Blue Diamond Coal Company is trying to keep news of the accidents under wraps. And despite the usual rush to report any “violence” that can be pinned on the striking miners, no news media anywhere in the state have reported Blue Diamond’s violence in the mine.

The strikers say the accidents bolster their assertion that they are fighting for their lives by demanding a United Mine Workers contract with a union-controlled safety committee.

The wages for the eighty scabs now crossing the picket line are up around union scale. But unsafe working conditions are the issue that has prompted 129 miners to stay on the picket line for twenty-seven months.

After refusing to even negotiate with the union for more than a year, Blue Diamond suddenly announced last May that it had signed a contract with the “Justus Employees Association.” The contract with the scab union did not include a safety committee with the power to shut the mine. But it did include a no-strike clause.

The UMWA appealed to the National Labor Relations Board, charging that the company had set up and continues to dominate the JEA.

Before the hearing [on the UMWA charges], strikers will mark the first anniversary of the brutal state police assault here . On October 17, 1977, more than 100 people were arrested and several seriously injured when cops attacked a mobilization of strikers and supporters who were demanding that Blue Diamond stop running scabs.  
 
October 19, 1953
Aided and abetted by the capitalist-controlled press, the courts, the National Labor Relations Board and the city cops, the red-baiting owners of Hearns department stores [in New York] have done everything they could to break the strike their employees started last May 14.

All this did not bring one cry of protest from the major party candidates [for mayor], although they were in public office and could have used their influence to aid the strikers.

Halley, candidate of the Liberal Party, likewise ignored the plight of the strikers, although he held the powerful post of President of the City Council.

Wagner, President of the Borough of Manhattan, and now Tammany’s choice for mayor, didn’t raise his voice until he began shopping around for votes.

You would think it would take too much gall for one of the major party candidates to crawl to the Hearn strikers for votes. But Wagner has done just that.

In a letter to the strikers, he winds up saying, “…and I want to assure you I will do anything I can to have the situation settled.” This is after two injunctions have already been served on the strikers, one banning mass picketing and the other limiting pickets to three at each entrance.

The strikers do not seem to be impressed by Wagner’s campaign promises. One worker writing to the union paper quotes a friend: “At election time politicians’ promises aren’t worth a tinker’s damn. I don’t remember reading nothing about Wagner speaking up on the Hearns strike before this.” To this observation of his friend, the workers says he replied: “So what! I don’t remember reading nothing about Halley on the Hearns strike either.”  
 
 
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