Category: Unions

Workin’ in a Coal Mine

American Experience ran a documentary called “The Mine Wars” on January 26th. It told the story of West Virginia coal miners’ battle against mine owners at the start of the 20th century.

Few know that the WV mine workers struggle against the mine owners led to the largest armed insurrection after the Civil War and turned parts of West Virginia into a war zone that required federal troops to pacify.

The battle started in 1920 with a shootout in Matewan, WV. It was triggered by a plan by the United Mine Workers (UMW) to organize Mingo County, where Matewan is located, and the thuggish reaction by mine owners. There is a fine movie that documents this, “Matewan”, by John Sayles.

The town’s union-sympathizing Police Chief Sid Hatfield confronted a group of private detectives from the Baldwin-Felts company who were hired by the coal mine owners. The detectives had come to Matewan to evict the families of unionized miners. The “Battle” of Matewan left seven Baldwin-Felts men dead, along with the mayor and two townspeople.

Some background: Workers were paid based on the weight of the coal they mined. Each car brought from the mines theoretically held a specific amount of coal (2,000 pounds). However, cars were altered by owners to hold more coal than the specified amount, so miners would be paid for 2,000 pounds when they actually had brought in 2,500. In addition, workers were docked pay if rock was mixed in with the coal. Miners mostly lived in company-owned homes, and were forced to shop at company-owned stores.

The UMW started organizing and striking in WV in 1912. When the strikes began, the mine owners used hired guns to inflict plenty of violence on miners and their families.

There is a sordid history of similar efforts throughout the US. Check out the Ludlow Massacre in 1914.

But before WWI, the UMW was unsuccessful in changing working conditions or wages for miners. The US entry into WWI in 1917 sparked a boom in demand for coal, also bringing increasing wages. After the War, demand for coal fell, and so did miners’ wages.

At that time, the largest non-unionized coal region in the eastern US were WV’s Logan and Mingo counties, and the UMW made them a top priority. Mine owners in Logan bought off the Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin to keep the union out of the county. In 1921, after increasingly violent confrontations with the owners and their hired guns, miners moved to fight back.

In August, approximately 5,000 armed union men entered Logan County. Logan city was protected by a natural barrier, Blair Mountain. Chafin’s forces took positions at the top of Blair Mountain, while the miners assembled near the bottom of the mountain. There were skirmishes and deaths. On September 1, President Harding sent in federal troops to break up the battle, and the miners soon surrendered to the feds.

By 1924, UMW membership in the state had dropped by about 50% of its total in 1921.

Mine owners also engaged in a PR campaign that portrayed the UMW as “Bolsheviks”. The Red Scare in 1919-1920 was based on fears that the labor movement would lead to radical political agitation, or would spread communism and anarchism within the country. This sense of paranoia was driven in part by the mining companies.

Does any of this sound familiar? How many red scare equivalents have we had in the last 100 years?

Corporations have always been at war with workers. Here’s the real question: Is it possible for capitalism, by its very nature, NOT to incite a constant battle between the .01% and everyone else?

Probably not. Class is a feature of capitalism, so it follows that class conflict will always be part of capitalist economies. We may find ways to mitigate the effects of that conflict, but it will always be a struggle to do so.

At the same time, we see every day that the interests of private capital are not aligned with the needs of society as a whole. We re-learn these lessons because our public institutions periodically get co-opted by capital. Until private capital’s stranglehold over our political process is ended, it will always try to rig the system.

The miners’ struggle in West Virginia was not just a backwoods conflict. The WV experience has direct relevance to today’s American economy, to today’s capitalists, and to the state of labor in America today.

What happened in West Virginia is an object lesson for what all of America might look like with unfettered corporatism.

Take a look and listen to Lee Dorsey’s 1966 hit “Workin in Coal Mine” written by the late, great Alan Toussaint:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

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Monday Wake Up Call – November 30, 2015

Today’s wake up is for the American worker. While you were sleeping, corporate executives were piecing together an economy and associated tax regulations that allowed them to become America’s oligarchs.

The Center for Effective Government just came out with a study of CEO retirement funds. You already know the conclusion, but you didn’t know the facts:

• The 100 largest CEO retirement funds are worth a combined $4.9 billion. That’s equal to the entire retirement account savings of 47 million American families
• Nearly half of all working age Americans have no access to a retirement plan. The median balance in a 401(k) plan at the end of 2013 was $18,433, enough to generate a monthly retirement check of $104.

In addition, 73% of Fortune 500 firms have also set up special tax-deferred compensation accounts for their executives. These are similar to the 401(k) plans that some Americans have through their employers. But average workers face limits on how much pre-tax income they can invest each year in similar plans, while the plans the F500 provides to their top executives do not. They are free to shelter unlimited amounts of compensation in their retirement funds where their money can grow tax-free, until retirement.

But for the average employee? The GAO says that 29% of workers approaching retirement (aged 50-65) do not have pension or retirement savings in a 401(k) or IRA. While according to a study by the Schwartz Center at the New School, 55% of those aged 50-64 will be forced to rely solely on Social Security (which averages $1,233 a month).

The current rules mean that if CEO’s slash worker retirement benefits, they can boost corporate profits and thereby, stock prices. And since much of executive compensation is tied to the company’s stock price, these rules (and company practice) create a powerful incentive for CEO’s to choose their pocketbooks over those of their employees.

We are talking about market power. The CEO’s and their firms have little to fear from Mr. Market. In turn the rising wealth at the top buys growing political influence, through campaign contributions, lobbying, and the rewards of the revolving door between government jobs and those in the private sector. Political influence in turn is used to write the rules of the game—the tax laws we are speaking of here, antitrust laws, deregulation, union-busting—all in a way that reinforces income concentration.

The result is a feedback loop between political power and market power that created, and now maintains, a vicious circle of oligarchy.

Well, time to wake up from a snooze that allowed our politicians and the largest corporations and their CEOs to turn our country and economy into their private sandbox.

To help with today’s wake-up, here is Rage Against the Machine, the gone but not forgotten band, with Zach de la Rocha on vocals and the superb Tom Morello on guitar. They are performing “No Shelter”, written in 1998:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NEoesmnYU4

Sample Lyrics:
Empty ya pockets son, they got you thinkin’ that
What ya need is what they selling
Make you think that buying is rebelling
From the theaters to malls on every shore
Tha thin line between entertainment and war

Chained to the dream they got ya searchin’ for
Tha thin line between entertainment and war

There be no shelter here
Tha front line is everywhere
There be no shelter here
Tha front line is everywhere

American eyes, American eyes
View the world from American eyes
Bury the past, rob us blind
And leave nothing behind

Just stare
Just stare
Relive the nightmare

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Union-Busting at Pantex

Never heard of Pantex? It is the nation’s only nuclear weapons plant. The full name of the company is Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) Pantex. CNS is a combination of a who’s who of major defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin, Bechtel, and Booz Allen Hamilton. CNS took over Pantex in March, 2014.

The company assembles, disassembles, and tests nuclear weapon components for the US military. They also manage the storage and surveillance of plutonium pits. (Plutonium Pits? In Texas?)

Pantex is a union shop, and on August 29, more than 1,100 workers went on strike over CNS Pantex’ demand for health care concessions. CNS is also seeking the elimination of defined benefit pensions for new union members. In a statement, Council President Clarence Rashada said:

Wages are not the issue. Benefits, sick leave, medical coverage, prescription drugs, those are the issues.

Since work at Pantex involves exposure to dangerous chemicals and substances, the union is pushing back hard against CNS who is also seeking to shift greater health care costs onto its retirees.

The strike is the first in 45 years at Pantex, and it comes 18 months after CNS took over.

Let’s remember that Texas is a right-to-work state, so the union left one entry gate to Pantex free of picketers to allow managers and other employees to enter the plant without any commotion.

This is right up Scott Walker’s alley. The union-busting Republican governor of Wisconsin is on the campaign trail talking about preventing federal workers from collectively bargaining, creating a national right-to-work law and eliminating the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

And the Pantex union-busting is abetted by the Department of Energy (DOE). The union blames the DOE, arguing that a DOE rule capping worker benefits has put CNS and Pantex employees in untenable positions. By rule, CNS can’t offer employee benefits that would exceed the industry average by 5%. However, the industry baseline also includes manufacturers of cell phones and car parts, so the DOE is comparing labor costs on consumer goods and nuclear weapons, probably an Apple™ to warheads comparison.

Effectively shutting down Pantex over a labor rule that only affects 10% of DOE contractors also speaks volumes about leadership and priorities at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which supervises Pantex and CNS.

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) reports that in the run-up to the government’s award of the Pantex contract to CNS, CNS claimed it could save taxpayers over $3 billion by cutting redundancies and consolidating management, but NNSA never validated the claim. POGO quotes from a GAO report about the NNSA’s evaluation of the CNS bid:

Did not clearly or completely describe expected benefits and costs…lacked key analyses and assumptions for cost savings estimates…[and] was also missing a description of the unquantified benefits CNS management might or might not offer.

So, maybe it’s a matter of “screw the government” by contractors big and experienced enough to know better. POGO says a series of recent reports have found that NNSA is skimping on upkeep for old buildings, using obsolete fire safety equipment at weapons sites, and relying on broken security sensors to protect uranium stockpiles.

CNS also runs the Y-12 facility at Oak Ridge TN, former home of the Manhattan Project. Y-12’s primary mission today is providing secure storage of nuclear material for both the US and other governments. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists calls Y-12 a “Poster child for a dysfunctional nuclear weapons complex”, noting that although Y-12 has not produced weapons for 25 years, its annual budgets have increased by nearly 50% since 1997, to more than $1 billion a year.

POGO reported that the NNSA spent $50 million on new security systems at Y-12 but couldn’t find a way to get security guards and security sensors working in sync. The overhaul was a result of a July 2012 incident in which a then-82-year-old nun and two others broke into Y-12 to protest the production of nuclear weapons. They made it into the building where most of the US stockpile of highly enriched uranium is stored. The DOE Inspector General found:

Troubling displays of ineptitude in responding to alarms, failures to maintain critical security equipment, over reliance on compensatory measures, misunderstanding of security protocols, poor communications, and weaknesses in contract and resource management.

Follow-on security tests found that the guard force at Y-12 was cheating on evaluations.

You would think that if there’s one place where this cutting corners on safety and security would not be tolerated, it’s with nuclear weapons. CNS has demonstrated in its Y-12 and Pantex situations that competent nuclear weapons handling and security at nuclear weapons facilities should be governmental functions.

They are far too important to be left to a private contractor’s business decision.

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