The UMWA launched this campaign, called Justice at Peabody, at a December 9 rally in St. Louis. Organizers say that hundreds of nonunion miners at Peabody mines across the country have requested assistance from the UMWA to form a union.

Peabody Energy reported 2005 sales of 240 million tons and $4.6 billion in revenues. The company operates 28 coal mines in the United States, nine of which are currently unionized. Some 36 percent of the company’s U.S. workforce is unionized, a percentage Peabody has pledged to lower.

“We have, over the last 15 years, moved the vast majority of our production and developed our operations to where we have reduced the intensity of our unionization,” boasted Peabody president Gregory Boyce last October. He pledged to “continue on that path.”

In an article in the January-February issue of the United Mine Workers Journal, John Cox described the conditions in the nonunion Peabody mine in Indiana where he works. “It’s a whole different world,” said Cox. “We don’t have job security at all. They can come out and say, ‘Boys, tomorrow you’re going to work a 12-hour shift, and there is nothing you can do about it. You don’t have any rights. Shut up and do your job or go home.’”

“The safety issue is one difference between nonunion and union mines,” UMWA communications director Phil Smith told the Militant in a March 14 phone interview. “When you have a local union safety committee, workers can go to them to get unsafe situations corrected, or, if need be, to shut down an unsafe operation. In a nonunion mine you can go report the problem to your foreman, but if he tells you to go back to work you’ve got two choices: continue working unsafe or lose your job.”

Smith said that interest in the union has increased in the aftermath of the string of mine accidents this year that have cost the lives of 21 coal miners. “We’ve gotten a lot of calls from miners, both in Peabody mines and in other mines, who want to discuss the difference between working union and nonunion,” Smith said. “A lot of these miners have worked in union mines but now find themselves in nonunion operations, and they can see the difference a union makes. At the same time, the coal bosses really haven’t changed in the last 100 years. Their main goal is to produce at the lowest possible cost. And they put a lot of pressure on their workforce to achieve that goal.”

In addition to its 10 nonunion mines in Indiana and Illinois, Peabody operates four nonunion mines in Kentucky, and one in West Virginia. In the West, the company’s nonunion operations include three large surface operations in Wyoming, an underground mine in Colorado, and a large surface mine in New Mexico. All of Peabody’s overseas operations, which include four mines in Australia and one in Venezuela, are unionized.

“Right now the campaign has begun with a focus on Peabody’s mines in West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois,” Smith said. “But we’ve made contacts at the mines out West and are looking to expand our effort there as well.”

In this campaign, the UMWA has deployed dozens of organizers and field staff throughout the coalfields. They have used flyers and a special website (www.justiceatpeabody.org) to build support for the effort.

UMWA organizers are getting miners to sign a petition supporting the union. This will be used to press for card-check neutrality on the part of the coal company. This means the company agrees to abide by the decision of a majority of miners to sign up for the union rather than having an election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

“The NLRB is packed with corporate types and people who aren’t favorable to workers organizing,” Smith said. “With the company appeals and objections you’re often talking five, six, even 10 years down the road before the process is complete. By that time, often people have been fired or reassigned and the company has been allowed time to wage a campaign of fear and intimidation among the workers.”

Paul Pederson contributed to this article
 
 
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