When a coal miner at the Dugout Mine owned by Arch Coal in Utah was recently struck by a massive slab of rock falling from the roof, it was just one more example of an accident waiting to happen at workplaces across the country.

The Co-Op miners in Huntington, Utah, are setting an example of how to battle to protect safety on the job. The conditions at Co-Op were responsible for three deaths in the mine in the last half of the 1990s—half of the total coal mine fatalities during that period in Utah. The miners are organizing to establish representation by their union—the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA)—in order to have greater control over the conditions and pace of work, as well as livable wages and benefits.

From day one of their fight a year ago safety has been at the heart of the Co-Op miners’ struggle. Their November 29 press conference outside the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) office in Price, Utah, where they presented a list of safety violations by management, is a continuation of the course that has won them broad backing in the labor movement and from churches, students, and immigrant rights and other organizations.

We wholeheartedly support the call by the Co-Op miners for wide circulation of their petition to the National Labor Relations Board demanding sanctions against C.W. Mining for harassment and threats of wholesale firings of UMWA supporters. We also join the miners in urging that messages be sent to the MSHA backing the miners’ struggle for safer working conditions and dignity on the job.

As the bosses step up their drive for greater profits, struggles will grow among working people to resist the devastating consequences of the employer attacks on our lives and working conditions. Workers will fight for protection against speedup and layoffs, for improved safety and health conditions, regulation of and veto power over work rules, and health codes to protect workers against industrial hazards, from asbestos fibers and coal dust, to chemical and radiation poisoning.

Workers must fight for veto power on questions of safety on the job. They should insist that production be shut down at once on the demand of the workers and at no loss of pay whenever their safety is at stake. All safety controls and the speed of the production line must be set by the workers themselves.

Through union power working people can fight for more acceptable levels of chemical pollution and control over purification of waste products. Through our collective strength workers can establish safe standards after gaining full access to information on the materials and equipment we work with, and through consultation with technicians of our own choosing.

To wage an effective fight workers must organize as a class, in unions, and not rely on the bosses, their government, or fake “friend of labor” politicians. Out of the estimated 100,000 deaths on the job in the United States in the two decades between 1982 and 2002, for example, U.S. government agencies have only referred 196 cases to prosecutors to charge bosses with willful violation of safety standards.

Through reliance on our collective strength, and solidarity with each others’ struggles, working people can make gains in this fight. Meat packers at Swift and Co. in Greeley, Colorado, for example, won a provision in their new contract that gives a union representative a key to the lock that allows the bosses to increase the production line. It’s not surprising that this drew applause from workers when it was announced at the meeting to vote on the contract.

Like all such agreements with the bosses, the one at Swift will be put to the test on the shop floor. As workers fight and score some victories, they shift the relationship of forces in their favor and transform their unions into more effective instruments of struggle. In doing so, more and more workers will begin rejecting the bosses’ argument that they cannot afford to stay in business unless pollution controls are lifted or safety standards lowered. More and more people will argue that it is the workers and the community who cannot afford pollution, diluted safety rules, or bosses who put profits above all other considerations. And more and more workers will realize that only labor can put science to work as the liberator of humanity, not its destroyer.
 
 
Related articles:
Utah: Co-Op miners expose unsafe working conditions
Fight bosses’ threats to fire UMWA supporters  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home