1100 Mine Workers on Strike in Alabama

It should be said that this is what we have been seeing for decades. The promise of sharing the profits when the company makes money from speculators that buy up companies and then reneging.  Top AFL-CIO bureaucrats like AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler heading down to the picket line to "stand in solidarity" and walk the picket line is more of the same toothless response from those in possession of the potentially powerful AFL-CIO apparatus and it will not be seen as a threat to the mine bosses.  Shuler is looking to replace Trumka as head of the AFL-CIO so we'll see a lot of photo ops with her in the coming period. Also, pressuring investors and leafleting Manhattan enclaves where they reside will not either. This strategy was used during the Hormel strike under the influence of Ray Rogers and his corporate campaigns before the leaders of the UFCW international pulled strike sanction and replaced local P9's leadership with a more compliant group.

We have seen there is a strong union mood in Alabama and the country. The union vote at the Amazon plant in Bessemer was not not because the workers are anti-union. It was lost because the workers feared the bosses' power in response to a "yes" vote and a weak response to it from the heads of organized labor. In Kentucky in the past period as teachers and parents fought the right wing state government there were also strikes in auto and protests in mining where miners blocked a rail line from the mine. The trade union leadership refused to unite these struggles or the working class communities of Kentucky in the east and west and instead openly attacked the more militant parents and teachers. (search the Kentucky or education labels on the right of this blog).

This strike can be won as can the strike of auto-workers in Dublin West Virginia but it will be won through mobilizing workers in our workplaces and communities not by pressuring or attempting to embarrass billionaire investors or by a visit from a high ranking labor official for a day or two.  The AFL-CIO strategy of leaving strikes in isolation, one local or one workplace fighting what are global corporations alone is the cause of our defeats over the past period, not any lack of courage or heroism from the rank and file union members. But we can't stay on picket lines forever. The mine bosses are not threatened by a visit from Liz Shuler, they've learned through decades of such visits what it means. The bosses are not afraid of the trade union hierarchy. Richard Mellor

Warrior Met forces 1,100 Mine Workers in Alabama into long strike

 This post is reprinted from People's World.

BROOKWOOD, Ala. (PAI)—Some 1,100 Mine Workers and their allies are standing strong against corporate refusal to make them whole as the strike the Warrior Met coal mining firm in Alabama forced them to call passed the 10-week mark in mid-June.

“We’ll be here one day longer than y’all can stand!” the union tweeted on June 15, accompanying a video from the hashtags #warriormetcoalaintgotnosoul and #UnitedWeStand.

But the workers took their fight beyond the mine itself. On June 22, led by union President Cecil Roberts, they descended on the Manhattan offices of the hedge funds who finance and back Warrior Met—and who reap the profits.

The miners, labor, and community supporters will leaflet in front of Manhattan office buildings that house BlackRock Fund Advisors, Inc., State Street Global Advisors, and Renaissance Technologies. Stuart Applebaum, President of the Retail, Wholesale, Department Store Workers Union and Sara Nelson, Association of Flight Attendants president, are scheduled to picket, too, UMWA Legislative Director Phil Smith reported.

“These hedge funds are among several entities that invested in Warrior Met five years ago when the company emerged from bankruptcy,” Roberts said. “But they insisted on dramatic sacrifices from the workers to the tune of $1.1 billion. The company has enjoyed revenues amounting to another $3.4 billion since then, much of which flowed into these funds’ accounts. It’s time to share that wealth with the people who created it – the workers.”

Warrior Met, which emerged from the ruins of bankrupt Jim Walter Energy several years ago, is now profitable but forced the workers at its mines to walk. A lot of its profits came from the first, post-bankruptcy, contract it forced on workers, which included $6-per-hour pay cuts, to $22, among other givebacks.

At the time, company bosses promised the workers would be made whole once Warrior Met made money. Now it’s making money, and bosses don’t want to make the workers whole. That’s forced the UMWA members into the union’s first strike in Alabama in 40 years, after the old contract expired on April 1.

Company refusal to keep its word is important for workers anywhere, but especially in northern Alabama, which had a prior history of union solidarity and strength, an exception in the otherwise union-hating South.

While talks are ongoing, they’re not getting very far, so UMWA has reached out for both community support and labor solidarity.

Several unions, notably the United Food and Commercial Workers, sent checks to the strike fund run by the four UMWA locals which represent workers at Warrior Met‘s two mines, its central shop, and its processing plant.

The fund is not only paying miners forced to strike but bought health care coverage for them, too—an important point for coal miners exposed to the dangers of black lung disease.

And union leaders, including AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler and AFA-CWA President Sara Nelson—the two women widely assumed to be leading contenders to succeed Richard Trumka atop the labor federation when he steps down—have traveled to Brookwood, Ala., the firm’s center, to stand in solidarity, encourage the miners and march on picket lines.

“Instead of rewarding the sacrifices and work of the miners, Warrior Met is seeking even further sacrifices from them, while demonstrating perhaps some of the worst labor-management relations we’ve seen in this industry since the days of the company town and company store,” Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts said when the forced strike began.

“We have always been ready to reach a fair agreement that recognizes the sacrifices our members and their families made to keep this company alive. At this point, Warrior Met is not….Despite Warrior Met’s apparent appetite for this conflict, we will prevail.”