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No Contract: No Coal!

By VVAW

The fight for the right to control their own lives isn't new to the coal miners in Harlan County, Kentucky. The struggle against the dominance of the coal operators and mine owners began in 1917; it continues today.

Since 1917, the coal operators have used every tactic they could to crush the militant miners, and though they have had temporary successes, the miners have never stopped fighting back. In 1931, the "Battle of Evarts" saw four hired gun thugs killed, and 43 miners (who were defending themselves) arrested on charges of murder and conspiracy; Harlan earned its reputation as "Bloody Harlan." When coal lost its place as the number one source of power, the mechanization cut the labor force by 2/3's, the companies go the upper hand.

In 1970, the Eastover Mining Company bough the mines at Brookside and Highsplint in Harlan County. Although the miners began to organize to join the United Mine Workers of America (WMWA), the company quickly signed a contract with the Southern Labor Union (SLU), a company union which agreed to $30 per day (top wage) where UMWA mines paid $42 per day; SLU had no safety committee, and provided a medical card which wasn't honored by local hospitals. No SLU local has ever gone on strike.

When the three-year contract ran out, the Brookside miners went to the UMWA and brought the union into the fight; in June, 1973, by a vote of 113-55 they voted in the UMWA. On July 26, 1973, when negotiations with Eastover failed, the miners went out on strike.

Eastover Mining and the coal operators could not stand alone against the militant determination of the miners. Eastover, however, is the wholly-owned subsidiary of Duke Power Company, the 6th largest utility in the country, with over $2.5 billion in assets. Duke wants a controlled system--coal from Duke-owned mines straight to the Duke-owned generating plants. To complete the chain, Duke wants to own the unions and the miners.

Duke has money--over $90 million in profits last year--and money means power; when miners set up picket lines to keep scabs out of the mine, Judge Byrd Hogg, himself a mine-owner, prohibited the union from having more than 3 pickets at any one mine entrance. Miners' wives, members of the Brookside Women's Club, took up the picket line and beat the scabs away from the mine. Duke had to find another tactic.

Under the guidance of the WMWA, 20 miners went to the New York Stock Exchange to picket. Back in Harlan County, during Duke's annual stockholders' meeting, they cast 55 votes for Arnold Miller, president of UMWA. Bound by the legal restraints of so-called "labor" laws, the union mounted a public relations campaign against the company, calling it the next Farah ( the pant's factory which was finally forced to recognize the union after a lengthy strike), and warning potential buyers against Duke stock. The campaign has not yet proved successful.

The real battle still goes on in Harlan County. SLU officials, on behalf of Duke Power, offered tow of the striking miners bribes to get the miners back to work--and a $5000 bonus within 48 hours of success. Tape recorders and UMWA photographer recorded the attempt, and the SLU was publically exposed as a sell-out representative of the coal operators.

Under company oriented labor law, a striking union must hold an election after one year in order to continue to represent the workers. Duke and it's union hacks began to coerce new employees at the company's Highsplint mine ( just down the road) to sign SLU cards, in hopes that they could rig the vote in a new union election. The striking miners also understood the importance of the other mines in the area; the Brookside mine alone cannot hurt the huge power company, but united action can.

In early July, miners from Highsplint began a sympathy walkout. One pensioned miner, walking the picket line, was shot twice by a security guard and five other were pinned down in a ditch by automatic weapons fire coming from the direction of the company commissary. State troopers, used as scab guards throughout the strike, could find no automatic weapons when they searched the area. The security guard, arrested the next afternoon, was charged with shooting and intent kill; his $3000 bail was paid by the personal bodyguard of the president of the Eastover Mining Company.

On the following day, a foreman from the Highsplint mine, sympathetic to the striking miners, held off company officials with a high-powered rifle as they tried to force him to return to work. He was arrested the following morning.

Eastover is using still another tactic--evicting the miners and their families from their sub-standard company housing (half the housed have no plumbing, water has been declared unfit for animals to drink). When asked why she lives in company housing, one miner's wife replied: "All I can say is, we can't find anyplace else to move to, there's such a housing shortage in Harlan County and around.

Lines are clear: on one side is the massive corporation with its company union; its hired gun thugs; complete cooperation from the local judge, the State police, and the State government. On the other side are the miners and their families; men and women with a history of resisting intimidation and violence, and growing support from those who see that the miners' struggle is the struggle of all those who fight exploitation. The miners' demands are clear, too: give us back the control of our lives and our union--which means safe working conditions, good pay, medical benefits. In return the company will get its coal; without it, in the words of one miner: "No contract, no coal."