*ORGANIZE THE COAL MINERS!

Click on the title to link to a "YouTube" film clip of Pete Seeger performing performing the classic coal country song "Which Side Are You On?"

ORGANIZE THE COAL MINERS!

COMMENTARY

MOURN, BUT THEN ORGANIZE!

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 unionization of Wal-Mart and the South, two giant tasks that would go a long way toward a return of labor militancy. In short, organize the unorganized. Those tasks are still central to such a 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 deep 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. Moreover, I have also read a recent article on the state of unionization in the American automobile industry that was at one time significantly unionized. The most dramatic statistic that I gathered from the 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. So militant unionists are today confronted with more than the question of organizing previously unorganized workers. Thus, an expansion drive for membership of these previously militant unions, in effect a reorganization, 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 known class struggles 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 labor struggles one need only mention one name Harlan, famous in story and song, in the hills of Kentucky to remember when militant miners knew how to fight (as well as the built-in limitations to a successful fight, as well). My father, before he escaped the coal fields by joining the Marines in World War II, ‘worked the coal’ as a boy and young man around Hazard, Kentucky, another legendary mining name. He had many a story to tell about those experiences and it is a measure of how bad conditions were that he happily went into the Marines 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, 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 work force 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 during a fight 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 our 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 within 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. We want one big industry-wide, nation-wide (or for that matter, world-wide) union. End of story. 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.

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 controlled by the union that would prohibit work in unsafe mines and address other mine safety issues. Let us be clear again 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 the victory of socialism might look like 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, auto and the unorganized. That, my friends, is the beginning of labor wisdom now. As the legendary labor organizer Joe Hill reputedly said before his execution in Utah for the 'sin' of union organizing- Don’t mourn, Organize!