REQUIEM FOR A UNION

The Slow, Sad Death Of The UMWA

In an Associated Press story dated September 5, 2015, we were informed that Patriot Coal had just shut down the last union mine in Kentucky.  In another story from "Coal Age" dated February 15, 2015, the magazine commented on the fact that the UMWA was now unrepresented in the Illinois Basin, one of the richest and historically most productive coal fields in North America.  These two stories served in many ways as a preliminary journalistic epitaph for the once mighty United Mine Workers of America which in its prime had more than half a million dues paying members across America and Appalachia.  The United Mine Workers had been one of the leading unions in the entire effort to organize American labor, fight for worker's rights, and to pave the road for most of the human services and environmental agencies and legislative achievements which had, until August 5, 1981, been considered to be mainstays of the relationship between corporate employers and the work force which performs their bidding.

Photo Of John L. Lewis by AZ Quotes

It has never been my good fortune to be a member of a labor union.  But I grew up in a strongly union oriented family on Right Beaver Creek in Knott County KY and my maternal uncle Mabry Hicks was a member of the UMWA for his entire career as a miner and I was allowed to read his United Mine Workers Journal every month as soon as he finished with it.  I started out liking the joke page and the stories it contained about the places and people I recognized from time to time.  But, over the course of time, along with the strong union orientation of my entire family, the journal helped me to develop an understanding of the tenuous and sometimes antagonistic relationship between labor and business.  I have lived in the Appalachian coal fields of KY and WV most of my life. I have also traveled fairly extensively through the coal fields of several other states including VA, TN, OH, PA, and IL.  My parents operated a small country store throughout my childhood and I was sometimes a patient, for minor childhood problems, at the UMWA owned hospital at McDowell, KY.  I saw on a regular basis what could be accomplished in Appalachia and America if workers organized, gained union representation, and held firm to their union principles both individually and collectively.  I saw the difference in wages and benefits workers received in union operations as opposed to the smaller, non-union punch mines. "Punch Mine" is the colloquial name given to leased operations which large companies placed in the hands of small operators because they were too expensive or too risky for the large operators to choose to assume the liability of their operation. The leasing operators would assume all the liability and pray to make a fortune by paying as little as possible to employees with few to no benefits above their substandard wages. In addition to receiving the royalties on any coal these leases produced, the large corporate owners also often leased or sold old, worn out, and shoddy equipment to the lease operators who were often starting out with nothing more than a foreman's license, a naive desire to succeed, a shaky credit rating, and no capital.  These operations were nearly always in coal seams with bad bottom, bad top, water, or gas. Quite a few of them had the entire combination. Many of them were also off the beaten paths of the railroads and any coal produced had to be trucked many miles to customers which naturally lowered the price of the product. It was always high risk for the lease operators and a guaranteed win for the corporations which held the mineral rights. If a ton came out the company got their cut and if the roof caved in, the mine exploded, or employees were killed or injured in a multitude of other ways the leasing operator took the fall. And if that operator went broke, gave up, or got killed themselves another ambitious and gullible individual was always standing by under the mistaken belief they could succeed in the same lease.

UMWA Journal Cover--Photo by Lorne Blair Rare Books

 I saw the benefits union miners received from the chain of hospitals operated by the UMWA in Appalachia.  I have personally been inside the hospitals at McDowell, KY; Beckley, WV; Hazard, KY; South Williamson, WV; West Liberty, KY;  and Man, WV.  The Man location was closed years ago. The entire chain is now operated independently as the Appalachian Regional Healthcare System.  I had known the wonderful work the hospitals and their dedicated staff performed on a daily basis before the union sold them off to lower expenses tied to a long list of elderly retirees, decreasing membership, and myriad other economic factors. I still use the West Liberty, Kentucky, location and the chain does provide good care in the region.  But it is not nearly as patient centered as it was when the UMWA owned it. 

Map Of The Illinois Basin Coal Field by USGS Energy Resources Program

I have watched as the numbers of UMWA members and UMWA mines steadily decreased over the past thirty or forty years. In the late 1930's, the UMA had about 800,000 members nationwide and was a social and political force to be reckoned with. But in today's world, there are less than 50,000 members and many of those are rapidly aging retirees.  From a high of 11,000 members in Logan County, WV, at the height of the coal boom to a current low of only a few hundred in the county, union membership steadily decreased all across the nation and union negotiating power has also persistently and fatally shrunk in direct proportion to the percentage of coal production tied to the union.

We will examine several reasons which I believe are tied directly to the steady deterioration of the UMWA.  Some of these reasons began more than forty years ago and the most prominent of those is the steady, ongoing war against union labor in particular and most mainstream labor in general which hit full swing in the early days of the Reagan Administration and which has continued under every Republican president and congress this country has elected since 1980.  This war against union labor has also been combined with a consistent effort to deregulate nearly every industry in the country by the Reagan White House and every subsequent Republican White House.  The first major blow in this two pronged effort was the firing of the air traffic controllers.  At the time, I was working as a horse farm foreman in Central Kentucky and spending little time in Appalachia.  But I knew at the time that the firing of the controllers was simply a first blow against organized labor in general.  The AFL-CIO chose not to become involved in the issue because they had endorsed Reagan and mistakenly believed that it was too early to end their supposed honey moon with the White House.  I believed at the time and still do that the AFL-CIO and organized labor in general should have stepped up and supported the controllers wholeheartedly and, if necessary, by means of a general one day nationwide strike by every union laborer in America.  Such an action could have proven instantly that organized labor collectively held a great deal of power and would not allow the White House to peremptorily terminate several thousand of the most critical and highly specialized union workers in America.  When organized labor quietly sat on their hands and watched the air traffic controllers be fired and replaced with poorly qualified and inadequately trained workers, the door was opened through which big business and the subsequent Republican administrations would chisel away at the superstructure of organized labor, workers rights, fair pay, and every other benefit which union women and men had won over the previous century.

The great majority of union labor contracts negotiated in America since that time have been, in one way or another, giveaway contracts.  In nearly every one of them, labor has lost either pay, benefits or both. Perhaps, the worst of these giveaway contracts was the one signed by leadership of the Teamsters Union and approved by their membership vote which stripped numerous benefits from the United Parcel drivers and laborers in 2013.  Beginning with that negotiation process, United Parcel couched their efforts to strip union workers of their rights and benefits in such terms as "seeking driver flexibility" which was a misnomer for the company's effort to broaden the job descriptions and increase the work load for drivers.  Such efforts across a large number of unionized companies steadily chiseled away at the strength and viability of unions.

Map Of Appalachian Basin Coal Field by Energy Data Exchange US Department of Energy

Additionally, the UMWA suffered from serious and permanently detrimental periods of leadership.  Beginning with the presidency of W. A. "Tony" Boyle from 1963 to 1972, a long period began when the union was deliberately and criminally mismanaged by its leadership.  In 1969, Joseph "Jock" Yablonski ran for the presidency of the union with strong support from the membership, the best of intentions to reshape the union back into the worker centered entity of its early years, and a great deal of likelihood of winning.  In September of 1969, even before the election, which was held on December 9, Boyle plotted to have Yablonski murdered, embezzled the money to pay for the crime from union funds, and arranged to have three men hired to commit the crime.  The murderers actually killed Joseph "Jock" Yablonski, his wife, and adult daughter all in their Pennsylvania home on December 31, 1969.  Boyle was indicted and convicted of embezzling union funds to make illegal election contributions in 1973 and sent to federal prison.  He was indicted for the murder for hire scheme in September 1973 and sentenced in April 1974 to three consecutive life terms. He died in prison in 1985.

Photo of Joseph "Jock" Yablonski by YouTube

In December 1972, Arnold Miller, a West Virginia mainstream miner who had previously run unsuccessfully for the state legislature, was certified to succeed Boyle as the union president.  Despite his apparent honesty and good intentions, Miller proved to be less than maximally effective as a union administrator.  His term lasted until 1979, and was marked by naive and inept decision making on the part of Miller and those who revolved in his orbit of power and influence.  At the time of his election, the union had about a quarter of a million members but a series of wildcat strikes, legislative attacks on the union, and increasing automation caused the membership to steadily shrink throughout the administrations of Miller and his immediate successor Sam Church who also proved to less than effective as an administrator even though he had been vice president since 1977.  Church was succeeded by Richard Trumka in 1982.  Richard Trumka did have a brief history as a working miner but became an attorney before returning to work for the UMWA in 1974 as a staff attorney.  Trumka is now president of the AFL-CIO and it appears that his intentions from the start were to achieve a higher office than the presidency of the UMWA.  While he had all the skills, education, and training necessary to be a strong president, his overall personal goals seem to have prevented him from focusing on  the needs of the union membership.  Since December 1995, the UMWA has been under the leadership of Cecil Roberts and that term has been not much more than a caretaker administration as union membership, representation among the active mining work force, and overall political and social power have steadily shrunk to the pitiful state in which it exists today.

During the week of June 18-25, 2018, in  "The Nation" magazine, America's best political magazine, a short article by co-authors Bryce Covert and Mike Konczal under the title "Union Strong" presents a graphic which shows that unionized workers which represented 30% of all American labor in 1955 now represent only 11% as of 2017.  The graphic goes on to show that union workers receive 10-20% higher pay than non-union workers, that workers of color benefit as much as 5 times the income boost from membership that white workers receive which serves to provide them with racial parity in terms of pay and benefits.  Therefore, the woman or man of color in the workforce has a great deal to gain from active membership in and unstinting support of a trade union.  And, as income disparity grows like a bloom of red algae all across America, the graphic goes on to educate us to the fact that "if union membership had stayed at 1950's levels, the growth in income share of the top 10% would have been reduced by 50%."  Those figures and facts from Mr. Covert and Mr. Konczal quickly and simply illustrate just how tragically the union membership shrinkage over the last 50-60 years has damaged the American workforce in general.  Those damages are no greater anywhere than in the coalfields which were previously represented by the United Mine Workers of America.   

In addition to the above mentioned problems of leadership, the UMWA was facing that constant stream of Republican attacks on workers rights and organized labor from January 1981 to the present day.  Beginning with the administration of President Bill Clinton, with its populist focus, coal companies, coal brokers, and industrial coal consumers began a structured attack on the UMWA, federal safety and environmental regulators, and coal mine laborers in general.  The US steel industry was shrinking due to foreign competition and industrial coal sales were shrinking commensurately.  The coal companies needed someone to blame for their problems. So they invented the purely fictitious "War On Coal" and couched it as an organization which was intended to protect the interests of front line workers.  Coal companies and industrial coal consumers poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the "War On Coal" which was and always will be a lie.  There never was a "War On Coal".  The only war being waged at that time was a coal company financed "War Against Regulation And The Working Class".  The companies incorporated a non-profit organization they called "Friends Of Coal" in order to draw in secondary coal related businesses and their owners all across the country.  They sought membership in these efforts from the front line miners, local small business owners, politicians at all levels, and anyone else dumb enough to fall for the idea that positive and constructive labor, production, and environmental regulations by the Clinton and Obama Administrations constituted their purely fictional "War On Coal".

This industrial public relations warfare was also augmented with a broad ranging, well funded effort to elect and control politicians at all levels ranging from governors and senators down to city council members and magistrates.  If you were a candidate who was willing to parrot the propaganda of the coal industry and vote in their favor on issues ranging from a single city ordinance regulating the weight and speed of coal trucks all the way up to destroying federal environmental policy and law, you were their candidate and they would put money and influence into your campaign.  They managed to turn West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky in particular into Right Wing Radical Repugnican voting fiefdoms of their overall goal of destroying labor laws, public health care, black lung law, workers compensation, and environmental laws not just in the coal fields but nation wide if they could. 

As an adjunct to the "War On Coal" and as the political influence of that fictitious entity has spread, they have managed to play a major role in the election of disgraced coal operator Jim Justice as Governor of West Virginia.  Since his misguided election, he actually changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Repugnican and has fully endorsed the destructive crime spree of TRAITOR & Spawn Of Satan Trump. According to the Lexington Herald Leader, Justice owes more than $2.5 million dollars in taxes to at least five Kentucky counties in which he has previously mined coal.  Despite making public pronouncements that he will pay the debts, not even a minimal amount has been received.  In West Virginia, he has also been ordered to pay $9.4 million dollars on a defaulted loan.  That kind of public action, or inaction as the truth may be, makes Justice the ideal candidate for support from coal operators and TRAITOR & Spawn Of Satan Trump.  Despite his avowed loyalty to TRAITOR & Spawn Of Satan Trump, coal field employment continues to drop in West Virginia further adding to the problems of both union and nonunion miners.  During the time Justice has occupied the governor's office, the largest mine in West Virginia has shut down. 

The UMWA Pension Fund is in deep trouble and the union has sought congressional actions to save these critical payments to retired and disabled miners.  But the Repugnican congress has been far less than receptive to bailing out the pension fund.  The lives and survival of most of the retired and disabled miners hang in the balance and it is not likely that congress will take any decisive or permanent action to save the pensions since the miners are a relatively small and rapidly diminishing voting bloc.  The days when being a member of the United Mine Workers of America was a guarantee of lifelong safety, healthcare, and general well being are no more.  

The United Mine Workers Of America has not ceased to be a trade union.  But they have ceased to organize, enroll new members, or maintain a credible political profile.  They are not dead as an organization.  But they are on life support and not likely to survive.  Just as America has lost our last veterans from the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World War I, we will also lose our last union miner in the foreseeable future.  That, my friends is sad state of affair.