United Mine Workers of America

The United Mine Workers of America (UMW or UMWA) is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the United States and Canada. Although its main focus has always been on workers and their rights, the UMW of today also advocates for better roads, schools, and universal health care.

The UMW was founded in Columbus, Ohio, on January 25, 1890, with the merger of two old labor groups, the Knights of Labor Trade Assembly No. 135 and the National Progressive Miners Union. Adopting the model of the union was initially established as a three-pronged labor tool: to develop mine safety; to improve mine workers' independence from the mine owners and the company store; and to provide miners with collective bargaining power.

After passage of the National Recovery Act in 1933 during the Great Depression, organizers spread throughout the United States to organize all coal miners into labor unions. Under the powerful leadership of John L. Lewis, the UMW broke with the American Federation of Labor and set up its own federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Its organizers fanned out to organize major industries, including automobiles, steel, electrical equipment, rubber, paint and chemical, and fought a series of battles with the AFL. The UMW grew to 800,000 members and was an element in the New Deal coalition supporting Democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt. Lewis broke with Roosevelt in 1940 and left the CIO, leaving the UMW increasingly isolated in the labor movement. During World War II the UMW was involved in a series of major strikes and threatened walkouts that angered public opinion and energized pro-business opponents. After the war, the UMW concentrated on gaining large increases in wages, medical services and retirement benefits for its shrinking membership, which was contending with changes in technology and declining mines in the East.

Coal mining

Development of the Union

The UMW was founded at Columbus City Hall in Columbus, Ohio, on January 25, 1890, by the merger of two earlier groups, the Knights of Labor Trade Assembly No. 135 and the National Progressive Miners Union. It was modeled after the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The Union's emergence in the 1890s was the culmination of decades of effort to organize mine workers and people in adjacent occupations into a single, effective negotiating unit.

At the time coal, was one of the most highly sought natural resources, as it was widely used to heat homes and to power machines in industries. The coal mines were a competitive and dangerous place to work. With the owners imposing reduced wages on a regular basis,

Throughout 1887–1888, many joint conferences were held to help iron out the problems that the two groups were having. Many leaders of each groups began questioning the morals of the other union. One leader, William T. Lewis, thought there needed to be more unity within the union, and that competition for members between the two groups was not accomplishing anything. As a result of taking this position, he was replaced by John B. Rae as president of the NTA #135. This removal did not stop Lewis however; he got many people together who had been also thrown out of the Knights of Labor for trying to belong to both parties at once, along with the National Federation, and created the National Progressive Union of Miners and Mine Laborers (NPU).

Although the goal of the NPU in 1888 was ostensibly to create unity between the miners, it instead drew a stronger line distinguishing members of the NPU against those of the NTA #135. Because of the rivalry, miners of one labor union would not support the strikes of another, and many strikes failed. In December 1889, the president of the NPU set up a joint conference for all miners. John McBride, the president of NPU, suggested that the Knights of Labor should join the NPU to form a stronger union. John B. Rae reluctantly agreed and decided that the merged groups would meet on January 22, 1890.</blockquote>

The UMWA constitution listed eleven points as the union's goals:

Payment of a salary commensurate with the dangerous work conditions. This was one of the most important points of the constitution.
Payment to be made fairly in legal tender, not with company scrip.
Provide safe working conditions, with operators to use the latest technologies in order to preserve the lives and health of workers.
Provide better ventilation systems to decrease black lung disease, and better drainage systems.
Enforce safety laws and make it illegal for mines to have inadequate roof supports, or contaminated air and water in the mines.
Limit regular hours to an eight-hour work day.
End child labor, and strictly enforce the child labor law.
Have accurate scales to weigh the coal products, so workers could be paid fairly. Many operators had altered scales that showed a lighter weight of coal than actually produced, resulting in underpayment to workers. Miners were paid per pound of coal that they produced.
Payment should be made in legal tender.
Establish unbiased public police forces in the mine areas that were not controlled by the operators. Many operators hired private police, who were used to harass the mine workers and impose company power. In company towns, the operators owned all the houses and controlled the police force; they could arbitrarily evict workers and arrest them unjustly.
The workers reserved the right to strike, but would work with operators to reach reasonable conclusions to negotiations.

After resigning as head of the CIO in 1941, he took the Mine Workers out of the CIO in 1942 and in 1944 took the union into the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Lewis was a Republican, but he played a major role in helping Franklin D. Roosevelt win re-election with a landslide in 1936, but as an isolationist supported by Communist elements in the CIO, Lewis broke with Roosevelt in 1940 on anti-Nazi foreign policy. (Following the 1939 German-Soviet pact of nonaggression, the Comintern had instructed communist parties in the West to oppose any support for nations at war with Nazi Germany.)

Lewis was an effective strike leader who gained high wages for his membership while suppressing his opponents, including the United States government. He was one of the most controversial and innovative leaders in the history of labor, gaining credit for building the industrial unions of the CIO into a political and economic powerhouse to rival the AFL, yet was widely criticized as he called nationwide coal strikes damaging the American economy in the middle of World War II. Coal miners for 40 years hailed him as the benevolent dictator who brought high wages, pensions and medical benefits.

Achievements

An eight-hour work day was gained in 1898. The first ideas of this demand were outlined in point six of the constitution.
The union achieved collective bargaining rights in 1933.

List of strikes

The union's history has numerous examples of strikes in which members and their supporters clashed with company-hired strikebreakers and government forces. The most notable include:

1890s

Morewood massacre – April 3, 1891, in Morewood, Pennsylvania. A crowd of mostly immigrant strikers were fired on by deputized members of the 10th Regiment of the National Guard. At least ten strikers were killed and dozens injured.
Bituminous Coal Miners' Strike of 1894 – April 21, 1894. This nationwide strike was called when the union was hardly four years old. Many of the workers salaries had been cut by 30%
1908 Alabama coal strike – June–August 1908. Notable because the 18,000 UMWA-organized strikers, more than half of those working in the Birmingham District, were racially integrated. That fact helped galvanize political opposition to the strikers in the segregated state. The governor used the Alabama State Militia to end the work stoppage. The union adopted racial segregation of workers in Alabama in order to reduce the political threat to the organization.
Westmoreland County Coal Strike – 1910–1911, a 16-month coal strike in Pennsylvania led largely by Slovak immigrant miners, this strike involved 15,000 coal miners. Sixteen people were killed during the strike, nearly all of them striking miners or members of their families.
Colorado Coalfield War – September 1913–December 1914. A frequently violent strike against the John D. Rockefeller Jr.-Colorado Fuel and Iron company. Many strikers and opposition were killed before the violent reached a peak following the April 20, 1914 Ludlow Massacre. An estimated 20 people, including women and children, were killed by armed police, hired guns, and Colorado National Guardsmen who broke up a tent colony formed by families of miners who had been evicted from company-owned housing. The strike was partially led by John R. Lawson, a UMWA organizer and saw the participation of famed activist Mother Jones. The UMWA purchased part of Ludlow site and constructed the Ludlow Monument in commemoration of those who died.
Hartford coal mine riot – July 1914. The surface plant of the Prairie Creek coal mine was destroyed, and two non-union miners murdered by union miners and sympathizers. The mine owners sued the local and national organizations of the United Mine Workers Union. The national UMWA was found not complicit, but the local was judged culpable of encouraging the rioters, and made to pay US$2.1 million.

thumb|upright|

United Mine Workers coal strike of 1919 – November 1, 1919. Some 400,000 members of the United Mine Workers went on strike on November 1, 1919, although Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer had invoked the Lever Act, a wartime measure criminalizing interference with the production or transportation of necessities, and obtained an injunction against the strike on October 31. The coal operators smeared the strikers with charges that Russian communist leaders Lenin and Trotsky had ordered the strike and were financing it, and some of the press repeated those claims.
Matewan, West Virginia – May 19, 1920. 12 men were killed in a gunfight between town residents and the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency, hired by mine owners. Director John Sayles directed a feature film, Matewan, based on these events.
The 'Redneck War' – 1920–21. Generally viewed as beginning with the Matewan Massacre, this conflict involved the struggle to unionize the southwestern area of West Virginia. It led to the march of 10,000 armed miners on the county seat at Logan. In the Battle of Blair Mountain, miners fought state militia, local police, and mine guards. These events are depicted in the novels Storming Heaven (1987) by Denise Giardina and Blair Mountain (2005) by Jonathan Lynn.
1920 Alabama coal strike, a lengthy, violent, expensive and fruitless attempt to achieve union recognition in the coal mines around Birmingham left 16 men dead; one black man was lynched.
1922 UMW General coal strike, On April 1, 1922, 610,000 mine workers struck nationwide, shutting down the majority of operations within the country.
Herrin massacre occurred in June 1922 in Herrin, Illinois. 19 strikebreakers and 3 union miners were killed in mob action between June 21–22, 1922.

1922–1925 Nova Scotia strikes

thumb|upright|WPA poster

In the 1920s, about 12,000 Nova Scotia miners were represented by the UMWA. These workers lived in very difficult economic circumstances in company towns. The Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation, also known as the British Empire Steel Corporation, or BESCO, controlled most coal mines and every steel mill in the province.

In the 1970s and after

Diana Baldwin and Anita Cherry, hired as miners in 1973, are believed to have been the first women to work in an underground coal mine in the United States. They were the first female members of UMWA to work inside a mine. Cherry and Baldwin were hired by the Beth-Elkhorn Coal Company in Jenkins, Kentucky. However, more pervasive were hiring practices discriminatory against women. The superstition that a woman even entering a mine was bad luck and resulted in disaster was pervasive among male miners.

In 1978 a discrimination complaint was filed by the Coal Employment Project, a women's advocacy organization, against 153 coal companies. This action was based upon Executive Order 11246 signed in 1965 by U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, which bars sex discrimination by companies with federal contracts. The complaint called for the hiring of one woman for every three inexperienced men until women constituted 20 percent of the workforce. This legal strategy was successful. Almost 3,000 women were hired by the close of 1979 as underground miners.

A general decline in union effectiveness characterized the 1970s and 1980s, leading to new kinds of activism, particularly in the late 1970s. Workers saw their unions back down in the face of aggressive management.

Other factors contributed to the decline in unionism generally and UMW specifically. The coal industry was not prepared economically to deal with such a drop in demand for coal. Demand for coal was very high during World War II, but decreased dramatically after the war, in part due to competition from other energy sources. In efforts to improve air quality, municipal governments started to ban the use of coal as household fuel. The end of wartime price controls introduced competition to produce cheaper coal, putting pressure on wages. The UMW leadership was part of the driving force to change the way workers were organized, and the UMW was one of the charter members when the new Congress of Industrial Organizations was formed in 1935. However, the AFL leadership did not agree with the philosophy of industrial unionization, and the UMW and nine other unions that had formed the CIO were kicked out of the AFL in 1937.

In 1942, the UMW chose to leave the CIO, and, for the next five years, were an independent union. In 1947, the UMW once again joined the AFL, but the remarriage was a short one, as the UMW was forced out of the AFL in 1948, and at that point, became the largest non-affiliated union in the United States.

In 1982, Richard Trumka was elected the leader of the UMW. Trumka spent the 1980s healing the rift between the UMW and the now-conjoined AFL–CIO (which was created in 1955 with the merger of the AFL and the CIO). In 1989, the UMW was again taken into the fold of the large union umbrella. He finished second in the riding of Pincher Creek.

The biggest conflict between the UMW and the government was while Franklin Roosevelt was president of the United States and John L. Lewis was president of the UMW. Originally, the two worked together well, but, after the 1937 strike of United Automobile Workers against General Motors, Lewis stopped trusting Roosevelt, claiming that Roosevelt had gone back on his word. This conflict led Lewis to resign as CIO president. Roosevelt repeatedly won large majorities of the union votes, even in 1940 when Lewis took an isolationist position on Europe, as demanded by far-left union elements. Lewis denounced Roosevelt as a power-hungry war monger, and endorsed Republican Wendell Willkie.

The tension between the two leaders escalated during World War II. Roosevelt in 1943 was outraged when Lewis threatened a major strike to end anthracite coal production needed by the war effort. He threatened government intervention and Lewis retreated.

The UMW represents West Virginia coal miners and endorsed Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) in the 2018 United States Senate election in West Virginia. In 2021 the union urged him to revisit his opposition to President Biden's Build Back Better Plan, noting that the bill includes an extension of a fund that provides benefits to coal miners suffering from black lung disease, which expires at the end of the year. The UMWA also touted tax incentives that encourage manufacturers to build facilities in coalfields that would employ thousands of miners who lost their jobs.

Recent elections

In 2008 the UMWA supported Barack Obama as the best candidate to help achieve more rights for the mine workers.

In 2012, the UMWA National COMPAC Council did not make an endorsement in the election for President of the United States, citing "Neither candidate has yet demonstrated that he will be on the side of UMWA members and their families as president."

In 2014, the UMWA endorsed Kentucky Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes for U.S. Senate.

In 2023, the UMWA endorsed Democrat Andy Beshear for the 2023 Kentucky gubernatorial election.

Leadership

Presidents

John B. Rae – 1890–1892
John McBride – 1892–1895
Phil Penna – 1895–1896
Michael Ratchford – 1897–1898
John Mitchell – 1898–1907
Thomas Lewis – 1908–1910
John White – 1911–1917
Frank Hayes – 1917–1920
John L. Lewis – 1920–1960
Thomas Kennedy – 1960–1963
W. A. "Tony" Boyle – 1963–1972
Arnold Miller – 1972–1979
Sam Church – 1979–1982
Richard Trumka – 1982–1995
Cecil Roberts – 1995–present

Vice Presidents

:1890: William H. Turner

:1891: Phil Penna

:1895: Cameron Miller

:1897: John Kane

:1898: John Mitchell

:1899: Thomas W. Davis

:1900: Thomas Lewis

:1908: John White

:1910: Frank Hayes

:1917: John L. Lewis

:1920: Philip Murray

:1942: John O'Leary

:1947: Thomas Kennedy

:1960: W. A. Boyle

:1963: Raymond Lewis

:1965: George J. Titler

:1972: Mike Trbovich

:1977: Sam Church

:1980: Wilbert Killion

:1982: Cecil Roberts

:1995: Post divided

Secretary-Treasurers

:1890: Robert Watchorn

:1891: Patrick McBryde

30 – Eastern Kentucky
31 – Northern West Virginia

References

External links

Remember Virden: documentary on the mine wars in Illinois
West Virginia's Mine Wars
Burning Up People to Make Electricity, The Atlantic, July 1974
Mary Harris ‘Mother' Jones, “Speech at a Public Meeting on the Steps of the State Capitol, Charleston, West Virginia,” 15 August 1912 Voices of Democracy, West Virginia Mining and the Conflict of 1912
The Pinkerton Labor Spy, Chapters XIX, XX, and XXI (Colorado Labor Wars, 1903–04)