Twice a week half a dozen or more ads offering coal mining jobs appear in the Price Sun Advocate and the Emery County Progress, the local papers in Utah’s coal-producing Carbon and Emery counties. Not only are the 10 coal mines in this area looking for workers, underground coal mines in Wyoming and New Mexico regularly advertise in the papers here.

According to job service personnel in Utah, hundreds of miners working at nonunion mines are putting in their applications at the union mines, and many are getting hired. Combined with the ongoing struggle to win representation at the Co-Op mine in Huntington, Utah (see article in this issue), a significant boost in the union organization of western coal is under way.

With the expansion of hiring for UMWA-organized jobs, and increased hiring at unorganized mines, coal bosses running nonunion operations are not only scrambling for workers but are also concerned about the effects of union influence spreading. Applicants for job openings at the nonunion Arch Minerals mines report getting long diatribes against unions during their interviews.

Many of the nonunion operations in this area still pay more than the bosses at union-organized mines. Andalex Coal recently upped the pay for all miners at their three facilities by 5 percent to nearly $23 an hour in order to stem the flow of miners leaving for union jobs. Despite this, however, many miners cite safety conditions, work schedules, health care, and other rights on the job as reasons they are pursuing jobs at the union mines.

Bosses at nonunion mines impose work schedules in an arbitrary way. This sometimes results in 12- and 13-hour days and days off that shift frequently. This is what the miners often cite as major reasons for applying to union mines. Miners at UMWA mines in this area have maintained a basic Monday through Friday eight-hour schedule, with some weekend work.

The year-long fight at the Co-Op mine with the substantial support for the workers there by the United Mine Workers union has also contributed to putting the UMWA in the spotlight in this region as a fighting organization. Miners at nonunion operations in this area follow the developments of the Co-Op fight through the papers and by talking to co-workers who know first-hand about the labor struggle.

Supporters of the union organizing drive at Co-Op who work at other nonunion mines, which includes a couple of dozen former Co-Op miners who went through the 10-month strike there, are often asked about the latest developments in the fight.

The U.S. Labor Department and a number of major coal companies say that the demand for coal miners will likely increase even more in the coming years as the industry faces a massive wave of retirements.

“For the last 15 years or so, we’ve been able to reach back into a pool of experienced miners that had been laid off or who had lost jobs through consolidation,” said Tom Hoffman, vice president of investor and public relations at Consol Energy, the nation’s largest underground coal company, according to an October 18 article by the Associated Press. “Those guys are now largely gone, either retired or they got out of the business. We’re facing a very big demographic bubble.”
 
 
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Utah miners and their supporters press labor board to set union vote  
 
 
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