The St. Paul meeting will feature a report back from Ben Miller, organizer and field agent for the Lakes and Plains Regional Council of the Carpenters and Joiners union. Miller visited Utah at the end of January to get a firsthand feel for the four-and-a-half-month union-organizing struggle of the Co-Op coal miners.

In an interview with the Militant, Miller said that several trade unionists met in St. Paul, Minnesota, in early January to discuss organizing solidarity with the Utah strikers. “The group decided to send someone to Huntington, Utah,” he said. “Because I have worked in the coal mines I was asked to go.” Miller is from the coalfields in southwest Virginia. His father was a charter member of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) for 55 years and worked 33 years in an underground coal mine. In the late 1960s Miller worked for three years at the Moss #3 D underground mine in Virginia owned by the Pittston Coal Company.

“We moved pretty quickly and gathered a token $500 in funds from UFCW Local 789 and others,” Miller said. “We also got 100 signatures from three different Carpenters locals on petitions supporting the coal strikers. I took these to Utah to give to the miners.”

Miller arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah, and was picked up at the airport by Dallas Wolf, one of the four UMWA organizers assigned to work on the strike against CW Mining, also known as Co-Op.

During the two days he spent in Utah, Miller attended a leadership committee meeting and a general membership gathering of the Co-Op strikers. Commenting on these meetings, Miller said, “I was impressed with the effectiveness of the UMWA organizers, the leadership committee and the general membership meeting. Before I went to Utah, I read everything I could get on the strike. I found a very determined leadership. There is a committee in place that is on a mission with clearly defined goals. They have a good number of events scheduled that they will be speaking at to get support.”

Miller videotaped interviews with Co-Op miners that he took back to Minnesota to show at the February 6 benefit. He will also use them to gain broader support for the strike in the Midwest. The miners reported that they are sending Miller a CD with the speech that Jesus Salazar gave at the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride kickoff rally held in Salt Lake City September 25. Miller plans to play the CD at the St. Paul benefit, he said.

“You could look at this as a glaring example of abuse of a few isolated workers,” Miller said about the Utah miners’ fight. “I found a membership that is not a victimized group. They all want the same thing, they are committed to the cause to make life better for the miners and their families.”

All 75 workers at the Co-Op mine, most of them Mexican immigrants, were fired September 22 for protesting unsafe practices by the bosses on the job, defending co-workers the company victimized for such conduct, and for trying to organize themselves into the UMWA. With the union’s help, they have since organized an unfair labor practices strike and have been picketing the mine every day.

The miners told Miller as he was leaving that they want a report on the February 6 benefit, which they will present to participants at the February 7 Solidarity Day activities in Huntington.

In response to a letter signed by Robert Butero, UMWA Region IV director, several UMWA locals are planning on sending delegations. “We are asking each UMWA District 22 local union to send members to the rally, if at all possible,” the letter states. “Please ask your members to participate and become active and to show support by attending this rally. We think it is important to show UMWA solidarity with the Co-Op Miners.”

Miners report that UMWA members from Trinidad and Craig, Colorado; Kayenta, Arizona; Gallup, New Mexico; and Utah will be attending.

These actions are part of a growing solidarity movement nationwide with this UMWA-organizing fight. Strikers report that two Co-Op miners will be traveling to Boston, Massachusetts, March 8 for a weeklong tour. The tour is being organized by Massachusetts Jobs With Justice. The Utah miners will speak at union meetings in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Garment workers who are members of UNITE Local 102G at North Star Glove in Tacoma, Washington, sent $49 and a solidarity message written in three languages—Vietnamese, Spanish, and English—and signed by 90 percent of the workforce. Donations and messages of support were collected by workers in three meatpacking plants in the Washington, D.C., area. They included a message of solidarity signed by 40 members of UFCW Local 27 at the Smithfield plant there, sent along with a $100 check and cover note signed by local president Buddy Mays.

On February 3, strikers Bill Estrada and Ana María Sánchez will speak at a meeting organized by students at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

The UMWA and the Salt Lake Co-Op Miners Solidarity Committee are jointly organizing an information picket in front of a Kingston family business in Salt Lake February 21.

The Co-Op mine is owned by the wealthy polygamous Kingston family. The Kingston clan, also known as the Latter Day Church of Christ, includes an estimated 1,200 members. The secretive group has amassed a $150 million business empire in six western states, running Utah companies that include pawnshops, restaurant supply stores, and dairies. In addition to the family’s notoriety for superexploitation of employees in their businesses, several prominent members of this clan have been recently convicted for incest and other abuse of young female members of the family.

On January 26, Jeremy Ortell Kingston, a member of the Kingston family, was sentenced to a year in prison for committing incest with his 15-year-old cousin. “Before sentencing,” reported the January 27 Salt Lake Tribune, “Kingston apologized profusely, said he accepted responsibility for committing incest and begged 3rd District Judge Michael Burton to allow him to remain free to work and support his family. The victim, Lu Ann Kingston, now 24, said only jail time would send a message to the defendant and other members of the powerful and secretive Kingston clan. ‘Otherwise, Jeremy and the clan will continue to break the law,’ Lu Ann Kingston said. ‘They will continue to marry off child brides.’”

David Ferguson from Seattle and Janice Lynn from Washington, D.C., contributed to this article.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home