We also urge you to send in contributions right away to help the Militant in mounting a legal and public defense (see below where to send contributions).

Given this turn of events, we wholeheartedly agree with the Co-Op miners that building their October 2 anniversary rally in Price, Utah, takes on additional significance.

The Co-Op bosses have the gall to charge the UMWA and a number of its officers and organizers with “unfair labor practices.” This is after the National Labor Relations Board found in June that the Co-Op miners had been fired illegally and ordered the company to take back the workers.

This lawsuit, however, is not only an attack on workers’ elementary right to organize a union. It’s an attack on freedom of the press. It’s an attack on free speech. The mine bosses in Utah who filed the suit—along with the so-called International Association of United Workers Union, which miners say convincingly is a creation of the Kingstons to keep out a real union—are trying to silence those who have backed the Co-Op workers’ struggle for living wages, safe working conditions, and human dignity. The Kingstons are trying to intimidate us, to prevent us from telling the truth.

These Utah mine bosses need to know that their lawsuit will have the opposite effect. The Militant is joining the Co-Op miners, their union, and other labor and news organizations in an unremitting struggle to dismiss the suit or to defeat the Kingstons if the case goes to trial. In the process, the truth about this wealthy capitalist family at the center of the offensive against labor in the western United States will be told and heard much more widely.

The suit the mine bosses filed names the following publications and other media as defendants, in the order cited in their legal brief (see link below): United Mine Workers Journal, The Militant, Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret Morning News, Emery County Progress, Price Sun Advocate, Provo Daily Herald, Intermountain Catholic, National Catholic Reporter, Catholic News Service, KRCL Radio 90.9 FM, Utah Independent Media Center, Earth Island Journal, the website of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride Coalition, Joe Hill Dispatch, KUTV, Northwest Labor Press, Salt Lake City Weekly, Casper Star Tribune, Craig Daily Press, and Workers World.

We pledge to continue our truthful coverage of the labor struggle in dispute and to work with all the news organizations named above, and many others, to expand this kind of publicity.

The Militant, its editor, its web administrator, and 20 reporters occupy a weighty section in the Kingstons’ lawsuit. Their legal brief devotes 24 of its 76 pages to citations from some 50 articles, two editorials, and one letter to the editor the Militant has published over the last year. What are the alleged “defamations”? Overwhelmingly, statements by workers, UMWA representatives, and other unionists and supporters of this union-organizing struggle describing the miserable wages, unsafe working conditions, and indignities by the bosses against Co-Op miners, as well as the actions by these workers to band together in order to form a union to fight the employers and win.

An article by Anne Carroll published in the Nov. 3, 2003, Militant, for example, is among the numerous, and often lengthy, citations. “The article also republished the following defamatory statements,” the Kingstons’ brief claims.

The first is a quote by Ernie Herrera, a UMWA retiree who worked 23 years at the Hiawatha mine near Co-Op, who said: “I’m proud of you guys. Everyone knows the Kingstons have been abusing the people at this mine for years. They think they are above the law.”

The article also quoted Celso Panduro, one of the Co-Op miners, stating: “The day we united against the owners is because we had hit a wall. Every time we had asked for better working conditions they told us to keep our heads down and keep working or we could be out the door.”

The Militant is proud to have published such articles providing the facts and editorials siding with the workers. We stand by them.

As we have said in previous editorials, this is the most important labor struggle in the United States today. With their determined struggle to win, aided by expanding support from the labor movement in this country and beyond, the Co-Op miners are setting an example of how to effectively resist the bosses’ offensive. The stakes are high. If the Kingstons prevail, the mine barons everywhere will have blood in their mouths to intensity their assault on labor. If the miners succeed, they will have given a much needed boost to the UMWA in the West and beyond, and to thousands of others fighting to organize unions or strengthen those they already have.

Defeating the Kingstons’ lawsuit is part of this struggle. It’s also needed to ensure that no boss can get any idea it can use this suit as a precedent to pursue their profit-increasing objectives. We pledge to do our outmost to make this a reality. And we urge all workers, farmers, youth, and every other individual and organization interested in human decency to join in.

Donations can be sent to the Militant 306 W 37th Street, 10th floor, New York, NY 10018.
 
 
Related articles:
Utah miners: ‘Bosses’ lawsuit won’t stop our fight for union’
UMWA re-upping its support for miners Co-Op workers build Oct. 2 solidarity rally
Suite filed by Kingstons (download page for legal brief)  
 
 
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