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Sep 5, 11:09 AM
EDT
No union mines left in Kentucky, where labor
wars once raged
By DYLAN LOVAN
Associated Press | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
HARLAN, Ky. (AP) -- Kentucky coal
miners bled and died to unionize.
Their workplaces became war zones, and
gun battles once punctuated union protests. In past decades, organizers have
been beaten, stabbed and shot while seeking better pay and safer conditions deep
underground.
But more recently the United Mine
Workers in Kentucky have been in retreat, dwindling like the black seams of coal
in the Appalachian mountains.
And now the last union mine in Kentucky
has been shut down.
"A lot of people right now who don't
know what the (union) stands for is getting good wages and benefits because of
the sacrifice that we made," said Kenny Johnson, a retired union miner who was
arrested during the Brookside strike in Harlan County in the 1970s. "Because
when we went on those long strikes, it wasn't because we wanted to be out of
work."
Hard-fought gains are taken for granted
by younger workers who earn high wages now, leading the coal industry to argue
that the union ultimately rendered itself obsolete. But union leaders and
retirees counter that anti-union operators, tightening environmental regulations
and a turbulent coal market hastened the union's demise in Kentucky.
The union era's death knell sounded in
Kentucky on New Year's Eve, when Patriot Coal announced the closing of its
Highland Mine. The underground mine in western Kentucky employed about 400
hourly workers represented by the United Mine Workers of America.
For the first time in about a century,
in the state that was home to the gun battles of "Bloody Harlan," not a single
working miner belongs to a union. That has left a bad taste in the mouths of
retirees: men like Charles Dixon, who heard the sputter of machine gun fire and
bullets piercing his trailer in Pike County during a long strike with the A.T.
Massey Coal Company in 1984 and 1985.
"I had my house shot up during that
strike," said Dixon, the United Mine Workers local president at the time. "I was
just laying in bed and next thing you know you hear a big AR-15 unloading on it.
Coal miners had it tough buddy, they sure have."
The shots fired at Dixon's home recall
the even deadlier organizing battles of the 1920s and `30s, many in Harlan
County.
One ambush shooting in 1937 ended with
the death of union organizer Marshall Musick's 14-year-old son, Bennett, when "a
shower of bullets tore through the walls of the house," according to union
leader George Titler's book, "Hell in Harlan."
Organizing battles raged in Appalachia
throughout the last century, most notably the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain in
West Virginia, where thousands of striking miners fought a shooting war with law
enforcement and replacement workers, ending in dozens of deaths. One year
earlier, 10 people had died in Matewan, West Virginia, in a skirmish over
eviction notices served to miners who had joined the union.
In Harlan County, Kentucky, the 1931
Battle of Evarts ended in four deaths. More recently, the strife of the
mid-1970s Brookside mining strike here was captured in the Academy Award-winning
documentary, "Harlan County U.S.A."
Johnson, who appeared in the film when
he was 22 years old, returned this summer to the scene of his first picket line
arrest along state Highway 38 in Harlan County.
He had stood there, near the Highsplint
mine entrance, with other union members and gasped as state troopers set up a
machine gun across the street. After about four hours of noisy picketing, a tall
trooper stuck a baton between Johnson's legs and raised it up to his
groin.
"We just came to lend them a hand that
day, and ended up going to jail," said Johnson, now 63 and battling health
issues.
Johnson, Dixon and union leaders worry
that the union's disappearance in Kentucky has opened the door for coal
operators to lower worker standards.
"When the coal industry rebounds to the
extent that it does, and non-union operators take a look around and see that
there's no union competition, and they'll see that they can begin to cut wages,
they can begin to cut benefits, they can begin to cut corners on safety, they'll
do that," said Phil Smith, a national spokesman for the miner's union.
Smith pointed to operations run by
former Massey Energy chief Don Blankenship, who closed union mines in the 1980s
and now faces criminal conspiracy charges in the 2010 deadly explosion at the
Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia that killed 29 workers.
But industry leaders argue that higher
wages and safer mines in recent decades have reduced the desire for workers at
non-union mines to organize.
"Anymore, I just don't think there's
that level of discontent between the company and working coal miners, which I
think is a very good thing," said Bill Bissett, president of the Kentucky Coal
Association, an industry group. "If anything, they've won, which I think they've
worked themselves out of a job, in that respect."
Bissett said mines have become safer
despite the union's diminished presence in Kentucky.
"We're in some of the safest time in the
history of U.S. mining right now and a time when the UMWA is at their lowest
level," he said.
More vigorous federal enforcement and
the closing of older Appalachian mines in a turbulent coal market have also
contributed to declining injuries and deaths.
Union membership remains substantial in
West Virginia, with more than 30,000 members, largely because that state wasn't
affected by the environmental regulations on high-sulfur coal that essentially
halted mining in western Kentucky in the 1990s. Smith said those western
Kentucky mine shutdowns led to the loss of about 20,000 union members in two
years.
Patriot Coal cited the slumping market
when it told workers the Highland Mine had to close.
"You could've heard a pin drop," said
mine worker Scottie Sizemore.
A safety officer at Highland for just a
few months, Sizemore had left another coal job and his family behind in Harlan
County, 300 miles away.
Union miners at the Highland mine were
making about $24 an hour and working four 10-hour shifts a week. Workers at
non-union mines typically work long shifts six days a week, and benefits vary
from mine to mine. Sizemore, who was not in the union at Patriot, has since
moved back to Harlan County to work for a smaller mining company. He took a
hefty pay cut.
Wages were less of a priority than
safety during the Brookside strike of the 1970s. Organizers were pushing the
mine's owner, Eastover Coal Company, to sign a contract establishing a United
Mine Workers local there.
Returning to the scene of his arrest
four decades ago, Kenny Johnson looked past a small bridge that leads to a
mining operation. Coal is still being mined there today, just not by union
miners.
Johnson recalled the hard lessons he
took from that clash.
"I realized that day that it was very
serious and that people would fight you, even to the point of having you put in
jail for standing up for some of the ideals that coal miners hold dear," he
said.
As he spoke, a young, burly miner drove
across the bridge, smudges of coal dust on his face. He angled his truck across,
a few feet away from where Johnson was standing.
As he accelerated away, a cloud of dust
kicked up behind him.
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Friday, September 11, 2015
No union mines left in Kentucky, where labor wars once raged
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