Stand with coal miners on strike in Alabama!
https://themilitant.com/2021/05/29/stand-with-coal-miners-on-strike-in-alabama/
Fight to win pay, benefits lost in bankruptcy
BY JOHN BENSON
Vol. 85/No. 22
June 7, 2021
May 20 McCalla, Alabama, rally in solidarity with United Mine Workers on
strike against Warrior Met Coal. Miners are fighting to reverse
concessions forced on them five years ago.
UMWA
May 20 McCalla, Alabama, rally in solidarity with United Mine Workers on
strike against Warrior Met Coal. Miners are fighting to reverse
concessions forced on them five years ago.
BROOKWOOD, Ala. — Some 1,100 United Mine Workers of America union
members have been on strike since April 1, seeking to win back
concessions forced on them five years ago by Warrior Met Coal company.
They have set up a dozen or so picket shacks at mine portals, railroad
crossings, and other mine facilities and are reaching out for solidarity.
Henry Clay Dennison, a rail worker and former coal miner from Seattle,
and this worker-correspondent stopped by picket lines here May 21-22 to
talk with strikers about their fight and to bring solidarity from rail
workers in western Washington.
At a picket shack by the main entrance to the Warrior Met No. 4 mine we
met Chris Daniel, a miner with over a decade of experience in West
Virginia and Alabama.
“The main reason we are out here is because of Warrior Met’s unfair
labor practices,” he said. “We need better wages and better benefits,
like we had before. We need better working conditions and safety.”
Five years ago, Warrior Met miners gave up major concessions in wages,
benefits and working conditions under pressure from the bankruptcy
courts and the mines’ new owners after the previous owner, Jim Walter
Resources, went belly up. Warrior Met is highly profitable.
“I work in Seattle,” Dennison told Daniel, “but I worked in the coal
mines in West Virginia and Alabama for 18 years, including five years
near here at the Oak Grove mine.
“I came to Brookwood to bring a solidarity message from Pete Gushwa,
president of my union, SMART-Transportation Division Local 324,”
Dennison said. “Workers in many industries face attacks by the bosses.
My co-workers agree we have to stand together and use our unions to
strengthen each other.”
“If people don’t think this strike affects them, they should remember
the air traffic controllers,” Daniel said, referring to the 1981 firing
of 11,000 striking air traffic controllers by then-President Ronald
Reagan. Members of other airport unions were not mobilized to honor and
defend the strikers’ picket lines, and the strike went down to defeat,
setting up a long series of union-busting drives by employers in major
industries.
“Three days ago was the 101st anniversary of the battle at Matewan,”
Daniel said, referring to the 1920s battles by the UMWA to organize
nonunion mines in southern West Virginia. “The company hired goons who
went into striking miners’ houses and put their things out on the
street. In Matewan, the miners fought back,” Daniel said. “I don’t want
people to forget our history.”
“The railroad bosses want to lower the price of our labor and are laying
the groundwork for major attacks on wages and working conditions,” said
Dennison. “We talk about this in our union. That’s why my local
president wrote a letter of support for the UMWA here.”
“We need to rebuild the habit of solidarity with other unions to get
ready for what the bosses are preparing to do to us on the railroads,”
Dennison said. “It’s how we can gain the confidence to do what we need
to defend ourselves and move forward. We have to use the unions we have
— and organize unions where there aren’t any.”
Miners from the Oak Grove mine have been visiting the Brookwood miners’
picket lines and attending the weekly solidarity rallies organized by
the union at Tannehill State Park, each Wednesday at 6 p.m.
Dennison and I also went to an “Alabama Strike Fest” concert, organized
by The Valley Labor Report, a weekly talk radio show, outside UMWA Local
2397’s union hall May 22 to raise funds for the union’s strike fund. The
concert was attended by several hundred miners, family members and
strike supporters. It was also livestreamed on YouTube, making it
possible for people around the country to send in donations.
Help spread the word about the strike! Support and solidarity are
needed. All donation checks should be made out to UMWA 2021 Strike Aid
Fund and sent to: UMWA Strike Aid Fund, P.O. Box 513, Dumfries, VA
22026. Messages of support can also be sent to UMWA District 20, 21922
Hwy. 216 (Miners’ Memorial Parkway), McCalla, AL 35111. Email:
umwadistrict20@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Henry Dennison is the Socialist Workers Party candidate for Seattle mayor.
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Irvin D. Yalom “Truth," Nietzsche continued, "is arrived at through
disbelief and skepticism, not through a childlike wishing something were
so! Your patient's wish to be in God's hands is not truth. It is simply
a child's wish—and nothing more! It is a wish not to die, a wish for the
eveastingly bloated nipple we have labeled 'God'! Evolutionary theory
scientifically demonstrates God's redundancy—though Darwin himself had
not the courage to follow his evidence to its true conclusion. Surely,
you must realize that we created God, and that all of us together now
have killed him.” ― Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept