Vol. 71/No. 32      September 3, 2007

The online edition of the article said, at the end, “In the mining communities of Huntington and Price, sentiment against Murray seemed to be growing.”

It continued, “The writers and editors of ‘The Militant,’ a paper that describes itself as ‘a socialist newsweekly published in the interests of working people,’ was handing out copies of their latest edition Friday with the message: ‘No miner has to die!’”

The article reported that an editorial in an August special Militant supplement stated, “The truth must be told about the unsafe conditions facing miners at Crandall Canyon,” and “Responsibility for these men’s lives lies with the bosses.” The Utah daily added, “The paper blames Murray and his company” for the mine disaster.

The Militant’s coverage and efforts by the paper’s readers to get it into the hands of fellow working people is part of a long history of reporting on struggles of miners and other workers in the West, including the question of safety in the mines. Many workers in the area have bought, read, and circulated the paper over the years, and are doing so again today.

The socialist newsweekly featured prominent coverage of and editorial support for the 2003-2006 effort by miners to unionize the Co-Op mine in Huntington, Utah. That struggle began with a 10-month strike by about 75 miners, most of them Mexican-born. Failing to defeat the workers on the picket line, and facing the prospect of a union representation vote, C.W. Mining Co., which owns Co-Op, filed a lawsuit in September 2004 against the United Mine Workers of America, 16 individual miners, the Militant, and many others who had supported or reported on the unionization drive. The harassment suit accused the nearly 100 defendants of “defamation” and other charges.

The miners and their supporters continued to tell the truth about their struggle and beat back the bosses’ legal attack. Backers of the Militant launched the Militant Fighting Fund to defend the paper from the retaliatory lawsuit.

In May of last year, federal district judge Dee Benson threw out the charges against most of the defendants, including the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret Morning News. Two months later, the judge dismissed the remaining charges, including those against the UMWA and the Militant, “with prejudice and on the merits,” meaning the charges could not be refiled. The entire record of the Militant Fighting Fund can be found at the homepage of the paper’s website, www.themilitant.com.
 
 
Related articles:
Utah coal miners: ‘We want to mine 100 percent safely’
Workers respond to coal bosses’ unsafe productivity drive
Unsafe conditions are prevalent in Utah mines
Only effective way to enforce safety: organize unions  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home