Source: 13News
Date: Sept. 1, 2025
RACINE, W.Va. (WOWK) — With picnics and celebrations happening across the tri-state, one picnic is celebrating the work of coal miners and the impact they have on our lives.
Food grilling, sun shining and families coming together are staples of the Labor Day weekend. But for coal miners, the holiday celebrates the hard work and sacrifice of those who came before them.
“We’re here to recognize the sacrifices the people that came before us made to garner in better working conditions, safer working conditions,” United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) District 17 Vice President Brian Lacey said.
Cecil Roberts, the president of the UMWA and a native of West Virginia, said that the labor movement radically changed the coal mining industry.
“Used to be paid in zero for mining coal. Eight hours, ten hours, 12 hours a day. Seven-year-old kids used to have to go to work in the mines to help support the family,” Roberts said. “Everybody lived in a company house and a company town and went to the company store, and it was the union, the labor movement, that changed it.”
For the last 87 years, the UMWA has hosted a Labor Day picnic in the place where coal was first discovered in the Mountain State to not only celebrate the strides from the past, but to work towards the future.
“And, it’s also to remind people that there’s work still to yet to be done out there in this country for workers,” Lacey said. “They need safer workplaces, stricter safety laws, better wages, better benefits.”
And for Roberts, this year’s picnic is extra special, as this October he will be retiring from the position he’s held since 1995.
He hopes this picnic continues for generations to come.
“I hope it goes for another hundred years,” Roberts said. “And, I hope the union continues to be prevalent. I hope it continues to be important part of our society and our economic well-being.”
Brian Sanson will be taking over Roberts’s position in October.
Written By: Riley McIlmoyle
