Garrison opened the discussion at a December 6-7 meeting here of socialist workers who are members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) or work in nonunion mines.

The Co-Op strikers, a majority of whom are originally from Mexico, walked off the job September 22 to meet with management to protest unsafe working conditions and the suspension of a co-worker for union activities. The company responded by calling the sheriff and locking them out. “The stakes are enormous in this battle, especially for the UMWA,” Garrison said. “If the miners win this fight for a union, it will be a big step toward the UMWA taking back some of the ground that has been lost, especially in the West, where 55 percent of the total tonnage of coal is mined in the United States.

“Only 11 coal mines west of the Mississippi today are organized by the UMWA,” Garrison said. During the 1990s, the union lost significant strength in Utah’s Emery and Carbon Counties, once UMWA strongholds, when coal companies shut down their operations only to reopen them nonunion a few years later. Only two UMWA mines remain in Utah today, one of which is currently idled and being bought out by a new company, she said.

“Our union is backing this fight,” said Frank Peña, a Colorado miner and UMWA member. The Co-Op miners’ fight for justice is featured on the UMWA web site along with an appeal for solidarity, as well as in an article in the current issue of the UMWA Journal. The UMWA issued a press release in early October calling on the labor movement to support the Co-Op miners. Letters appealing for solidarity and financial aid for the strike have gone out from the International to all UMWA locals.

“Timing is critical,” emphasized Peña. “A broad solidarity campaign is needed, and socialist workers who are coal miners have a special responsibility in helping to advance this fight.”

Examples of the kinds of solidarity that have been won so far include the formation of a support organization in Salt Lake City that includes labor officials, religious activists, students at the University of Utah, and other community activists. The committee helped build a rally of 200 in Huntington December 13. Members of UMWA Local 1984 at the Deserado mine in Rangley, Colorado, decided to donate funds for their annual Christmas party to the purchase of food for the Co-Op strikers, and have set up a support committee in the local. UMWA District 2 sent a contribution of $4,000.

Thousands of dollars have been donated by locals of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Workers union (PACE) at refineries in Salt Lake City, and the Catholic Church in Huntington has raised funds to pay rent and utility bills for strikers who need the assistance.

Bob Stranahan, an Arizona coal miner, explained that the retired miners are some of the strongest backers of this strike in the West. He said that “one 92-year-old retired miner and former leader of the UMWA in Utah spoke to the Co-Op miners at a food distribution organized by retired miners from East Carbon, Utah. He told everyone he didn’t care where you are from or what language you speak, these miners are fighting to be future members of the UMWA.”

Clay Dennison, a UMWA member from Alabama, pointed to the potential for active support from groups such as the Black Lung Association. “Just this week the Black Lung Association from Birmingham, Alabama, sent a contribution along with a message to the Co-Op miners,” he said.

The socialist coal miners adjourned their meeting Saturday night to attend a 75th anniversary celebration of the Militant newspaper. The audience at the event included students and workers from a local oil refinery and copper mine who are involved in strike solidarity work.

In her report to the meeting, Garrison outlined some of the employers’ assaults on the mine workers union as coal companies drive to increase their profits. During the 1970s, she explained, a significant shift in coal production to the West, particularly to the Powder River Basin in Wyoming, took place with the opening of giant mines such as the Belle Ayr, Black Thunder, and North Antelope-Rochelle, each rated as the most productive mine in the United States at one time the past three decades.

The bosses defeated the UMWA in a bitter strike at the Belle Ayr mine in 1975. This defeat was a major setback for mine workers in the Powder River Basin and the West.

In two other hard-fought strikes by the UMWA in the late 1980s and early 1990s at the Big Horn and Decker mines near Sheridan, Wyoming, workers beat back union-busting by the coal bosses. One of the main issues in that fight was against the growing practice by the coal bosses of contracting out work.

In 1999 miners struck at the Deserado mine in Colorado and in 2000 at the Pittsburgh and Midway-owned mines on the Navajo Nation in Tse Bonito, New Mexico, and Kemmerer, Wyoming. The workers were able to beat back company demands to lengthen the workday and severely cut health benefits. But despite the successes scored in these fights the UMWA has continued to take blows in the West.

Garrison explained the coal operators’ drive against miners throughout the United States is part and parcel of the capitalist offensive against workers internationally. The U.S. rulers have made gains in their “war on terrorism” and especially in winning greater hegemony over their imperialist rivals. There is no significant opposition to the U.S. occupation of Iraq today. They have made progress in streamlining their military and implementing their goal of creating a professional military that can be rapidly deployed around the world.

U.S. imperialism faces two big obstacles, however, Garrison said. The first is capitalism’s relentless enemy, the growing capitalist economic crisis and depression conditions throughout the world. This crisis gives rise to the second obstacle, the working-class resistance it engenders—from Bolivia to Venezuela to Mexico and the United States, including in Utah. The bosses and the government have not been able to push working people and the industrial unions off the center stage of politics.

The Co-Op miners are standing up for their rights in face of a brutal offensive by the bosses throughout the coal industry. “The conditions they face aren’t really that much different from those faced by other coal miners around the country,” Garrison noted.

“What is different is that the Co-Op miners are in the front ranks of the resistance,” she explained. “The outcome of their struggle will have an impact on miners everywhere who currently have no union, as well as those who do. Miners and retirees at the Horizon Natural Resources mines in Illinois, Kentucky, and West Virginia (formerly AEI), for example, are currently in a battle to defend their health benefits.”

Jay Ressler is a member of UMWA Local 1248 in southwestern Pennsylvania. Betsy Farley is a laid-off member of UMWA Local 4004 in northeastern Pennsylvania.
 
 
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