warrior Met itself.
There may be some justification for the company’s position in recent earnings figures. Warrior Met reported a loss of $35 million in 2020 (after net income in 2019 of $302 million).
As for 2021, the company has refused to release financial “guidance,” citing “uncertainty created” by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a story online by the Tuscaloosa News.
What’s hopeful in any of this? For one thing, the union is taking a stand. It’s not caving.
Second, perhaps because it is standing toe to toe with Warrior Met, the union is attracting outside support. An August rally in Brookwood was attended by communication union members from AT&T in Atlanta. In addition, Teamsters, unionized teachers, longshoremen, and labor movement officials from Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and South Carolina were on hand.
The rally brought together individuals who might otherwise be hostile to one another. At the very least, they might be wary.
One fella attending the rally told the online publication Portside, “I’m a Trump man.” Standing nearby were union members hoisting Strike for Black Lives placards.
How is this possible?
Hamilton Nolan of Portside commented, “Our everyday experience in a society that is … politically polarized tells us that getting young and old and Black and white and left and right all together for something should be extraordinary or impossible; but at a union rally … it becomes natural.”
Richard Robbins lives In Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.