Workers are also reacting to the slashing of workers' compensation and the denial of applications for relief by miners suffering from black lung, a preventable disease that remains the top killer of miners. As miners' benefits are eroded, medical clinics in the coalfields are forced to cut staff or close their doors, affecting entire communities. At the same time many farmers in these rural areas are facing the squeeze of dropping commodity prices and lack of government relief for natural disasters. These are all factors in the shifting mood in the mining regions.

One of the clearest sign of the bubbling resistance is the round of five rallies in September in which thousands of retired and working miners, organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), turned out to defend lifetime health care. These meetings were a response to several federal court decisions siding with coal companies that have stopped paying into the 1992 Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act (Coal Act) — rulings that threaten the coverage of some 70,000 retired miners and their families.

In the last year, miners have struck against Jeddo in the eastern Pennsylvania anthracite region, Freeman United in central Illinois, and Deserado in Rangley, Colorado. A central issue in all three fights was lifetime health care and pensions paid by the coal bosses. On September 28, miners at the Maple Creek Mine in Footedale, Pennsylvania walked off the job in a two-day strike, following months of tensions underground over unsafe working conditions, including dangerously high levels of explosive coal dust. In April, the bosses at the Green Pond No. 9 mine in western Kentucky announced they were eliminating medical insurance, prompting the 36 miners there to carry out a successful UMWA organizing drive.

Through hard-fought strike battles in the 1940s, the UMWA laid the basis for what are among the most comprehensive health benefits in U.S. industry.

In 1969, tens of thousands of miners struck to demand safer working conditions and compensation for black lung disease. This marked the beginning of the Miners for Democracy movement, in which miners confronted the UMWA's corrupt leadership gang around union president Anthony Boyle and made substantial gains in democratizing the union. Miners pushed back attempts to cut into health benefits through the 111-day national coal strike in 1977-78 and the strike against Pittston Coal Group a decade ago. At each turning point, tens of thousands of miners mobilized through strikes and rallies, drawing in broader layers of workers and others to push back the bosses' attacks.

The coal operators have succeeded in weakening the UMWA over the last decade through successive giveback contracts and shifting production to nonunion mines where conditions are often worse and they are able to squeeze more out of the workers. The assault by the mine owners is part of a broader offensive by the capitalist employers and their government against health and safety, unionization, and the very humanity of the working class.

Universal cradle-to-grave health care is an important social issue for all working people. The fight beginning to brew in the coalfields to defend this gain is a life-and-death question for the UMWA. The union officials are under pressure to wage a fight to maintain this conquest. So far their campaign has centered on lobbying capitalist politicians in government. But it will take more than lobbying to stop the coal bosses' drive to break the miners' union. Cecil Roberts, president of the UMWA, spoke at each of the rallies in defense of the Coal Act, threatening to call a mass demonstration in Washington, D.C., early next year to defend lifetime health coverage. Many retirees, survivors, and active miners would wholeheartedly support such a call.

The stakes in this fight affect all working people, and the labor movement should go all out to respond to the initiatives taken by coal miners to defend the important gains they have conquered.  
 
 
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