This day in West Virginia labor history

On this day in 1989, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) began its historic strike against the Pittston Coal Company. The issues leading to the strike were mostly regarding retiree health benefits.

The union had been working without a contract for a full 14 months when the strike began, which was pretty much unheard of at the time. During that time many miners received training in nonviolent action and civil disobedience.

Around 1,700 miners in West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky participated in the strike, which lasted until Feb. 20, 1990.

It was my first big fight. I had only been working on economic justice issues with the American Friends Service Committee for a month or so, although I followed events as closely as I could in the Charleston Gazette in the year leading up to it. Everybody paying attention knew something was going to blow.

I remember sitting in the cafeteria of the WV capitol and being told by a UMWA rep that it was starting as we spoke. It would come to absorb my attention, energy and chi for the next 10 months and I forged some strong relationships that continue to this day. I'll always be grateful to AFSC for giving me the chance to jump in. I can't say that I had a huge impact on the strike, but it had a huge impact on me.

It was intense and exhausting, but, to be honest, I was having the time of my life.

When I look back on it, I think of friends, picket lines, burning houses, evictions, crashing coal trucks, (alleged) jackrocks, singing, banter, jokes, learning guitar, anger, Christmas, courage, goon guards, provocations, state police, constant motion, solidarity, direct action, mischief, learning, absorbing history, brave women holding the line, places, and the threat of violence, all to a Bob Dylan soundtrack.

At times, the atmosphere on the picket lines reminded me of the movie Matewan just before the shootout. It seemed to me at the time as if the fate of the world, or at least the labor movement, hinged on the outcome. Eventually, the union won a restoration of benefits, which have helped thousands of retirees and survivors over the years. But UMWA membership continued to decline.

The strike developed in the aftermath of another less fortunate strike against Massey subsidiaries earlier in the decade. Like Pittston would later do, Massey withdrew from the Bituminous Coal Operators Association (BCOA), the industry bargaining group. This was the beginning of Massey's spree of union busting, environmental failures, intimidation, political manipulation, safety shortcuts and the rest.

Massey's power would grow over the years in power and influence, like the rising power of Mordor in The Lord of the Rings.

Ironically, Pittston withdrew from the coal industry in the years following the strike, with many of its assets sold to Massey.

Fast forward to this date in 2010, when a mammoth explosion at Massey's Upper Big Branch underground mine in Montcoal WV killed 29 miners. Before Massey bought the mine from Peabody Coal in 1993, it had been a union operation. But after a strong anti-union campaign led by former Massey CEO and now candidate for the US senate (!), the union was decertified by the late 1990s.

Without a union, miners had less of a voice in working conditions, and especially mine safety. With terrible consequences. You can read all about it here.

Much happened in the wake of the disaster. There were investigations, lawsuits, fines and criminal prosecutions, including the first ever conviction of the CEO of a major corporation for conspiring to evade safety rules. Massey no longer exists. But eight years later, the Republican controlled congress has yet to pass meaningful mine safety legislation, such as that advocated by the late great Senator Robert C. Byrd.

This day reminds me of the best and worst in West Virginia history, of what working people organized in unions can achieve and of what can happen if unions are weakened and defeated.

During WV's recent and successful teachers' strike, I felt echoes of Pittston days, with crowds at the capitol almost as large as the ones in 1989. And it was great to feel the warm presence of UMWA members rallying in solidarity.

Times have changed but our recent and more distant history shows that the need for working class solidarity is as urgent as ever. And that's not likely to change.

Annals of hypocrisy

You really can't make this stuff up. As my friend Ken Ward reported in yesterday's Gazette-Mail, WV's Republican representatives in the US House, who rode to power in part by pretending to give a ____ (fill in the blank) about coal miners, voted to cut funding on the federal Mine Health and Safety Administration.  Fortunately, the measure failed to pass the entire House.

UMWA president Cecil Roberts had this to say about that: "I am gratified that a majority of the House agreed with our position that we should not be cutting coal mine safety at a time when we are experiencing rising fatalities and serious injuries in America’s mines."

I guess you get what you vote for.

Speaking of abominations, then there's this.

How soon is very soon? Not soon enough

El Cabrero has been a terribly inconsistent blogger these days. I'm out of state at a staff retreat, and staff retreats in my organization are kind of like endurance events...minus the health benefits.

However, this tantalizing bit of news can't go by uncelebrated. Ken Ward reports in the Charleston Gazette that additional federal indictments related to Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine disaster, which killed 29 coal miners in West Virginia in April 2010, will be forthcoming "very soon."

Previously, the federal prosecutor said that indictments were coming "soon." That was a few weeks back if memory serves.

I'm hoping the "very soon" is much sooner than "soon." It can't come soon enough for me. I feel like a little kid on a long car trip. Are we there yet?

ON THAT NOTE, here's a related story.

JUST DO IT. Here you can learn nearly 130,000 good reasons why expanding Medicaid would be good for WV

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Unsolicited shoutout

I had a request for more Okinawa pictures, which I aim to provide. But first I feel obliged to give props to a book that helped me survive the physical misery of two long overseas flights in economy class.

That book is....Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, a well-known author of fiction and nonfiction who has Appalachian roots. She made a big splash a couple of years ago with her book about local food, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Some of her fiction tends to be preachy at times but Lacuna seemed to have been written just for getting me through the flights.

In 2008, El Cabrero, the Spousal Unit and two friends went to Mexico, where among other things we visited the house of artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Rivera's murals at the Ministry of Education in Mexico City, and the museum at Leon Trotsky's home in exile where he was killed by Stalin's agents.



I've been fascinated by Trotsky since I was a pup and while I'm no follower, early exposure to his life and ideas has given me zero tolerance for Stalinist BS and anything that reeks of it, however, wherever and whenever it shows up. Later on, I also became a Frida and Diego fan (two turkeys on the farm are named after them).




Anyhow, Kingsolver ties their lives together with that of a fictional protagonist who eventually gets caught up in post WW II Cold War hysteria. She even weaves in ancient Mexican civilizations, including a visit to the pyramids at Teotihuacan, which is truly a magical place.



What can I say? The book scratched my itch. And I'm grateful for the diversion.

MINE SAFETY. Can you say "union?"

MINING AND MORE are the subjects of the latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

NO COMMENT. NPR reports that Massey CEO Don Blankenship's pay increased recently despite continuing concerns about mine safety.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Awful grace

Aeschylus, courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme at Goat Rope these days is hard times and how to get through them, not that we're dealing with that now or anything.

I am not one of those who thinks all suffering is beneficial. Most of it is just plain suffering that leads to more of the same. My first choice is to get rid of it.

But still...

Most people who have accomplished difficult things in life have had to overcome obstacles. And for many, the struggle itself gave them strength to go on and do great things (assuming they survived, of course). Athletes and others who do difficult things go through a long and arduous period of training and preparation.

Ancient myths and folktales are full of stories of heroes, heroines and sages who had to go through a painful initiation before they could accomplish their work.

According to the Greek tragedian Aeschylus,

He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our despair, against our own will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.

The ancient Chinese sage Mencius aka Mengzi (4th century BC) put it this way:

When Heaven is about to confer an important office upon a man, it first embitters his heart in its purpose; it causes him to exert his bones and sinews; it makes his body suffer hunger; it inflicts upon him want and poverty and confounds his undertakings. In this way it stimulates his will, steels his nature and thus makes him capable of accomplishing what he would otherwise be incapable of accomplishing.

It doesn't always work out that way, but sometimes it does--and the world is better for it.

HUMAN RIGHTS. Today is International Human Rights Day. El Cabrero and amigos will be exercising some of ours today on behalf of winning others. Here's the UN Declaration. Too bad we haven't got there yet.

GOOD FOR THEM! It looks like those union workers sitting-in in Illinois are getting somewhere.

DEATH IN THE MINES. Massey Energy has been cited for an October Boone County mine fatality.

TEASING OUT the positive side of teasing is the subject of this article.

URGENT FIRE ANT UPDATE here.

HOARDING can be bad for your health.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: AWFUL

WALKING FOR FREEDOM

Caption: Statue of Booker T. Washington outside the WV state capitol building.

The theme for this week's Goat Rope is Black History and its many intersections with El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier entries.

Yesterday's post was about John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry and the formation of unionist West Virginia during the Civil War.

As John Alexander Williams wrote in his classic West Virginia: A History,

Few of the 25,000 black people who found themselves living in West Virginia after the Civil War are likely to have wept for the loss of the Old Dominion. What was Virginia irridenta for some of their former masters became a haven of freedom for ex-slaves. Some blacks served as spies or couriers for Union troops operating in the Shenandoah region; others simply followed the soldiers northward to freedom. More than one Valley white family was shocked by the departure of "faithful old family retainers" who left at the first good opportunity. Julia Davis tells the story of a husband and wife who belonged to Miss Davis's grandmother; they took off once looking for Yankee protection at Harpers Ferry but became lost and had to return. On the next opportunity, they took off again. This time they appropriated a horse and carriage from their mistress--and they made it. Farther south, a Union soldier noticed a 75-year-old black woman accompanying the army as it retreated across Gauley Mountain after the Lynchburg Raid of 1864. Over terrain so rugged and barren of food that it reduced war-hardened men to tears of frustration, she was "striding along on foot with wonderful endurance and zeal...walking for freedom."

One person who made that long walk was young Booker T. Washington, who traveled with his mother and brother from the plantation where they had been enslaved in Franklin County Virginia. The journey was long and hard and the children made most of it on foot.

Washington's stepfather had previously escaped by following the Union army and was working at a salt furnace in Malden, Kanawha County. Conditions were harsh, but he was able to begin his education in a one-room school.

In his Up From Slavery, Washington describes the excitement and novelty of a world of education being opened up to a people who had been denied it for centuries:

This experience of a whole race beginning to go to school for the first time, presents one of the most interesting studies that has ever occurred in connection with the development of any race. Few people who were not right in the midst of the scenes can form any exact idea of the intense desire which the people of my race showed for an education. As I have stated, it was a whole race trying to go to school. Few were too young, and none too old, to make the attempt to learn. As fast as any kind of teachers could be secured, not only were day-schools filled, but night-schools as well. The great ambition of the older people was to try to learn to read the Bible before they died. With this end in view, men and women who were fifty or seventy-five years old would often be found in the night-school. Sunday-schools were formed soon after freedom, but the principal book studied in the Sunday-school was the spelling-book. Day-school, night-school, Sunday-school, were always crowded, and often many had to be turned away for want of room.

Eventually, Washington studied at the Hampton Institute in Virginia, returning to West Virginia to teach. Later, when he taught at Hampton, he returned during breaks to work in the mines. Washington left West Virginia in 1881 and opened a school for African Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama.

According to Joseph Bundy, writing in the West Virginia Encyclopedia,

The school had a humble beginning, with 37 students meeting in Butler Chapel African American Methodist Episcopal Zion, a log structure with an adjoining shanty. At the close of the May 1914 term, Principal Washington's last full year as the head of the school, his Tuskegee Institute owned 110 buildings, 2,110 acres of land and more than 350 head of livestock; hundreds of wagons, carriages, farm implements, and other equipment valued at nearly $1.5 million; and a permanent endowment fund worth more than $2 million.

Washington drew criticism from W.E.B. DuBois and others for not challenging racial inequality--although it was a lot easier to do this in New England than Alabama. His efforts no doubt improved conditions and life chances for many African Americans in the deep South.

He died on the Tuskegee campus in 1915.

NO END IN SIGHT. Here's Scott Ritter on the future of Iraq.

MYTHS OF FREE TRADE are busted in this discussion by Chalmers Johnson of Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang's new book, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism.

WHAT BOOM? Barbara Ehrenreich comments on the dismal state of the economy in this article. Here's the punchline:

The challenge isn’t just to prop up stock prices but to rebuild an economy in which everyone shares the good times — and no one is consigned to a permanent recession.

SUBPRIME MESS. Economist Dean Baker comments on the subprime mortgage crisis here.

MINERS' RIGHTS. A number of groups have petitioned the Mine Safety and Health Administration to require more training on miners' rights to a safe and healthy workplace, as Ken Ward reports.

DINING OUT ISN'T EASY for folks with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

PERCHANCE TO DREAM

Dreams are a perennially fascinating topic. It's pretty amazing that each night as we sleep our minds produce such wild images, stories, and ideas--or at least it seems that way when we wake up. Some animals even seem to do it.

El Cabrero is not an expert on sleep or dream science, but it seems like the latest research indicates that dreams play an important mental function connected with memory and the processing of the information and stimuli of waking life.

Freud shook the scientific community with the publication of his The Interpretation of Dreams at the turn of the last century. His ideas that such phenomena were meaningful seemed ludicrous to materialistically oriented scientists, but in fact it concurred with the opinions of pretty much all humanity throughout pretty much all history. Dreams probably influenced the development of a lot of human myths and religious beliefs and practices--including the belief in life after death as people dreamed of encounters with the departed.

Some dreams seem to be just residual static from the previous day's events, but others appear to have a clear or disguised meaning. Occasionally, some are downright deep.

I've always been interested in this subject, but dreams really got my attention when I discovered the ideas of Freud and Jung in my youth. I'm not an orthodox Freudian or Jungian now (though I lean towards the former most days), but I agree with their main idea that these creations of the unconscious have a lot to tell us.

I take dreams pretty seriously, especially strong ones, and they have even influenced some of the most important decisions of my life. It's not that I think they are messengers from beyond--although some sure seem that way--but rather that they express a lot of the mental activity, thinking and feeling that go one beneath the surface of our ordinary awareness. They have triggered insights and creativity from scientists as well as artists.

Dreams will be the guiding thread through this week's posts.

Speaking of which, here's a funny dream I had when I first read Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, which argues that they are basically wish fulfillments. I wished I was able to interpret dreams--so I dreamed I could. Pretty cute.

DEALING WITH RECESSION. Here's an op-ed by yours truly on what it would take to provide a strong stimulus to a slowing economy.

TIME FOR DISASTER POPULISM. Here's Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, on how the right is great at cashing in on bad news and how the rest of us need to dial in.

MINE SAFETY. Ken Ward had a good one in the Sunday Gazette-Mail about how many coal companies ignore fines for unsafe conditions.


COMBAT TRAUMA is increasingly a factor in courtrooms around the country in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

MEAT. More and more people are rethinking carnivorous habits, or at least the ways we satisfy them.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

CALL NO ONE HAPPY UNTIL...

Caption: This kid looks pretty happy now, but it's too soon to tell.

El Cabrero just finished a second slow slog through The Histories of Herodotus, which is a long, rambling account of the conflict between ancient Greece and the Persian empire, complete with any number of random digressions.

Herodotus has been called "the father of history." The book jacket notes that he's also been called "the father of lies."

(I would suggest "the father of BS" as a reasonable compromise, but I have a feeling that BS was already pretty old by the time of the battle of Marathon.)

For my money, such as it is, one of the best parts is the story of a conversation and its aftermath between Croesus, the fabulously wealthy king of Lydia (in what is now Turkey), and the Athenian sage and statesman Solon on the perennially interesting subject of happiness.

Both of their names have since become proverbial, as in to be "rich as Croesus" or a Solon or wise lawgiver.

That story will be the thread that holds this week's Goat Rope together.

Sneak preview: Croesus, fishing for a compliment, asks Solon who is the happiest of mortals and gets a wise answer he never expected. Solon answers in effect that the wisest course is to call no one happy until he or she has died and you know the whole course of the life in question. Things change and happiness or virtue can often be mistaken for luck.

TOUGH DAYS FOR MASSEY ENERGY. Speaking of which, Massey Energy has had a run of bad luck lately. Gee, I'm really torn up about that. Please wait while I try to compose myself. OK, I'm back. Here's why:

FIRST, as mentioned last week, Massey received the biggest fine in U.S. history for its "reckless disregard" for safety at the Aracoma fire that killed two miners in Jan. 2006. The fine was $1.5 million, the maximum allowed by law.

Here's the link to the MSHA report and here's a sample from their press release:

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) today announced that it has fined the operator of the Aracoma Alma Mine No. 1 in Logan County, W.Va., where two miners perished in a fire on Jan. 19, 2006, $1.5 million for contributory safety violations. The fine is the largest ever assessed by MSHA in a coal mine accident. MSHA's investigation team determined that 25 violations of mandatory health and safety laws contributed to the accident.

"The number and severity of safety violations at the mine at the time of the fire demonstrated reckless disregard for safety, warranting the highest fine MSHA has levied for a fatal coal mining accident," said Richard E. Stickler, assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health. "MSHA has referred this case to the U.S. Attorney's Office for possible criminal charges."

Stickler added: "We at MSHA extend our thoughts and prayers to the families for their losses, and we thank them for their patience as we worked to complete our investigation. We appreciate the cooperative working relationship we have had with the West Virginia Office of Miners' Health, Safety and Training and the West Virginia Governor's Office, as represented by Davitt McAteer."

In March 2006, MSHA referred the Aracoma case to the U.S. Attorney's Office for possible criminal charges (assuming any of them still have their jobs).


SECOND, Ken Ward reported Sunday in the Charleston Gazette-Mail that

More than a year after two miners died in a conveyor belt fire, federal inspectors continue to find serious safety violations at Massey Energy’s Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine.

In the last six months, U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration inspectors have cited the Logan County operation for more than 170 violations, agency records show.

Actually, Ward also shows that mine inspectors before the fire "missed or ignored major violations that agency officials say were key factors in the deaths."

FINALLY, a March 23 decision by U.S. District Judge Robert C. "Chuck" Chambers, former speaker of the WV House of Delegates rescinded the valley fill permits of four large surface mines, all of which were, according to The State Journal, subsidiaries of Massey Energy.

Maybe if Solon were with us today, he'd urge us to call no corporation happy until we see how it all shakes out.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

MOVING FORWARD, and more sad news from WV

Caption: We need to start moving in the right direction. This little guy already started.

As El Cabrero recalls, the first lines of Dante's Divine Comedy go something like this:

"In the middle of our life's journey I awoke to find myself in a dark wood, having lost the true path."

That's a common personal feeling for a lot of us, but, sad to say, it's an apt description of current state of the United States under this disastrous regime.

Even leaving aside for now the incalculable damage that has been done to the international standing and security of the country, at the domestic level there is a lot of damage to undo. One place to start is moving from the upward distribution of wealth towards something like the common good.

The Economic Policy Institute thinks the American people could use "an economic agenda that will spur growth, reduce insecurity, and provide broadly shared prosperity." They've recently started a new initiative called the Agenda for Shared Prosperity in which they plan to articulate an economic program that is "comprehensive, understandable, and workable."

Here are the first three points:

1. Health care and retirement security: Building on existing popular and effective programs to provide accessible and affordable health care and ensure retirement security, we will propose: (a) that all Americans have guaranteed access to affordable health care through employer-provided insurance or a public plan; and (b) that retirees receive at least 70% of their pre-retirement income via a supplement to a strengthened Social Security.

2. Fair trade: An alternative approach to globalization and competitiveness will include policies to rebalance trade, to invest in new technologies that generate high-quality domestic manufacturing employment, and to promote environ-mental and labor policies to ensure that globalization benefits working people in both developed and developing nations.

3. Rewarding work: A plan for rebalancing the labor market will include raising and indexing the minimum wage, ensuring the right of workers to organize unions, and making full employment a central commitment of economic policy.

Other items on the agenda include energy policy, investments in infrastructure, family policy, the safety net, fiscal policy, and ensuring opportunity for all. Look for more as this develops.

SAD WEST VIRGINIA NEWS: I'm sad to say that the death toll from the apartment fire in nearby Huntington is now nine. That city has taken some major hits over the years.

MORE SAD WEST VIRGINIA NEWS: Two miners were killed this weekend in a McDowell County roof fall. According to Ken Ward, writing in the Charleston Gazette, the deaths were caused by a risky practice known as "retreat mining," in which the last remaining coal is extracted from pillars holding up the roof of the mine.

In all the mining disasters the state has suffered in the last year, has anyone heard that drug abuse by miners was a factor? I didn't think so. The recent proposal of the state coal industry for mandatory drug testing of all miners seems to me to be a cynical effort to divert attention from mine safety.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED