The suit against the miners is part of an extensive legal action stemming from a 19-month-long struggle at the Co-Op mine. Workers have been fighting for better pay, safety, and dignity on the job, and union representation with the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Unable to defeat the miners, the company tried firing nearly all union supporters shortly before a December 17, 2004, union election and also to use the courts to undercut the union struggle. The votes of the majority of pro-UMWA miners have yet to be counted by the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that oversaw the union election.

“It is well-settled that ‘neither employers or unions may sue individual employees in damage suits,’” states the miners’ reply to the coal bosses in explaining why the C.W. Mining suit should be thrown out of court. The company contends it is the victim of unfair labor practices by the union and the individual miners, and that nearly 100 other defendants who have written about or supported the Co-Op miners’ struggle also defamed the company.

The miners’ attorney argues that especially during labor struggles, where it is to be expected charges and counter charges would be made, a charge of defamation against the miners has no standing. In the course of a “labor dispute,” says the miners’ reply, courts have repeatedly ruled in cases where unionists called employers “criminals” or charged them with “hiding money” that those statements were nothing more than “fiery rhetoric,” and not defamation. In the context of the long fight at the Co-Op mine, “describing oneself as having been fired, or the working conditions as unsafe or stating that the incumbent union did not properly represent these employees” cannot be the basis for action against the miners on the bosses defamation claim. In addition to the miners’ reply to C.W. Mining, Ed Mayne and the Utah State AFL-CIO also responded to the C.W. Mining lawsuit on April 22, again asking the court to dismiss the case against them. Mayne is the state president of the labor body and has spoken out in support of the miners numerous times.

C. W. Mining utterly failed to respond to the arguments of the Utah AFL-CIO that Ed Mayne’s statements “could not possibly be understood to be defamatory, even if this dispute was not set in a labor context, which it is,” says the union organization’s reply.

PACE Local 8-286, a union local which represents oil workers in the Salt Lake City area, also filed papers asking the court to deny C.W. Mining’s request to make the union part of the suit. A proper summons was never presented to the union, according to the union reply, but the company’s lawyers contend this was not their fault and the court should allow them the right to amend their lawsuit to include Local 8-286.

The union asks the court to stop the coal bosses attempts to drag them into the case stating “this is not simply a case of misnomer, as previously stated [by C.W. Mining]” but “by reason of the lack of any allegations whatsoever against Local 8-286.”

C.W. Mining wants to name the local “because it is a member of PACE Region 11, and because Region 11 was reported to have passed a resolution in support of the striking miners.” But the union points out that the local and the regional body are not the same. And in any case “the resolution itself is the purest form of lawful, protected free expression and support of solidarity for coal miners engaged in a labor dispute.”

Attorneys for the Militant newspaper and the Socialist Workers Party, who are also prominent among those being sued by C.W. Mining, are working on a reply to C.W. Mining’s recent memorandum to the court in regards to their motion to dismiss the suit. Those papers will be filed with the court before April 29 and will be reported in next week’s issue of the Militant.
 
 
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Unionists prepare to fight mine boss suit against the ‘Militant’  
 
 
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