The United Mine Workers of America was founded on this date in 1890

The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) was founded in Columbus, Ohio on January 25, 1890. The union was founded by people who came from different coalfields and from different traditions of mine worker unionism. Many attempts had ben made to form local, regional, and national unions of mine workers, and there had been notable successes and failures in organizing the coal miners. The methods of mining coal and the structures of the anthracite and bituminous coal industries were changing as coal was helping to drive the expansion of modern capitalist industry. Competition between mining districts and between the coal operators and changes in the methods of extracting coal tended to drive wages down and makes mining ever more dangerous.

The UMWA sought to achieve industrial stability in coal mining from the union's earliest days. In the best light, this meant restricting competition between the operators and winning legislation that restricted or outlawed child labor, defined what a legal ton of coal was, required safe mining practices and workplace safety, insured mine workers' safety and health, and provided for mine workers after they were too old or infirmed to work. In the early days the union and the coal operators sought to reach agreement on coal prices together and to use their relative power to control coal markets together. But the operators were never good partners to the union, and competition from non-union and low-cost mining districts and industrial monopolization worked against union-operator cooperation. Industrial chaos was always just a half-step away. Under these conditions, then, the union and the operators came to represent different and opposing interests.

In the worst light, local and district unions competed with one another and the union's leadership played union locals and districts against one another. The leadership sometimes sought to partner with certain operators and politicians in ways that were at least unethical and that did not always serve the worker's long-term interests. Corrupt union officials have done much damage to the union's cause and reputation. The union was sometimes fighting for industrial stability on its own. Mine workers often looked first at their mine, then at their company or region, and then, perhaps, at the national picture when it came to union affairs and deciding union policies and voting on union contracts. Changes in mining technology worked against the mine workers maintaining employment and solidarity and keeping control of their work, and resentments have grown from this. The noble attempts by the union to win industry-wide contracts and to create a working pension system and to provide for healthcare have depended on extending union organizing, stable employment, payments made by union-represented coal operators, industrial stability, fair courts, and cooperation and support from state and federal officials. Only at rare moment in our history have most of these factors been in place at the same moment.

It is a miracle and a blessing that the UMWA still exists. The coal operators and their allies have sought to divide the mine workers and have used their economic and political power to isolate the workers and break the union. They have brought extraordinary pressure to bear against the union and have used violence when that suited their needs. They have influenced the public schools and other public institutions in many areas to be "pro-coal," which has come to mean pro-company, and the true history of mine workers' struggles has to be constantly rescued from their hands.

The union remains the only reasonable and available institution to represent mine workers' interests. There are about 67,000 coal mine workers in the United States and Canada, and the UMWA may represent something just over 20 percent of those workers. According to the union's website, the UMWA now represents "coal miners, manufacturing workers, clean coal technicians, health care workers, corrections officers and public employees throughout the United States and Canada." Not too many years ago the union had the slogan that "God, guns and guts built the UMWA" and I believe that that has been true. The UMWA has set a high bar for other unions and has used its power to support other unions. The idea that strikers have to "last one day longer" and our modern concepts of industrial unionism come from the UMWA to a great extent. Today the union depends more on God and guts and its ability to make its case to workers and its power to win good contracts.

We need a new era of union organizing to boost the union's numbers and influence and power so that mine workers do better and so that their communities survive. Good living wages and retirement benefits, guaranteed by a union contract, circulate through mining communities quickly and raise everyone's standards of living. A progressive wage floor, strong health and safety provisions with active enforcement, and protected pension plans in coal mining benefit all workers and our communities no matter what jobs we have or where we live. 

The pictures and music below come from a variety of sources and are posted here to show readers something of mine workers and mining communities. I am including some of my own narratives and commentary by others. Not all of the workers and mines here are union-represented. My point is to create a context for understanding where the UMWA comes from and why the union is needed now.

The best resource there is the United Mine Workers of America website. One of the best things that you can do right now is to support the striking Warrior Met mine workers in Alabama. They have been on strike for over 21 months. Go right here to do that. Another great resource for learning union history is the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum. The Mother Jones Museum is also a great resource.
      

New Salem Baptist Church

Built in 1921 for the African American community of Tams, West Virginia. The New Salem Baptist Church is one of the last remaining structures in Tams. At one time the church boasted a congregation of around 350, but those numbers have dwindled to about a dozen since the mine closed in 1955. The last residents of the town of Tams vacated in the 1980s and the remaining structures were destroyed or moved. Photograph and text by David Dunlap, courtesy of Broken Doors Photography and Art Collective

A snapshot of War, West Virginia.

Incorporated in 1920, War was previously known as Miner's City. At its height War had almost 4,000 residents, a far cry from the approximately 690 as of the 2020 census. Photo and text by David Dunlap, courtesy of Broken Doors Photography and Art Collective

Blue Diamond Mines--The Johnson Mountain Boys

1973

An anthracite miner and his wife

A coal mining community and family in Utah

Women gathering coal in the Pennsylvania anthracite region.

Photograph by Kristen Kennedy of Virginia Lee Photography. She is one

 of my favorite modern photographers and her work has appeared on this blog many times.

The Monongah Mine Disaster of December 6, 1907 took the lives of at least 362 mine 

workers, many of them immigrants. It was the worst disaster in coal mining history in

the United States.

"The coal you mine is not Slavic coal. It's not Irish coal. It's not Polish coal. It's not 

Italian coal. It's coal."---John Mitchell, President of the UMWA 1898-1908

Around the time that Arnold Miller was becoming nationally known I decided that I would

go to work in the mines as some of my great uncles and others in my extended family had done. I was close to dropping out of school, and working in the mines was all that I could see myself doing. My father, who knew the miner's life, and I had quite an argument about it. The argument ended with me saying arrogantly "I'm going to work in the mines!" and my father saying, "Just stay where you are. I'm going to go find a heavy object and kill you and save the company the trouble." I waited until after my father passed on to get my mining papers.

On April 20, 1914 Colorado National Guard troops opened fire on the Ludlow tent colony in Ludlow, Colorado. Striking mine workers and their families were living in the tent colony during one of the most dramatic and heart-wrenching strikes in U.S. history. At least 19 people, including 12 children and 2 women who were associated with the strikers and the union, died that day at Ludlow. This is a photograph of the Ludlow Massacre memorial.

Nimrod Workman - Forty-Two Years (1976)

Afterword

The "Blue Diamond Mines" song may seem like an odd choice to open this post with, but I believe that it captures a feeling of a place and time and allows me to say something about mine workers' cultures. There are plenty of complaints made by mine workers about the union, but in my experience these are complaints about policies or personalities more than anything else, and they're often made from a place of love and hope. Dissent was baked into the union when it was founded in 1890.

I believe that I owe the UMWA for almost everything that I have today, and I feel good about paying my associate dues every year. How and why I'm paying associate dues instead of retired dues is a long story, but life has its twists and turns. I feel especially good when I can support the Black Lung Movement. I'm thankful every day that I have known so many mine workers, had them as friends and family, joined those picket lines, shared time and food and memories with them and their families. They blessed me with their wisdom and humor, blessings that I have not deserved. Regardless of what you think about coal and energy sources and climate change, I'm sure that you believe that mine workers should receive decent pay and benefits and have secure healthcare and retirement systems. I'm sure that you believe in workplace safety and health. I'm certain that you believe that coal communities and former coal communities should not be abandoned and left to fend for themselves.

Please support those Warrior Met strikers. Please support the miner's rights to a fair standard of working and living, to dignity in retirement and to healthcare. Please support the coal mining and former coal mining communities.

"Solidarity Forever"

History records that the labor anthem "Solidarity Forever" was first published on today's date in 1915. Ralph Chaplin began writing what became "Solidarity Forever" in 1913 while covering the Paint Creek–Cabin Creek Strike, or the Paint Creek Mine War, in West Virginia for a publication issued by the revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World. It was completed two years later in Chicago at the time of a hunger demonstration there and gained its early popularity during a lumber workers' strike in Washington State.

There are many versions of the song, and I think that these different versions most often reflect the divergent opinions of who is singing and who is leading a crowd. The verses that promise a hopeful future in which the working-class takes power and establishes some form of socialism are left out when labor leaders and Democrats are rallying workers for immediate objectives. Leftists might sing one version of the song that is closer to their politics and leave it to another group to sing another version. Workers who join rallies and picketlines today hear the words and often grasp their meaning immediately. But there is more to be said about the song and what it means.

The poem that became "Solidarity Forever" was written at a moment when mine workers and their families in West Virginia were experiencing defeat during a period of prolonged armed struggle that we know today as the West Virginia Mine Wars. One would have had to be outrageously optimistic to have believed at that point that the mine workers' struggles would continue and that eventually something like justice would prevail even for a short time. The song has a healing power to it when all of its verses are sung with honesty, and I have wondered if this healing power and the positive message of what can be attempted comes from the very origins of the song.

I first heard "Solidarity Forever" as a kid when it was played on a mandolin by an old man during a house party. I purchased the album of labor songs done by The Almanac Singers and learned the words to every song on that album as a teenager. I have probably sung the song, in one version or another, hundreds of times on picketlines and at meetings over the years. "Solidarity Forever" has never grown old for me. I especially enjoy watching young people taking in the song and joining in singing it with others. I pray that they don't lose that light and fire in their eyes and in their hearts.

Here is the version by The Almanac Singers that I learned:

Singing Solidarity Forever, Passaic County, 1926

Description
Strikers raise their fists and sing as they march down a street during the Passaic Textile Strike, 1926. One striker wears a military uniform.

American Labor Museum / Botto House National Landmark

Persistent URL: https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3GH9K76

Labor leader Bill Lucy talks MLK and the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike

 

Some things to think about, some things to ponder, some things to do

Friend of Sea Wolf Books recommendation from Bob—

Thomas Bell's novel "Out of This Furnace" (1941) tells the story of several generations

of Slovak immigrants in Pennsylvania. It is not the common and idealized story of immigrants,

but the flesh-and-blood story of people who worked on the railroads and in the steel mills. A

reader can cry and laugh through the book and share the hopes of the steel workers and their

families in the closing chapters. My family were not Slovak immigrants, and they did not work

in the steel mills, but there is so much there from my grandparents' and parents' generations that

I could easily locate something of my family's story there. The book can be raw in sections, but

it is always honest. I reread passages from the book at certain times of the year every year as an act

of memory and of thanking and honoring those who have passed on. The book is one of the most popular published by University of Pittsburgh Press and is used in some college classes. Attempts

have been made to turn it into a film as well.

Available through Sea Wolf Books at: https://bookshop.org/a/87294/9780822952732

Please support the railroad workers and our unions!

 Please support the railroad workers and our unions!

Please read this if you're working over a holiday

I picked this up from Wayne Rubydoo at Forgotten Coalfields of Appalachia. It's true for any holiday Please remember this and please share it.

To all you working today and holidays, Be Careful and don't let this time of year distract you. Just concentrate on going home. If doing a non production maintenance shift again be extra careful and don't slack on safety just to get it done and get out. With these temperature fluctuations and barometric pressure changes be careful going in and out and you surface people be a little extra vigilant around highwalls. The word high equals momentum which equates to smashed. Just be careful. I've spent many a holiday underground being a maintenance person and sometimes alone in the mine. It is easy to let your want to go home to persuade you to take those shortcuts, don't do it. Kind of like the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. Be safe.

Reading R.G. Yoho's "The Nine Lives of Charles E. Lively"

The Nine Lives of Charles E. Lively--The Deadliest Man in the West Virginia-Colorado Col Mine Wars
R.G. Yoho
Burlington, North Carolina: Fox Run Publishing, 2020

167 pp., $19.95 paperback
https://www.foxrunpub.com/

Books about labor history and their authors have their ups and downs. Over the past fifty years in the United States we have seen the field of labor history move from institutional histories of unions and strikes and the biographies or autobiographies of union leaders to making arguments in favor of theories about immigration and how classes formed in the United States. There followed from that very-much-needed scholarship on women, certain crafts and trades, people of color, specific immigrant groups and regions, and the relative strengths and weaknesses of radical workers and their organizations. Labor historians and others then delved into researching and writing about the daily lives of "ordinary" people and people and movements who had been important in their day and who have since been written out of history or forgotten about. Along the way we had quite a few working-class people writing labor history as they knew it. None of these areas of study ever disappeared or were ever pushed aside exactly, but as research went on people began asking different questions about our history and searching for answers.

Labor history's fortunes are tied to the fortunes of the labor movement. When union organizing is on an upswing, more work on class struggles gets written and published. When unions are doing less well, there is less published. Much labor history has been written as a part of  a wider attempt to map a history of the United States that includes everyone. That has meant deconstructing or disassembling aspects of our culture, and that is a continuing project. Getting working-class people on tape or film who were closely involved in their communities has been essential to this. The historians have taken us apart, but they have not yet put us back together with a full understanding of who we are. Much labor history has also been about answering specific questions. Why doesn't the United States have a larger labor movement, mass labor and socialist parties, a more cooperativist society as other countries do? Why are race and gender our largely unspoken and unapproached divided lines, and what does this mean in the daily lives of working-class people? How do working-class identities intersect and where and why do they diverge from one another? What do "race," "class," and "gender" mean in the United States anyway?

Labor historians necessarily write from the histories of their countries and their peoples. You can catch up with what is new and interesting in labor history by going to the Labor and Working Class History Association to start with. There are labor history events on Zoom about every week from one source or another. There are journals, films, music, museums, and lots of books being published that are way too expensive for most working-class people to afford. If you're interested in radical analysis of labor history that you can afford, go to International Publishers and Haymarket Books to start. If you have some cash burning a hole in your pocket, head over to the University of Illinois Press to start.

There are many people who write and present about labor history who are not attached to colleges and universities and who self-publish. There are also many professors who teach at smaller colleges who have devoted themselves to doing local labor histories. Over the past few years there has been quite a bit of interest in the West Virginia Mine Wars, and there are people who live in West Virginia who are uniquely qualified to tell the stories of the Mine Wars. The Mine Wars ran from around 1912 into the early 1920s. This was essentially open warfare between mine workers and their supporters, on the one side, and the coal companies, law enforcement and gun thugs, and politicians who sided with the companies on the other side. It is remarkable to understand that working-class people engaged in prolonged armed struggle in Central Appalachia. It is more remarkable to understand that similar battles were fought in Colorado, parts of the South, Illinois, and many other places all within the last one-hundred and-forty years. These were open battles over workers' rights, safety on the job, higher pay and wage floors, the right to union representation, democratic government, and, in many cases, the right of workers to control or have a say in how coal was going to be mined. Please visit the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum and look at the books and learning sessions they offer to begin learning more. 

R.G. Yoho has written a book about Charles E. Lively, a complex and troubled man who worked for the notorious Baldwin-Felts detective agency. Baldwin-Felts is most often remembered as a union-busting and strike-breaking outfit that had on its payroll men who spied on union organizers and used violence and extra-legal means to achieve their ends and most often got away with what they had done. Really, nothing good can be said about Baldwin-Felts and objectivity is impossible when discussing the agency. Lively was a mine worker who took the side of the anti-union gun thugs. He spied on union miners, infiltrated the union ranks, and committed terrible acts of violence in Colorado and West Virginia, and probably in other states as well. In doing this he was part of a large and nefarious cohort. He and a few others were responsible for the murders of Sid Hatfield, the pro-union sheriff of Matewan, West Virginia, and Ed Chambers, Hatfield's friend and deputy, in Welch, West Virginia on August 1, 1921. Lively never paid for his major crimes, unless we consider his downward-spiral over the years as justice.

These assassinations were carried out in order to revenge the outcome of the Battle of Matewan on May 19, 1920 during which seven Baldwin-Felts detectives were killed. Two miners and Matewan's pro-union mayor were also killed that day, and the number of people wounded has never been determined. The violence in Matewan was one part of class and community conflict in the region as the coal industry sought to take over the state. The killings of Hatfield and Chambers sparked outrage across southern West Virginia and helped lead to a mass armed march by mine workers on Logan County, West Virginia and the Battle of Blair Mountain. Workers had reached their limit and wanted justice and their communities supported them.

Yoho's book is not a reliable labor history. He gets the initials of the United Mine Workers of America wrong and he misses an opportunity to describe the violence that Baldwin-Felts operatives engaged in in Colorado and how one of those operatives was assassinated in Trinidad, Colorado. He gets a story of a lynching in Colorado wrong. The socialists who were so important to mine worker organizing in Colorado and West Virginia get little attention. Yoho uses many newspaper articles as sources that appeared in newspapers far away from West Virginia and Colorado. Mother Jones, often called "The Miner's Angel" for her work in union organizing is mentioned without examination, although she committed serious errors in Colorado and West Virginia. People of color and immigrants who are essential to the story don't get mentioned. Yoho does not take up the fights that mine workers organized to take control of their work and all of the ways the coal operators fought back and insisted on holding the cards.

But Yoho does something else that is remarkable when he follows Lively into what must have been madness and dissolution. Labor historians rarely do this. Yoho is good at questioning motivations and creating a narrative of Lively's fall. He seems to dismiss Lively's anti-communism and reactionary politics as his motivations for betraying others and trying to break the miners' union. He goes deeper and gets as close to Lively's inner self as an author can do from a distance and in a short book. This becomes a good case study of someone who lives at the margins with an outsized temper and a level of alienation that swamps him. We see Lively falling apart over the years and then taking his life as he was hitting rock bottom. This occurred in 1962, or forty-two years after Lively had been one of the team who killed Hatfield and Chambers. It is difficult indeed to find anything redeeming in the life of Charles Lively as R.G. Yoho tells the story, and that helps make this a compelling tale.

This is a book that cries for better editing, less repetition, and less insistence on holding the moral highroad, though I share most of Yoho's sympathies.

If you have not seen John Sayles' film "Matewan" you owe it to yourself to see it. Here is a scene from the film that carries on the legend of Sid Hatfield:

Charles Lively appears in the film here. He is the man who makes "the bad end of the bullet" speech.
                

A Prayer For Workers On Labor Day

Lord God, Master of the Vineyard,

How wonderful that you have invited us

who labor by the sweat of our brow

to be workers in the vineyard

and assist your work

to shape the world around us.

As we seek to respond to this call,

make us attentive to those who seek work

but cannot find it.

Help us listen to the struggles of those

who work hard to provide for their families

but still have trouble making ends meet.

Open our eyes to the struggles of those exploited

and help us speak for just wages and safe conditions,

the freedom to organize, and time for renewal.

For work was made for humankind

and not humankind for work.

Let it not be a vehicle for exploitation

but a radiant expression of our human dignity.

Give all who labor listening hearts

that we may pause from our work

to receive your gift of rest.

Fill us with your Holy Spirit

that you might work through us to let your justice reign.

Amen.

Taken from the The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Labor Network.

Living in Solidarity by Bob Bussel (Northwest Labor Press)

The following article by Bob Bussel comes from the August 17, 2022 issue of The Northwest Labor Press. It lays out in simple terms much of what this blog is about and what we try to communicate. Please subscribe to the paper and catch it here on the Web as well. 

After Richard Trumka died last August, Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne praised the late AFL-CIO president as a man who “lived in solidarity.” Dionne cited Trumka’s admission that “we as a movement have not always done our best to support our brothers and sisters of color” as an example of his commitment to inclusion and his insistence that labor live up to its highest ideals.

The concept of solidarity is the most profound expression of these ideals. 

Looking back in labor history, the Knights of Labor adopted the slogan “an injury to one is the concern of all” to reflect this spirit of mutual obligation and shared responsibility for the well-being of all workers. Written over 100 years ago, “Solidarity Forever” remains the anthem that is still sung at many labor gatherings. On September 19, 1981, I was proud to attend “Solidarity Day,” a demonstration in Washington, D.C. that brought together over 250,000 unionists and allies to protest Ronald Reagan’s labor and social policies. 

“Solidarity is a virtue we neither discuss nor practice enough,” E. J. Dionne declared in his tribute to Trumka. “We hear a lot about compassion and empathy, and certainly need more of both. But solidarity is a deeper commitment, rooted in equality and mutuality.” 

My first lesson in solidarity came early in my career, when the United Auto Workers warmly welcomed me as a young United Farm Workers organizer and showed up time and again on our picket lines. This was a union that had triumphed over the nation’s most powerful corporations. It knew what it meant to “live in solidarity,” and was committed to acting on this belief.

I recently learned about some powerful examples of solidarity in an article on a Starbucks strike in Worcester, Massachusetts. Nurses union members taught chants in English and Spanish to the strikers. A semi from a Teamsters local circled the picket line honking in support. The Carpenters Union, the local NAACP president, and elected officials joined the line. As a USPS driver explained, “I literally just pulled up and grabbed a sign.”

Of course, labor’s record on solidarity has been far from perfect. Many unions practiced policies of racial and gender exclusion, refusing to open their ranks or use their power on behalf of those they deemed unworthy. Too often, our movement has allowed jurisdictional and turf concerns to take precedence over mutual aid and support. However, we have fast been replacing “Solidarity Whenever” with “Solidarity Forever,” as labor has increasingly embraced inclusive policies, and more workers are actively supporting fellow workers who are organizing, striking, and seeking justice.

Living in solidarity is not just a matter of personal integrity; it’s also a social necessity. Solidarity presents a clear alternative to the “I’ve got mine, the heck with you” mentality all too dominant in a culture that values self-interest and individualism over mutual obligation and social sacrifice. And we especially need solidarity to confront the clear and present dangers we currently face: the climate crisis; threats to reproductive rights; and frontal assaults on democracy.

On Labor Day 2022, let’s renew our vows and pledge to “live in solidarity.” Then as now, “an injury to one” must remain “the concern of all.”

Christianity & Labor w/ Matt Bernico from the Magnificast on The Valley Labor Report

There are many theological fundamentals for working-class people here. Please give this a deep listen.
 

Baptist pastor Rev. David Wheeler speaks at a Portland labor rally

 

Warrior Met Bides Time While UMWA Continues to Support the Fight

This union fight in Alabama has been going on for 15 months. At its base, this fight is about two very different ways of seeing the world and deciding whether people or profits are more important. Remaining out on strike for 15 months is a faith journey.
 

Happy Juneteenth Weekend!

 

We are union members and we believe in social justice