Vol. 77/No. 22      June 10, 2013

The defense effort was part of a fight around the three-year union-organizing effort by coal miners at the Co-Op mine near Huntington, Utah, which began in 2003. At stake was how to strengthen the United Mine Workers of America and use union power to fight for better wages, for dignity, and to ensure no miner is killed, maimed, or loses their lungs due to the coal bosses’ profit drive.

These are the same kinds of issues being fought out today by UMWA-organized miners who work for Patriot Coal Corp. in West Virginia, Kentucky and elsewhere; by miners employed at the Deer Creek Mine in Utah not far from where the Co-Op fight took place; and that confront hundreds of millions of workers, organized and unorganized, around the world.

Other central questions for the working class were also posed by the struggle that gave birth to the first Militant Fighting Fund:

How can working people unite against the superexploitation of immigrant labor used by the bosses to drive down wages and conditions of all?

How can workers defend political rights, including freedom of speech and the press, that we need to organize and act in our class interests?

How can we effectively fight back when bosses use the courts to tie up our struggles in red tape?

Ten years ago 75 coal miners began a fight to win UMWA representation at Co-Op, known as the lowest-paying mine in a region where union mines were few and far between. Most of the workers were originally from the state of Sinaloa in Mexico.

In September 2003, the company fired 74 miners for halting work to protest suspension of a fellow worker, Bill Estrada, a leader of the union drive. When the bosses locked the workers out, they struck and set up a round-the-clock picket line. For the next 10 months they reached out for solidarity from UMWA locals and other unions in Utah, the Pacific Northwest, San Francisco Bay Area and around the country.

At the UMWA convention Sept. 29-30, 2003, more than 500 delegates gave seven Co-Op miners a standing ovation. Strike leader Jesus Salazar Jr. told delegates that the Utah miners were paid between $5.25 and $7 an hour, with “no health insurance and no benefits in an unsafe, underground mine.” As new UMWA members, Salazar said, the miners were asking other unionists “to help us defend our dignity and our families.” UMWA President Cecil Roberts urged delegates to back their fight.

Growing support in the unions and beyond put pressure on the National Labor Relations Board to reinstate the miners and to set a representation election. On July 6, 2004, the victorious Co-Op miners, joined by more than 100 supporters, marched to the mine to reclaim their jobs.

“We are letting the mine owners know we are coming back to work stronger than we were last September,” said Juan Salazar. “They can’t interfere with our efforts to join the United Mine Workers of America, to put union stickers on our hardhats, to join together.”

In a counterattack, in September 2004, C.W. Mining and its company “union” filed a retaliatory lawsuit. The more than 100 defendants included 16 miners, the UMWA and its officers, the Salt Lake City Catholic diocese, the Socialist Workers Party, the Militant, and Utah’s two main dailies, the Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret Morning News. The coal bosses charged that miners who spoke out about the fight, as well as those who backed them or reported what they said, were “defaming” the company.

‘Militant’ special target

The Militant Fighting Fund was launched soon after the lawsuit was filed to raise funds for the defense and explain the stakes for workers in beating back this effort to shut up unionists and newspapers that accurately report and champion workers struggles.

Just days before the union representation vote, set for December 2004, the company fired the big majority of miners. The coal bosses said they had “discovered” that the workers — many of them employed at Co-Op for years — lacked proper papers proving they were eligible to work.

The fired miners got other jobs and continued to fight these attacks and organize union activities. In December 2005 the NLRB ruled that C.W. Mining had fired the miners illegally. Later in 2006 the agency ruled that six Co-Op miners were entitled to back pay and reinstatement, but the rest weren’t because they hadn’t shown proper work documents.

This is one among many examples of how the bosses and their government use the second-class status imposed on immigrants to weaken struggles by fighting workers.

On May 1, 2006, Federal Judge Dee Benson in Salt Lake City dismissed C.W. Mining’s lawsuit against most defendants. That same day millions of immigrant workers downed their tools and marched in cities and towns across the U.S. demanding a halt to deportations and the criminalization of the foreign-born. Shortly afterwards, the owners of C.W. Mining agreed to a settlement ending the lawsuit against all defendants.

The miners had stood off the bosses on the picket line, in court, and before the NLRB.

The story is recounted much more fully in articles and reports that can be found on the left-hand panel of the Militant website (“Record of Militant Fighting Fund”). Check them out.

Toward the opening of the struggle, in a December 2003 introduction to Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs, Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, had the following to say about the fighting Sinaloa miners at the Utah mine:

“It is possible that among the striking Minneapolis Teamsters who laid the foundations for the transformation of the labor movement throughout the entire Midwest in the 1930s there was not a single worker who had been born in Mexico. (What a change a few decades have wrought!)

“But across the span of years, nationalities, languages, and lifetime experiences, the story told in Teamster Rebellion also belongs to the growing ranks of Spanish-speaking workers in the United States today as they enter into struggle. They can see themselves in those earlier generations of workers — many of them likewise first- or second-generation immigrants — who finally said ‘enough,’ and began to take their own future in hand.”

In the course of the two-year court fight against C.W. Mining, the Militant Fighting Fund raised over $120,000. More than 1,000 organizations and individuals endorsed the fund, including 26 union locals, some 230 officers of local unions, and officers of 10 international unions.

Alyson Kennedy and Bill Estrada — two of the Co-Op miners fired for their union-organizing activity — gave the Militant Fighting Fund their back paychecks won after the NLRB ruling. Those checks totaled over $25,000.

For some 75 years before and 10 years since, the Militant has provided news and support to struggles by working people the world over. The Militant Fighting Fund helps ensure the paper comes out and gets around week after week.

To contribute, contact distributors listed on page 8, or send a check or money order made out to the Militant, 306 W. 37th St., 10th Floor, New York, NY, 10018.
 
 
Related article:
Militant Fighting Fund May 4-June 25 (week 2)
 
 
 
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