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Vol. 71/No. 15      April 16, 2007

 
1,200 coal miners strike in Illinois, Pennsylvania
(front page/As we go to press...)
 
BY RYAN SCOTT  
WAYNESBURG, Pennsylvania, April 4—Nearly 1,200 members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) struck three underground coal mines at 12:01 a.m. today in Pennsylvania and Illinois. At issue is the effort by Foundation Coal Holdings, the mines’ owner, to negotiate a side agreement including wage concessions for the 236 UMWA miners employed at its Wabash Mine near Keensburg, Illinois.

The strike affects that mine and also the Cumberland and Emerald mines here, which together employ about 950 union miners.

“We’re here to stand up to Foundation Coal,” UMWA president Cecil Roberts told a rally of 2,000 miners near the Cumberland and Emerald mines on the first day of the strike. “We are going to stay out one day longer.”

“We came into this union fighting and we’ll die fighting,” Joe Hamilton, president of UMWA Local 1791, which represents the Wabash miners, told the cheering crowd.

Foundation announced today its intention to close the Wabash Mine, stating, “The UMWA has insisted that Wabash must sign the 2007 National Bituminous Coal Wage Agreement, and Wabash does not believe it can justify continued operations absent a different wage agreement.” Foundation owns another 11 mines in Appalachia and in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.

The national coal contract, signed last December by the UMWA and Consol Energy, is the model on which the union bases negotiations with other coal bosses. A half-dozen other coal companies have since signed contracts on terms mirroring those in the national accord.
 
 
Related articles:
On the Picket Line
Vanishing pensions: How can we fight back?  
 
 
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