Tag: UMWA

UMWA Endorses Ben Salango For W.Va. Governor

The United Mine Workers of America is endorsing Democratic candidate Ben Salango for West Virginia governor. 

According to UMWA President Cecil Roberts, 80 active and retired miners voted unanimously to support Salango on Monday.

Almost five years ago, the UMWA announced a similar endorsement of Salango’s opponent, Gov. Jim Justice.

“Had Gov. Justice been running against Ben Salango, we would’ve endorsed Ben Salango,” Roberts said during a virtual press conference Tuesday afternoon. “We would’ve felt then like we do now, that Ben Salango would’ve made a better governor than the governor we have now.”

Justice was running as a Democrat at the time against Republican Bill Cole. 

Justice, a Greenbrier County billionaire whose family owns several mining operations, announced at a Trump rally in 2017 he was changing political parties. 

Today, Justice-owned companies owe millions in environmental and labor-related fees and lawsuits. That includes roughly $4 million in delinquent debt for safety violations in 2019, according to a report from the Ohio Valley Resource. The Justice family agreed to pay more than $5 million in fines to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration in April.

ProPublica reported in May that the UMWA sued Justice in 2019 after the Justice companies stopped paying for retired miners’ health insurance plans. ProPublica also reports that the governor has paid more than $128 million in legal settlements. 

Justice campaign manager Roman Stauffer said in an emailed statement Tuesday afternoon that the governor “isn’t a politician and won’t engage in partisan politics.”

Throughout Justice’s time as governor, Stauffer said grants that the UMWA Career Center has received through the West Virginia Development Office – including a $369,000 grant in 2020, awarded quarterly – demonstrates Justice’s support for the union.

Roberts said Tuesday endorsing Salango had nothing to do with political parties, adding the UMWA also has endorsed Republican candidates for the 2020 election, due to the candidates’ support of legislation in Congress that will protect miners’ pensions and retiree health care. Such endorsements include U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito and Rep. David McKinley.

“Anybody that lives in West Virginia realizes there’s been a struggle now for 10 years, with bankruptcy after bankruptcy after bankruptcy,” Roberts said. “Workers’ pensions, workers’ health care, workers’ jobs are on the line every time one of those bankruptcies occurs.”

The UMWA announced Tuesday it’s also endorsing Democratic candidate Sam Petsonk for attorney general. Petsonk was a legal intern with the UMWA in the mid-2000s. He’s running against Republican incumbent Patrick Morrisey.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

Mine Safety Agency Should Do More To Protect Coal Miners In The Pandemic, Oversight Office Finds

The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration has not done enough to protect coal miners during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report from an oversight agency released Tuesday.

Through interviews with MSHA officials and union representatives, as well as reviews of state and national policies, the Department of Labor’s Office of the Inspector General concluded that MSHA could do more to track coronavirus cases among coal miners, address a growing backlog of inspections, and mandate safety precautions underground.

Following the March determination that coal mines would be considered “critical infrastructure” and exempt from coronavirus-related shutdowns, MSHA issued voluntary guidelines to protect miners during the pandemic, including measures such as frequent hand-washing, wearing masks and maintaining social distance when possible. But the agency has faced significant pressure to make those guidelines mandatory.

“We’ve been trying to get the Mine Safety and Health Administration to establish regulations, emergency temporary standards, to set up a regulation that everybody has to follow, that is enforceable, instead of us going from mine to mine to mine and trying to work something out,” said United Mine Workers of America spokesperson Phil Smith. “Because at the mines where there is no union, there is no protection. It’s that simple.”

The National Coalition of Black Lung and Respiratory Disease Clinics wrote to MSHA requesting an emergency temporary standard, and a bipartisan group of senators in May filed the COVID-19 Mine Worker Protection Act to require the issuance of such a measure.

MSHA has not yet committed to issuing an emergency temporary standard, the inspector general said.

The inspector general’s report also found that because of the coronavirus, MSHA suspended five categories of enforcement actions and seriously reduced 13 more, including ventilation investigations, non-fatal accident investigations and compliance assistance visits. Regular safety and health inspections, plus 14 other enforcement categories, have continued to operate at full capacity.

The report said those suspensions and reductions were a tradeoff: They limited contact between miners and mine safety inspectors and protected MSHA’s workforce from potential exposure to COVID-19, but they resulted in a backlog and increased the safety risk for miners.

Adding to the backlog was the number of MSHA inspectors who self-identified as being at high risk of contracting the coronavirus. About 100 of MSHA’s 750 inspectors, or 13 percent, have removed themselves from regular inspection duties out of concern for their own health.

In a response to the inspector general’s report included in its appendices, MSHA head David Zatezelo said, “MSHA agrees with OIG recommendations to develop a plan to manage the potential backlog of suspended or reduced activities, once full operations resume, and to monitor COVID-19 outbreaks at mines and to use that information to reevaluate our decision not to issue an emergency temporary standard.”

Some potential coronavirus prevention measures for coal mines include PPE, sanitization and staggered shifts. But these measures are an added expense for mine operators already struggling to remain profitable as the industry contracts.

July 14, 2009: Mine Union Leader Sam Church Dies in TN

Union leader Sam Church died in Bristol, Tennessee, on July 14, 2009, at age 72.

He was a native of Matewan in Mingo County. Both of his grandfathers had been coal miners as had his father—before becoming a barber.

In 1965, Church became a miner in Virginia and joined the United Mine Workers of America. In 1975, UMWA President Arnold Miller named Church to his staff. Church was elected vice-president of the UMWA in 1977 and moved into the presidency in 1979 following Miller’s resignation.

During his three years as head of the UMWA, Church worked to improve mine safety laws and benefits for black lung victims and miners’ widows. In 1981, UMWA members rejected a contract Church had negotiated and went on strike for 72 days. The next year, he was voted out of office in favor of Richard Trumka, who would lead the UMWA for the next 13 years.

After his defeat, Sam Church worked for a coal company in Virginia. Following Church’s death, Trumka said of him, “He was a union man from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.”

UMWA Wants More Coronavirus Protections For Coal Miners

The United Mine Workers of America is asking federal regulators to set uniform, enforceable guidelines to help protect coal miners from contracting COVID-19. 

In a letter dated Tuesday, March 24, UMWA President Cecil Roberts wrote to the Mine Safety and Health Administration requesting the agency issue a “safeguard” or “emergency standard” that would require coal mine operators to take actions to protect miners from the coronavirus. 

Union officials are requesting operators obtain N-95 respirators, set procedures for disinfecting equipment between shifts, provide extra personal protective equipment and create disinfectant strategies for bathhouses and other communal gathering places.

“While these are certainly difficult times for all workers, it is especially challenging for workers who are unable to work from home and have valid concerns about their health and safety and that of their loved ones,” Roberts said in the letter. “Our miners work in close proximity to one another from the time they arrive at the mine site. They get dressed, travel down the elevator together, ride in the same man trip, work in confined spaces, breathe the same air, operate the same equipment, and use the same shower facilities.”

UMWA spokesperson Phil Smith said while some mines are voluntarily taking precautions to protect workers, the efforts are not uniform across the industry. He said many coal miners suffer from impaired lung function due to exposure to coal and silica dust and may be more vulnerable to the coronavirus. In addition, he said many mines and miners are located in rural communities, which have less access to medical care and have faced high levels of hospital closures over the past decade. 

“There’s no consistency out there,” Smith said in a phone interview. “Even among the same companies [and] mines operated by the same companies. There’s certainly no consistency with mines where we do not represent the workers.”

If MSHA issues an “emergency standard” requiring mine operators to implement coronavirus precautionary measures,  mine inspectors could issue citations if operators are found out of compliance. 

A spokesperson for the agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

January 17, 1947: Labor Lawyer Harold Houston Dies in Florida

Labor lawyer Harold Houston died in Florida on January 17, 1947, at age 74. When he was young, his parents moved from Ohio to Jackson County and then to Charleston.

In 1901, after getting a law degree from West Virginia University, Houston opened a legal practice in Parkersburg.

By 1912, he’d returned to Charleston and soon became chief attorney and counsel for most of the state’s major labor organizations. Among his clients were striking coal miners, Sid Hatfield and others accused of murder in the Matewan Massacre, and United Mine Workers of America leaders charged with treason following the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain.

After the treason trials, Houston was fired as UMWA counsel by national president John L. Lewis. In 1931, Houston helped Frank Keeney organize the West Virginia Mine Workers Union—which briefly competed with the UMWA. Houston also ran for local, state, and federal offices on the Socialist ticket.

In later years, he was involved in an automobile dealership and a real estate addition in the Spring Hill section of South Charleston that bears his name. He eventually retired to Lake Worth, Florida.

UMWA’s Cecil Roberts Talks Climate Change Ahead of 2020 Election

As Democratic 2020 presidential candidates embrace sweeping climate proposals like the Green New Deal to move the U.S. away from fossil fuels, United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts told a crowd of reporters and miners gathered in D.C. that those policies could further harm an already struggling coal industry. 

Roberts spoke frankly Wednesday morning at the National Press Club about the struggles coal miners across Appalachia face as the industry contracts. He also talked about the challenges his union has faced in Washington, D.C., to get legislation passed that protects healthcare and pension benefits. 

“Everybody wants to get their picture taken with a coal miner that’s running for office. Isn’t that amazing?” Roberts said. “But they don’t want anything to do with us when they get in office.”

Most 2020 Democratric presidential candidates have offered specific policies aimed at helping miners during an energy transition. They include things like creating millions of renewable energy jobs and offering financial assistance to displaced miners. 

Roberts is skeptical.

“I just can’t make that work in my mind that somehow, somebody can be president, go to Congress and say, ‘We’re going to manufacture solar panels here. They’ve got to be union jobs, or they can’t exist, and they’ve got to pay what coal miners make,’ ” he said. “Not gonna happen.”

His remarks came hours ahead of a scheduled seven-hour CNN town hall on climate change. 

Roberts pointed to Congress’s long history of inaction in passing laws that protect coal miners. The first major coal mining reform bill, the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, was passed after the Farmington Mine disaster in 1968 that killed 78 miners. The law has been updated twice, in 1977 and 2006.

He applauded candidates who have reached out to the UMWA about climate change legislation and said most, if not all, candidates who the union approached to visit an underground coal mine have accepted or expressed interest. But he also voiced concern about the limits of governing, especially in Congress. 

“We want our pension plan saved. We want our healthcare plan saved,” Roberts said. “And if you can’t do that, and it’s been 10 years, how do you think we’re going to believe that you’re going to be able to give us a just transition from the coal industry to some other employment?”

Roberts added that doesn’t mean he wants the conversation to stop. 

“We come today to be part of this conversation, not about people talking about us, but we want to talk with everybody,” he said. 

The long-time union leader also said the federal government should invest more in technologies to remove carbon from coal-fired power plants, because while coal plants are closing in the U.S., other countries continue to build them. 

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