BY KATHERINE BENNETT  
PRICE, Utah—“We really need a union here,” said a coal truck driver who stopped and picked up a copy of the Militant from socialists hawking the paper outside a coal mine portal here May 16. Many drivers he works with are talking about the need for a union, he said. Most of the coal haulers in the area are paid by the load, not by the hour. Many times they have to wait at the mine for loads, which is unpaid labor for them.

“You will never get a union here,” another coal hauler told those selling the Militant. “The company would not allow it.” He nodded in agreement, however, when a Militant supporter replied, “If you wait for the company, you will never get it.”

The first day a national Militant sales team started a weeklong effort to reach out to coal miners and others in Carbon and Emery counties here in Utah, 10 supporters of the socialist newsweekly fanned out across this region—the center of coal mining in Utah. They set up campaign tables outside grocery stores and the local post office, and campaigned door-to-door and outside the entrance to mines during the shift change.

A young worker traveled from Cleveland and two workers and a student from Salt Lake City traveled to Price to join the weeklong effort.

Four days later, 17 subscriptions to the Militant and its sister publication in Spanish, Perspectiva Mundial, had been sold. Half of those were to coal miners or retired members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). About 30 single copies have been sold, more than a dozen at mine portals. The teams have visited miners who have been active in the fight to win representation by the UMWA at the Co-Op mine in nearby Huntington. Two of the unionists decided to subscribe to the paper, which has carried regular coverage of their struggle.

One Chicano miner, who works at a nonunion mine, bought a Militant subscription, endorsed the Militant Fighting Fund, and contributed $20 (see editorial on page 10).

At another nonunion mine, a young coal miner stopped to talk with Militant salespeople. He subscribes to the paper already, he said, but bought a copy anyway. He also donated $3 he had with him to the Militant fund drive because he said he enjoys reading the paper.
 

Discussions ranged from the occupation of Iraq, to the recent arrests of migrant workers in this country, to the increasing concentration of ownership in the fishing industry. Gudjon, a worker on the fishing trawlers for many years, talked about the devastating impact this has on fishing communities. The biggest companies in the industry keep buying up the fishing quotas allowed by the government in smaller towns and move the business to the larger towns and cities, forcing people to move.

“This is the kind of paper we need,” said an older worker as he looked at the Militant. He asked what we had in Icelandic and bought the pamphlet The Working Class and The Transformation of Learning. “Finally we have a workers paper here,” he said to his friend, pointing to the table and the pamphlet he had just bought.

Four people signed up to subscribe to the Militant. One bought a copy of Nytt Althjodlegt no. 1 (the Icelandic translation of New International no. 11), and a couple of pamphlets were sold.

Click here to see the subscription drive scoreboard
Click here to see the New International sales campaign scoreboard