It reported that an “illegal immigrant,” who was charged with hitting a child with a pick-up truck while driving drunk, “has brought the issue to the forefront of talks about safety in the state’s mines.” The worker, originally from Mexico, works at a mining repair machine shop.

“We had heard this had been going on, that there were problems with it more and more,” UMWA communications director Phil Smith was quoted as saying in the article. “I don’t know that anybody can put a finger on how many mines this is happening in, but we’re guessing this is a problem we’re probably going to be seeing a lot more of unless we address it.”

A growing number of immigrants working in the mines, however, is not a problem for coal miners but a source of potential strength.

The most significant working-class struggles in the United States recently have been led by immigrants, largely from Mexico and Central America, many of whom are undocumented. Last spring, millions of immigrant workers and their supporters marched across the country demanding legalization for all. On May 1, the first multi-city general political strike in U.S. history took place, with two million workers refusing to work and joining actions in dozens of cities and small towns. This had a positive impact on the entire working class.

These developments confirmed that the historic influx of immigrant labor in recent decades has irreversibly strengthened the U.S. working class. Workers and farmers are driven to immigrate by grinding economic conditions in countries dominated by imperialism. But immigrants are not suffering victims. They are fellow workers who bring their class-struggle experiences, help broaden the horizons of their co-workers, and themselves shed prejudices about U.S.-born workers in the process.

“There are plenty of people in southern West Virginia and Kentucky who would be willing to take those jobs,” Smith said. “When you start bringing folks who are willing to work for lower wages, that causes a problem for everybody when it comes to pay.”

It is not immigrant workers, however, who are responsible for lowering wages. It is the bosses who benefit from anti-labor laws aimed at keeping immigrant workers as “illegals” so they will be intimidated from standing up for their rights or organizing a union. The employers want immigrants to come to this country to have a section of our class that’s superexploited, and to keep working people divided by promoting the myth that Mexicans or other immigrants take away “American” jobs.

Under capitalism, competition for jobs reigns. A constant influx of immigrant labor does lower wages, if the union movement doesn’t take the initiative to embrace all workers and back any struggles to unionize workers, native- and foreign-born.

During the miners’ struggle to organize the Co-Op mine in Utah the UMWA took the side of the 75 coal miners, most of them immigrants from Mexico, who went on strike for 10 months to win UMWA representation in order to change abusive conditions and win livable wages and job safety. These workers inspired solidarity throughout the country and beyond and at a certain point posed the possibility of expanding the organization of western coal. Their steadfastness showed what can be done through working-class unity regardless of whether miners are born in the United States, Mexico, or other countries, or whether some are undocumented.

Forty-two miners have now been killed in U.S. coal mines this year, the most in any single year since 2001.

The latest fatality was 43-year-old Dale Russsell Reightler, who was killed in an October 23 explosion at an eastern Pennsylvania anthracite mine.

Thomas Channell Jr., 49, died October 20 at the Whitetail Kittanning mine in Preston County, West Virginia. He was killed when a massive rock broke from the rib, crushing him while he was operating a mining machine, said the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The mine was cited for 320 safety violations this year alone, many for roof and wall collapses.

Similar deteriorating job conditions face miners in other countries.

A recent article in the Post-Gazette described the growth of pocitos in the northern state of Coahuila, Mexico’s only coal mining region. A miner goes into these holes, some 30 feet straight into the ground, to dig for coal, while others hoist buckets loaded with coal to the surface. The article described the pocitos as “minuscule mining outposts with no more than 20 workers and, until very recently, a reputation for bypassing even the most basic safety standards.”

The pocitos sound like the mines that have opened up in eastern Kentucky along a thin seam of rare “blue gem” coal, used for making silicon. Joe Seay, operating a roof bolter in a blue-gem mine, was the 39th miner to be killed on the job this year, when a five-foot-long slab of rock fell on him. Extracting this coal is dangerous, with miners working in tunnels sometimes less than 19 inches high.

With the price of coal remaining high, the bosses continue to speed up production, forcing miners to work in unsafe conditions. Most coal mines are nonunion. These conditions, similar in other industries and countries, pose the need to build a labor movement capable of fighting effectively against the bosses’ assaults. This can only be done by seeing immigrant workers as our brothers and sisters, championing their demand to legalize all immigrants now, and making every effort to draw them into unionizing the mines and other workplaces.

Alyson Kennedy was a coal miner at the Co-Op mine in Huntington, Utah. She was part of the 10-month strike and two-year-long battle to organize the UMWA at that mine.
 
 
Related articles:
Protesters in N.Y.: ‘Legalize immigrants now!’
Australian gold mine company ignored warnings prior to rock fall that killed one miner, injured two  
 
 
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