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Miners Go Back But Fight's Not Over

By VVAW

The recent wildcat strike of soft coal miners begun this August in Logan County, W. VA. is now over. The month-long strike involved 90,000 coal miners, about 75% of all United Mine Worker members, and had spread to Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and Illinois before it ended. However, the conditions giving rise to the strike and the demands the miners fought for remain the same. The miners, like all workers, face a situation where they must fight or be crushed, so in one way or another, the fight will continue.

The coal miners have a long and militant history, especially in recent years, of wildcat strikes. They learned long time ago that you have to fight to survive in the coal fields and that the strike was one of their primary weapons. With the current economic crisis deepening, the coal companies have stepped up their attempts to smash the miners' wildcats to increase productivity and destroy their ability to fight back. The companies have used hundreds of court injunctions against the UMW to prevent wildcats, fining both the union and individual miners for violations of these injunctions.

In the 1974 contract struggle, thousands of miners demanded an end to the injunctions and fought for the right to strike to be included in their grievance procedure. They were sold out in this however when UMW President Arnold Miller 'traded away' the right to strike. Then in June the UMW leaders set up a wildcat strike commission to 'crack down' on the miners' strikes.

Despite the companies' and union leadership's attempts to control or break the wildcats, strikes have continued and hatred for the injunctions has grown. It was against this background that the most recent strike spread like wildfire throughout the coalfields as miners united together, demonstrating, picketing, and fighting the cops that tried to stop them.

Uniting around the battle cry, "Stop the Injunctions - We Demand the Right to Strike"; the miners also raised the demands against the firings, suspensions and jail sentences handed out during the strike against the runaround grievance procedure used by the coal companies. Their contract has two words in it, "binding arbitration" that meant that the companies can do whatever they want and the workers can't strike in retaliation until the company controlled courts 'rule' on the grievance. A leaflet put out by the Miners Committee to Defend the Right to Strike, a rank and file group active in the strike, summed up what the workers already felt: "Did a Federal judge build our union, did a politician give us gas, did an umpire give us Black Lung compensation? NO, only our struggle won these things. We need a new grievance procedure but one that does away with the umpire and gives us the right to strike."

In the face of the massive pressure of the coal companies, union hacks, cops, courts, injunctions, jailings and fines, the miners have ended the strike. At present there is a lull in the fighting, an orderly retreat, in order to be better able to fight another day. Even thought the strike is over without complete victory, the miners are in a stronger position than before for the next battle. The miners have learned through the wildcat that without the strike weapon, legal or not, the companies will take more and more advantage of their 'right' to work the miners to death for the sake of their profits. The issues are clearer than ever before to thousands of miners and workers all over the US; the way to fight is clearer; and the role of union hacks, like Miller, who consistently sabotaged the miners' struggle, is clearer. The next time around the miners are going to be one hell of a lot stronger!