The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 71/No. 1           January 8, 2007  
 
 
On the Picket Line
(on the picket line)
 
West Virginia coal mine fatality
brings 2006 U.S. toll to 47
PITTSBURGH—John Elliot, 26, a coal miner at Dana Mining Company’s Prime No. 1 Mine near Morgantown, West Virginia, was killed in a roof fall December 17. Elliot is the 47th coal miner killed on the job in the United States this year, the most since 1995. Elliot and two other workers were riding on a mantrip, a vehicle used to transport miners and equipment underground, when a section of roof fell, crushing him to death. Mine Safety and Health Administration records show that 33 roof collapses have occurred at this mine since January 2003.

Another coal miner was killed November 28 at the Spring Creek Coal Company surface mine in Montana when the wheels of a giant haul truck rolled over him after he got out of the cab when the brakes failed.

—Tony Lane  
 
Striking Steelworkers picket
Goodyear tire retail stores
Steelworkers on strike against Goodyear Tire and supporters picketed some 150 tire retail stores December 16 in their fight for a decent contract. Some 15,000 workers at 16 Goodyear plants in the United States and Canada, members of the United Steelworkers union (USW), have been on strike since October 5 against company concessionary demands. Bargaining between USW and the company resumed December 18.

Facing a shortage of Humvee tires for its military equipment, the U.S. Army is discussing measures to break the Steelworkers’ strike. The December 15 Financial Times reported that Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said that the army is exploring a possible injunction under the Taft-Hartley Act to force 200 workers back to their jobs in the Topeka, Kansas, plant.

—Brian Williams  
 
Rally at San Francisco piers
protests union-busting move
SAN FRANCISCO—Hundreds of unionists and their supporters marched and rallied December 9 on the piers here to protest a union-busting move by Hornblower Cruises. The company took over ferry service to Alcatraz in September, refusing to rehire 55 members of the International Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots, and of the Inlandboatmen’s Union of the Pacific, a division of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. The ferry service had been a union operation since it began in 1973.

—Lea Sherman
 
 
Related articles:
Record number of workers killed  
 
 
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