One is the March 7 demonstration called by the United Mine Workers of America in Montgomery, Alabama. The other is the strike by 5,500 copper and zinc miners and other workers in northern Mexico calling for safety improvements and protesting company greed that killed 65 fellow miners trapped in a coal mine after a methane blast.

It’s the employers’ disregard for safety that killed the coal miners in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila—just like the 24 miners who have died in U.S. mines this year. That’s what working people told Militant reporters on the scene. But bosses, government officials, and the capitalist media are working overtime to cover up the blame.

Dripping with class contempt, an article in the February 24 New York Times asserted that workers’ deaths were simply part of their “culture” of “dirt-poor towns…taco stands and the Roman Catholic Church.” Mexican government mine inspectors have argued that “no one can be blamed” because “accidents happen,” or even that the workers were responsible for their own deaths because they were so desperate for an income that they disregarded safety.

Those cynical rationalizations are familiar to U.S. miners, who have heard bosses and government officials use similar lies against workers north of the border. The bottom line is: miners’ lives don’t count; bosses’ profits are paramount.

But Pasta de Conchos miners tell a different story. For the bosses “it was just produce, produce, produce,” said miner Ignacio Moreno. “I have never seen anything so terrible in terms of safety.” He added, “If they had put more money and attention into safety, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Workers are not the cause of the mine deaths. Nor is it “nature.” Nor “an act of God.” It’s the bosses’ ravenous drive to increase production and fatten their profits—fueled by competition for markets, inherent in the profit system.

It’s not true miners’ deaths on the job are inevitable. When workers are organized and have a union that they use, they can prevent deaths. A month ago, when 72 workers were trapped underground by a fire at a Canadian potash mine in Esterhazy, Saskatchewan, no miners were killed. The reason? The workers, who are unionized, had forced the company to establish emergency shelters in the mine and other safeguards that saved everyone’s lives.

The starting point for the labor movement must be: no miner or any other worker has to die. The only way to prevent deaths and maimings on the job is for workers to organize and mobilize union power to enforce safety. As a miner at a recent union meeting in Brookwood, Alabama, put it, “Safety in the mines starts in the union hall.”

Workers in Mexico, the United States, and Canada are all brothers and sisters. We share common conditions and have a common enemy—the profit-hungry bosses.

An exemplary act of working-class solidarity by Local 890 of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union at the Canadian potash mine captured the meaning of these common class interests. The local’s president, Phil Polsom, sent a message to the miners’ union in Mexico last week, which said, “We can show solidarity no matter where the borders,” pointing to the potential to forge an alliance of working people across North America and beyond.

The March 7 UMWA march for mine safety in Montgomery, Alabama, shows what needs to be done. So does the February 16 one-day walkout by UMWA miners at the Freeman United Coal mines in central Illinois who protested when a company doctor tried to get a miner to return to work over the instructions of his own physician.

We urge working people and youth everywhere to back the strikers in Mexico and the UMWA march in Montgomery. Send messages of support! Organize solidarity delegations! Get out the word about these workers who are standing up for all labor.
 
 
Related articles:
Mine workers strike in Mexico
Protest boss greed that killed 65
Demand safety measures to prevent other disasters
Miners’ union calls march in Alabama
Partisans of Militant Labor Forum in Price, Utah, fight eviction attempt by landlord tied to coal bosses
Miners discuss Buffalo Creek disaster at film showing
Gas explosions prompt evacuation of Alabama’s Shoal Creek mine
An appeal to our readers  
 
 
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