The bosses at P&M and its parent company Chevron thought they would be able to force 12-hour shifts down the throats of the miners. They thought they could get away with undercutting the health-care coverage won by Navajo miners. But those who believe the UMWA is on its last legs got a rude awakening. They didn't count on the willingness of the ranks of the mine workers to put up a tenacious fight, reach out for broader working-class support, and get it.

In grim contrast, a reminder of what happens when health and safety and other social rights are held hostage to the employers' profit drive was the recent fire and explosion at the Willow Creek mine in Helper, Utah, which killed two young miners and injured eight, as well as the death of a worker at the Black Butte mine near Rock Springs, Wyoming. Both mines are nonunion. That fact speaks volumes about why the union is a life-and-death question for coal miners and millions of other working people.

The miners in New Mexico and Wyoming point out that they could not have beat back the company without the labor solidarity they received during the strike. They won support from sister UMWA locals in the West. And UMWA miners at a P&M mine in Alabama wore red armbands to work and took off work on two miners' "memorial" days in solidarity with their brothers and sisters on strike.

The miners traveled to California and successfully appealed for support from oil workers at Chevron. The unionists from the two striking locals joined forces in a march and rally in Denver at P&M headquarters, which won broader working-class support.

The Women's Auxiliary and Miners' Backbone, the strikers' two auxiliary organizations, played a key role--both in the militancy they added on the picket lines and in garnering solidarity for the strikes far beyond the communities the strikes took place in.

These victories drew on the power of the May 17 march in Washington where 8,000 union retirees, active UMWA miners, high school youth, and other supporters rallied to defend cradle-to-grave health care, which is under concerted attack by the employers.

The strike victories in the West, like the march on Washington, are further expressions of the emerging social movement of miners in the U.S. coalfields. The UMWA is beginning to take initiatives in the eastern coalfields to organize nonunion contract miners at union mines as well as organize nonunion underground miners.

The miners who just won the strikes correctly point out that now they must turn to support the UMWA members whose contracts expire at the end of August at four Peabody mines. Other working people should follow their example. As the UMWA fighters point out, that course of struggle is the road to the whole labor movement becoming stronger.  
 
 
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