From The American Left History Blog Archives (2007-08) - On American Political Discourse – ORGANIZE THE COAL MINERS!-DON’T MOURN, ORGANIZE! (2007)

Markin comment:

In 2007-2008 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on.     

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ORGANIZE THE COAL MINERS!-DON’T MOURN, ORGANIZE! (2007)

In my recent Labor Scorecard 2007 commentary (see September 2007 archives) and elsewhere I have noted that a key to the revitalization of the American labor movement is the organization of Wal-Mart and the South two giant tasks that would go a long way to a return of labor militancy. In short, organize the unorganized. Those tasks are still central to recovery, however, the recent mine disaster at the Crandall Canyon Mines in Utah and  last year’s disaster at Sago, West Virginia have brought to mind how precarious conditions are in the mines. And that is not even to speak of the seemingly daily disasters in the Chinese mines and elsewhere. Tunneling underground is just not a safe operation under any circumstances. Impelled by the profit motive, as Crandall Canyon so graphically demonstrated, it can be nothing short of industrial murder I have also read a recent article on the state of unionization in the American automobile industry which was at one time almost totally unionized. The most dramatic statistic that I gathered from that article was that while there are almost as many auto workers as there were at the height of the unions today only one third of that work force is unionized. Thus, an expansion of organization of these previously militant unions is on the agenda today.   

Historically some of the most dramatic labor battles in America involved the United Mine Workers and other miners’ unions. One need only think of the “Molly McGuires” in the Pennsylvania coal fields, the names  Ludlow, Butte, Coeur d’Alene, the Western Federation of Miners led by the legendary “Big” Bill Haywood and of other lesser class struggle led by him and the International Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies). The names roll off the tongue in endless succession.  More recently one remembers the great battles in the Eastern mines, especially West Virginia, up to the 1970’s. If one location epitomized theses long struggles one need only mention one name Harlan, famous in story and song,  in the hills of Kentucky to know  militant miners knew how to fight (as well as the built-in limitations to success, as well). My father, before he escaped the coal fields by joining the Marines in World War II and thereafter settling in Boston, ‘worked the coal’ as a boy around Hazard, Kentucky, another legendary mining town. He had many a story to tell about those experiences and it is a measure of how bad it was that he happily went into the service in order to escape that life. One lesson that he imparted to me and one that offers us hope is the tradition, honored more in the breech that the observance now, of the miners-Picket lines mean don’t cross. Every militant needs to have that slogan etched in his or her brain.

That said, today’s coal economics do not make the task any easier than in earlier times. Coal production has had a very stormy and topsy-turvy history and unemployment and abandonment of worked-over mines is only part of the story. Recently, with the increased price of other fossil fuels, mainly oil, however the coal ‘clean or dirty’ has become more valuable. Thus, old unsafe mines and other formerly forgotten fields are being worked today by the same old greedy capitalist investors that we all remember from the ‘age of the robber barons’. Moreover the location of the fields in remote areas and, frankly, the parochialism and localism of the workforce make organizing as difficult as it always has been.  Add to the mix, as noticeable in Crandall Canyon, the waves of immigrants swarming to the fields in search of desperately needed work and there is a handful. Yes, those are all problems to be confronted but the most serious problem is the lack of interest of today’s leadership of the Mine Workers and of the AFL-CIO to make this fight. And that is where the fight has to begin.

Lest I be accused of the dreaded sin of ‘dual unionism’ let me make clear that this fight to reorganize the miners has to begin with the current organized union structures as a matter of common sense. Tackling the individual disparate owners piecemeal with local unions is not the way forward. Yes, we want one big industry-wide, nation-wide (or for that matter, world-wide) union. What we do not want to do is rely on the good graces of governmental agencies, in this case, the Mine Safety and Health Administration. As the results of Crandall Canyon demonstrate reliance on this toothless (for labor) agency is a sure sign of defeat before we start.

Furthermore, a central demand beyond the tradition ones of union recognition, wages and working conditions is the absolute necessity to fight for a workers safety committee with the union that would prohibit work in unsafe mines and address other mine safety issues. Let us be clear this is not some tripartite (labor, capitalist, government) committee but a union one. If one wants to know what the embryonic stages of workers control of production under capitalism but before socialism that should be our model. It is a life and death struggle. All trade union militants should be demanding that instead of using your hard earned dues to elect one or another of the bourgeois candidates in 2008 that those dues go to organizing the mines. That, my friends, is the beginning of labor wisdom now. Don’t mourn, Organize!