Democrat Sherrod Brown is the senior senator from Ohio.
A year ago, more than a thousand coal miners with the United Mine Workers of America dropped their tools and walked out of the Warrior Met Coal Mine in Brookwood, Ala. Today, their strike continues, making it one of the longest strikes in recent history.
It illuminates the contradictions of the modern labor movement.
In many ways, organized labor has more momentum behind it than it’s had in recent history: President Biden is one of the most pro-union presidents in decades; recent surveys show the highest public support for labor unions in almost 50 years; and several high-profile unionization efforts have found success at companies such as Starbucks, John Deere, Kellogg’s and even Amazon.
On April 1, workers in Staten Island celebrated the first successful unionization effort at an Amazon warehouse. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Yet, union membership remains near historic lows. Organized labor still faces enormous obstacles against massive corporations whose dominance in the economy we haven’t seen since Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency.
And, just as in the Gilded Age, workers often feel like they have no one in government on their side.
In the midst of that era of corporate dominance, it was Roosevelt who first established the public interest in ensuring workers’ voices are heard.
With the help of documentary filmmaker Ken Burns and UNUM, his digital platform exploring the intersection of history and current events, I want to revisit a moment in 1902 when the very same union striking today in Alabama helped push Roosevelt to set a new precedent: The federal government has an essential role to play in labor disputes.
And while no one is calling for nationalizing an entire industry today, as Roosevelt threatened then, this moment is an important reminder that our government must work to protect workers’ right to organize for fair pay and safe working conditions.
United Mine Workers of America International President Cecil Roberts said the words in thinking back on the last year, one day short of the first anniversary of the union’s strike against Warrior Met Coal.
It is believed to be the longest strike in Alabama history.
By all accounts, no one saw it lasting this long.
The work stoppage, the first for the Alabama miners in four decades, began April 1, 2021.
Roberts, who has been president of the union for the past 26 years, said today it was the first major strike of his tenure.
Several times over the last 12 months he had thought it was close to ending.
“It should have ended months and months ago,” he said. “In fact, quite frankly, I don’t think there should have been a strike in Alabama.”
Curtis Turner is the president of the Local Union 2427 Central Shop. He worked for 36 years in the mines and, like Roberts, never expected the strike to continue for a year.
“We’ve made this company one of the largest met coal producers and sellers in the U.S., and the company is very profitable,” he said. “I just cannot believe the company has taken this position. In my opinion, it’s just corporate greed.”
The old agreement with the union was negotiated as Warrior Met emerged from the bankruptcy proceedings of the former Walter Energy, which declared bankruptcy in 2016.
Union members say they made numerous concessions at that time in pay, benefits, holidays, overtime and in other areas to keep the company going and get it out of bankruptcy. Those concessions, they say, have not been restored in subsequent offers from the company.
According to the union, miners lost about $6 an hour under the bankruptcy contract, which added up even more when you consider the accumulation of overtime.
“We were basically promised back in 2016 that if we did this contract, that if we made the company viable over the course of that contract, we would go back to whatever everyone else is making and back to the benefit package,” Turner said.
“Then they told us, we don’t think we made those promises.”
In the tentative offer, the company proposed a $1.50 raise over five years, the union says.
“In my opinion, we had no other choice,” Roberts said.
Nearly two weeks into the strike, it appeared a settlement had been reached, but that was rejected after the union members voted down the tentative agreement by 95%, Roberts said.
Warrior Met Coal did not comment for this story.
The company established a website, Warrior Met Coal Facts, to counter what it says are misleading statements in the media by union members.
Warrior Met says it has put forward eight full written proposals for a new contract in the last year and offered a 10% to 12% raise.
Roberts counters by saying the eight proposals are virtually indistinguishable from the tentative agreement that was overwhelming voted down by the union last April.
According to the company, the proposed contract from April 2021 offered reduced deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses on healthcare, a policy that miners wouldn’t be scheduled for seven consecutive days unless the employee agreed, offered additional holidays, and increased the number of unexcused absences allowed.
The union says the strike has cost the company close to $1 billion in lost revenue.
It arrives at that figure based on the price of metallurgical coal, which is used in steel production. Last year, when the strike began, the price fluctuated around $100 per ton. Within the last month, the price soared to more than $400 per ton.
According to Warrior Met Coal’s quarterly reports, the company last year incurred $21.4 million in non-recurring expenses directly attributable to the strike for security and other expenses, and $33.9 million in idle mine expenses.
“While the Company has business continuity plans in place, the strike may still cause disruption to production and shipment activities, and the plans may vary significantly from quarter to quarter for the full year of 2022,” the company warned in its last earnings report in February.
When the strike was initially announced, as many as 1,100 members were said to have been participating. Roberts said the number is closer to 900, and about 15% have gone back to work over the past year.
According to Roberts, the union has provided just under $20 million to its striking members over the last year, including healthcare coverage, and has been able to pay about $1.8 million using contributions from other unions and private individuals. The union could continue to pay out strike benefits for the next four to five years, he said.
“If the company is trying to put us in a position where we couldn’t pay these workers strike benefits, that’s not going to happen,” he said. “They need to rethink that.”
Turner said morale among strikers remains high. Food banks continue to distribute to families, and members rally every week.
“The people are just looking for a decent contract and being able to go back to work,” he said. “They realize they’re sacrificing a lot but its for a better future for them. They’re pretty well pumped. We’re not going anywhere.”
The union has denounced such incidents. Roberts said he has “called for non-violence” throughout the strike.
“But our people are dodging cars out on the picket line,” he said. “They’ve had threats made against them by workers inside those facilities. They’ve had guns pulled on them. But they’ve endured all of that.”
Turner said union members continue to station people outside mining locations, honoring the restraining order while continuing a picketing presence.
“We have to carry our people, drop them off, and come back and pick them up,” he said. “Some of these locations are so remote that they don’t have cell phone service. It’s real tough on individuals to participate.”
The union hasn’t just confined its picketing activity to Tuscaloosa County. Last year, miners protested at the Manhattan offices of BlackRock, the largest shareholder in Warrior Met Coal, on three different occasions. At one protest, Roberts was handcuffed, along with five other people, as the union attempted to aim attention at the companies they say are responsible for the conditions that made the strike happen.
By spotlighting the role of private equity firms in business, the strike also gained the attention of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass). Last month, a Brookwood miner and Roberts testified before the Senate Budget Committee.
Roberts said the union remains ready to make a deal to get members back to work.
“Somebody on the other side has got to want a collective bargaining agreement,” Roberts said. “We could find a way to reach an agreement. It’s like dancing with ourselves.”
BELMONT COUNTY, OHIO (WTRF)- It has been 82 years since the tragic Willow Grove Mine accident.
On March 16, 1940, an explosion ripped through the Willow Grove Mine, taking the life of 72 workers.
To honor the lives that were lost, family and community members gathered at the mine site in Neffs in Belmont County for a memorial service.
Leading the ceremony was, Rick Altman, District 31 Vice President of the United Mine Workers of America.
He says it’s critical that we continue sharing their story.
“People don’t realize how important it is to remember our history.
“In order to move forward we truly have to remember where we came from and the people that cost and gave up their lives so that we can have a better life.
“Not just for us, but for our kids and grandkids in the future.”
RICK ALTMAN, DISTRICT 31 VICE PRESIDENT, UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA
Flags were lowered to half-mast, and those present held a moment of silence.
Altman says the impact of this disaster is still present in today’s community.
“Your heart breaks when you hear some of the stories and it’s like Secretary Brian Sanson said it affects, generations that they didn’t get to spend time with their grandkids.
“They only hear stories and It’s a wonderful feeling to know that we can give finality and a true resting place for people who’ve been really disturbed for.
“82 years they haven’t had a place to call home.
“Now they’re home.”
RICK ALTMAN, DISTRICT 31 VICE PRESIDENT, UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA
Many other people spoke at the ceremony, including former State Representative Jack Cera, and Belmont County Sheriff David Lucas.
The name of each miner was read aloud, and wreaths were placed on the memorial stone. Even nearby churches rang their bells in their memory.
The Belmont County Veterans Association then performed a 21-gun salute.
This ceremony reminds us of the sacrifices these miners made in the 1940s but also reminds you that modern miners still face risk and danger every day and deserve respect.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The energy startup SPARKZ said Thursday it plans to build an electric battery factory in West Virginia in 2022 that will employ at least 350 people.
The company will partner with the United Mine Workers of America to recruit and train dislocated miners to be the factory’s first production workers.
“We need good, union jobs in the coalfields no matter what industry they are in,” said UMWA International Secretary-Treasurer Brian Sanson. “This is a start toward putting the tens of thousands of already-dislocated coal miners to work in decent jobs in the communities where they live.”
SPARKZ Founder and CEO Sanjiv Malhotra said the batteries produced at the factory will be 100% cobalt-free batteries, an effort to bring down the cost of U.S. lithium-ion battery production. The Democratic Republic of Congo has historically been the top producer of cobalt worldwide, with most mines controlled by Chinese companies.
Malhotra said the operation will be a boon to U.S. efforts to counter China’s dominance of the electric battery market. The factory is also a major step for West Virginia as the state transitions from its roots in coal production to the “new energy economy,” he said.
“America’s clean energy future will reach its potential when we innovate and manufacture the next generation of energy storage domestically,” Malhotra, a former U.S. Department of Energy executive, said in a news release.
SPARKZ is in the final stages of site selection in West Virginia for the factory, but the precise location of the plant has not been determined. The company, founded in 2019, said it will be announcing customer partnerships in the coming months. Its first markets will likely be in material handling vehicles, like forklifts, agricultural equipment and energy storage.
Malhotra said he plans to make the official announcement about the factory Friday during a visit in Charleston with U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Mulhern Granholm and Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland. U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sanson of the United Mine Workers of America also planned to attend.
“It’s difficult to tell your children that you can’t do things because you are not at work right now, you are on strike…It’s not fair. They exploit our work. They work us on skeleton crews…Then we get to watch them sit in the office and make $4 million dollars a year,” Braxton Wright, a United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) Local 2368 member, testified before the Senate Budget Committee on Capitol Hill on February 17, 2022.
Wright is one of more than 1,000 coal miners in Alabama on strike against Warrior Met Coal, a company whose largest shareholder is BlackRock Investment Group, the world’s biggest asset manager.
Nearly a year after the strike began on April 1, 2021, the miners represented by UMWA are still fighting to restore concessions they took to help Warrior Met Coal emerge from the Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring of Walter Energy in 2015. As part of an agreement in federal bankruptcy court, asset management companies Blackstone, Apollo Global Management, and KKR bought the remnants of Walter Energy and were allowed to reject prior labor agreements, including union miners’ collective bargaining agreement and their retiree pension and healthcare agreement.
Today, UMWA is confronting this legacy of Wall Street firms’ initial restructuring and continued controlling investment in Warrior Met during their labor dispute. At a strike rally in Brookwood, Alabama, UMWA International President Cecil E. Roberts explained, “Warrior Met is the creation of a shadowy network of New York hedge funds and investment banks…The workers gave up more than $1.1 billion in wages, health care benefits, pensions, and more to allow Warrior Met to emerge from bankruptcy five years ago. The company has enjoyed revenue in excess of $3.4 billion in that time. But it does not want to recognize the sacrifices these workers made to allow it to exist in the first place.”
The strikers at Warrior Met are far from the only workers dealing with companies whose largest shareholder is a Wall Street fund. BlackRock and Vanguard are frequently referred to as two of the Big Three (along with State Street) in the literature on asset management capitalism, which has proliferated in the United States since the 2008 financial crisis.
While academic studies cite that “as of December 2018 one of Vanguard, BlackRock, or State Street was the largest shareholder in 438 of the S&P 500 companies,” Senator Bernie Sanders, in a Senate Budget Committee testimony last month, stated that today the Big Three “are major shareholders in more than 96% of S&P 500 companies. In other words, they have significant influence over many hundreds of companies that employ millions of American workers.”
“Interestingly enough, if you haven’t heard much about the power of these Wall Street firms, it may have something to do with the fact that a small number of Wall Street firms control about half of the newspapers in America,” Sanders pointed out.
As asset management capitalism flourishes and an increasing number of companies have Wall Street funds as majority shareholders, more workers and unions will be navigating industrial labor relations, like the UMWA has with the dispute at Warrior Met.
To meet these challenges, UMWA is building a model for organized resistance against Wall Street funds’ exploitation of workers. In the Warrior Met strike, UMWA must target both Wall Street’s Frankenstein assemblage of the company from the remains of Walter Energy, as well as continued investments by financial firms such as BlackRock and Vanguard. To pressure the company and Wall Street shareholders towards an equitable labor contract, the union has developed a strategic campaign with simultaneous local, national, and legislative actions, which offers a glimpse into the potential future of labor and social movements in an increasingly financialized economy.
Holding the Line at Home: Strategic Local Action
As underground coal mining continues to be one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States, safety continues to be a significant concern for strikers, who work near the location of “one of nation’s worst mine disasters” that killed 13 workers at the Walters Resources Mine No. 5 on September 23, 2001. Additionally, while Wall Street firms, including Apollo and Blackstone, have paid themselves and stockholders nearly $800 million in Warrior Met dividends, miners in Alabama strike to earn back the $6/hour pay cuts, longer hours, fewer holidays, and increased health care costs they agreed to as temporary measures to help Warrior Met become profitable.
“The strikers only want something fair,” UMWA International District 22 Vice President Mike Dalpiaz explains. “To get the mine going after restructuring, we wanted to get the membership back to work. But after making the company hundreds of millions of dollars in the last five to six years, it’s time to come back for the concessions that miners took to help Warrior Met.”
Today, the miners in Alabama have come back in full force. In June, the union held what they believe is the largest labor rally in the history of the state, and the UMWA Warrior Met strike has now become the longest strike in Alabama’s history. However, maintaining a labor dispute for nearly a year hasn’t been easy for the workers or the union.
Strikers have reported company violence, including vehicular assaults on the picket line. Roberts issued a statement June 2021 saying, “We have members in casts, we have members in the hospital, we have members who are concerned about their families and potential of violence against them if they come to the picket line.”
Four months later, in October 2021, a Tuscaloosa County circuit judge delivered a blow to strikers’ ability to engage in otherwise legal, protected concerted activity by issuing a restraining order against UMWA picket activity due to allegations of escalating violence from picketers. UMWA released a blistering statement against the ruling as an “assault on the rights and freedoms of working families that has been the government’s hallmark during this strike. It contains provisions that are unconstitutional and it reinforces the notion that Americans – at least in Alabama – are not free to enjoy their rights to free speech and free assembly.”
Dalpiaz confirmed that Alabama State Police are essentially functioning as “private security” to usher temporary workers onto the mine property, a move that significantly reduces the strike’s economic impact on Warrior Met. Roberts emphasizes the effect this has also had on the local and state economy. “Alabama State Police have been working on the public’s dime to escort out-of-state strikebreakers who have been brought in to take Alabama taxpayers’ jobs. Where is the sense in that? We have seen no protest or investigation by our state’s leaders about this clear misuse of taxpayer dollars.”
Despite obstacles from Alabama courts, politicians, and police, strikers continue to hold the line nearly a year after the strike began. Dalpiaz emphasizes that the union believes fostering grassroots involvement and action is key to success. “We have kept this strike in Alabama alive by making membership the focus. At the end of the day, they have to live with this contract.” These workers remain the foundational, guiding force for a labor dispute that has taken on national dimensions.
“We Are Everywhere”: Taking the Struggle to the National Stage
Far from the Warrior Met mines in Alabama, UMWA picketers march outside the Manhattan headquarters of company’s larger shareholder, BlackRock, donning camouflage shirts emblazoned with the union logo and the phrase, “We Are Everywhere.” For months, they have been a steadfast presence at Wall Street firms who have invested in Warrior Met, including BlackRock, Apollo, and KKR.
Phil Smith, UMWA Director of Communications and Governmental Affairs, explains that having a Wall Street fund as the largest shareholder of a company alters industrial labor relations, in part, because it “frees the company up from the supervision that might come from traditional human shareholders.” As the UMWA merges more traditional strike tactics in Alabama with national and legislative approaches, the miners picketing Wall Street give a human face to the material impact that Warrior Met’s disembodied investment structure has on workers’ lives.
The national expansion of labor actions is described by Dalpiaz as an escalation of grassroots worker power. “On the ground, we speak with members and have rallies once a week to keep members informed and plan together what we think we need to do across the whole United States to pressure all stakeholders. You go where they are. The whole purpose is so they know we are here – everywhere across the country.”
On November 3, 2021, in an act of peaceful resistance during a rally outside BlackRock headquarters, 75-year-old Roberts and five other Mineworkers sat down and blocked traffic. They were arrested by the New York City police. Two weeks later, UMWA coordinated simultaneous national and global protests outside BlackRock offices on Wall Street; Melbourne, Australia; and across the United States, including the Alabama State Capitol, Denver, Washington, D.C., Boston, Newport Beach, and other locations.
While other unions and workers have joined in solidarity with UMWA, actions to pressure Wall Street firms have not been without their challenges—or surprises.
Smith explains that as UMWA coordinates their actions on Wall Street and fund management offices across the country, they have to be aware of who, or what, is the target at each location. “Renaissance Tech is top ten shareholders of Warrior Met, but when planning a picket, we found that in their New York headquarters, the only people working there are hired to service the computers…Decisions on when to buy and sell stocks are no longer made by humans.”
Smith recognizes that, under these circumstances, national and international strategic union action must be designed to influence the financial market. “Fund managers aren’t making day-to-day decisions on what happens with an investment that includes Warrior Met; a computer is. Some of these locations are just supercomputers and a few people who operate them. The only thing the computer cares about is how much money it makes. If it isn’t it making money, it can stop the behaviors and engage in new behaviors.”
Automated computer trading means that the strike needs to invoke financial losses that not only pressure Warrior Met’s human CEO and Board of Directors to come to an equitable labor agreement but also change the programmed behavior of a computer operating within certain parameters to buy and sell stocks. In November 2021, Warrior Met reported that the strike had cost them $16.2 million in increased costs over the previous quarter. However, with increased coal prices over the same period, even this multi-million dollar expenditure has not resulted in a drop in company stock value, nor has it significantly altered computer (or overall human shareholder) behavior.
Beyond the traditional image of strike picket lines and rallies, addressing computer algorithms is not typically one of the first components envisioned in a strategic union campaign during a labor dispute. However, for workers at a growing number of companies whose stocks are largely controlled by Wall Street funds, perhaps it may be. Recognizing this, the UMWA has not only taken its fight to Wall Street but also to the legislative powers that have the potential to regulate proliferating asset management capitalism.
Follow the Money: Wall Street Legislative Reform
“There should be some level of responsibility from Wall Street,” states Smith. Through the bankruptcy process “Apollo [Global Management] molded Warrior Met into what it is, and we are still dealing with this investment structure. How do you fight that? The only way is through legislation and better regulation of what private equity and asset management firms are doing.”
Smith’s statement highlights the importance of policy changes that are not only applicable to the current Warrior Met strike but also could have wider ramifications for the growing number of U.S. companies whose largest shareholder is a Wall Street fund. Recognizing this, UMWA has taken the fight to the halls of legislature, garnering political allies such as U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, and Bernie Sanders to speak out against Wall Street firms’ impact on workers and for regulatory legislation such as the Stop Wall Street Looting Act. This legislation would prioritize worker pay in the bankruptcy process; create incentive for job retention; and end the immunity of private equity firms from legal liability when companies they own break the law.
On an AFL-CIO panel, Warren, who co-sponsors the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, explained, “What happed at Warrior Met is what happens when these billion dollar Wall Street firms come to town. They suck as much as they can out of these companies to line their own pockets and it comes at the expense of worker and communities. The fact is that Warrior Met workers are on strike today because private equity gave them a bad deal.”
While Wall Street firms claim passive power over corporate America, Sen. Sanders is quick to counter this assertion. During the Senate Budget Committee hearing on “Wall Street Greed and Growing Oligarchy in America,” he explains that the Big Three of asset management firms — BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street — say “they are not involved in the day-to-day decisions of the companies they own, but let us be clear, these three companies own nearly one-fourth of votes at shareholder meetings, leveraging their power to influence CEO compensation, stock buy backs, environmental commitments, mergers, and pension benefits.”
***
It is this type of power that UMWA is pressuring BlackRock to assert over Warrior Met as its largest shareholder to reach an equitable labor contract. With just three asset management firms holding “about 80% of all indexed money” in 2020 and currently managing “a combined $21 trillion in assets, which surpasses the GDP of the U.S.,” Wall Street firms maintain a tremendous amount of voting power over major companies that employ millions of workers.
Through their strike at Warrior Met, UMWA miners provide U.S. workers with a model of multilevel labor mobilization that can combat underregulated asset management capitalism and harness private equity’s potential to sway corporate boards or management during labor disputes. It’s a fight that might have its epicenter in little Brookwood, Alabama, with a population of 2,000, but it has ramifications for 12,000,000 workers in the United States employed by companies who have Wall Street funds as their largest shareholders. The strikers’ struggle shows workers across the country how they can fight back against the power of asset management capitalism — and plan to win.
To support union strikers at Warrior Met, visit UMWA Strike Aid.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WCHS) — Some West Virginia coal miners say their safety is in question with a proposed bill that would affect how mine safety is regulated.
House Bill 4840 made its way out of the House of Delegates Government Organization Committee and landed inside the chambers. The piece of legislation had its first reading on Monday, and a public hearing was held with dozens of coal miners voicing their concerns. Many call the bill reckless, saying blood was spilled for the state’s current laws.
Harrison County coal miner Steve Zimmerman said if the bill passes, it would set mine safety back 50 years.
“The bill is doing disrespect to the men that are buried, the men that are still in those hills that will never come home,” Zimmerman said. “It’s beyond disrespectful.”
Under the bill, the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training would take on a new role. Mine inspections and fines for safety violations would turn into visits and recommendations.
“No one wants to work in an unsafe environment. In a mine, it could go from bad to worse very quickly,” Zimmerman said.
A part of the safety committee at his mine, Zimmerman said he knows the best practices, and to him, House Bill 4048 will affect miners’ safety.
“Everything about the bill rolls back safety 50 years. From apprentice miners not having the proper experience to obtain their black hat certification, which means they can go out by themselves, to eliminating the state inspectors ability to cite violations and charge the company,” Zimmerman said.
Last year, four miners died on the job, and already in 2022, two were killed. The latest was on Monday morning, hours before the public hearing, when a McDowell County miner lost his life.
“I want to send my condolences to that family that lost a miner today as well as his co-workers in that company,” Del. Adam Burkhammer, R-Lewis, said. “It’s not good news, and I sponsored this bill, so we don’t have to do that again.”
Burkhammer is one of House Bill 4840’s three sponsors. The current system is not working for him, and he wants to take a more proactive approach through training.
“I do want to save miners’ lives, and I believe we can do that with better and adequate training,” Burkhammer said.
Miners such as Brian Toothman like the training aspect of the bill, but he emphasized losing safety regulations puts lives at risk.
“We don’t ever want to take away anything we have as far as safety,” Toothman said. “A lot of us are looking at the long-term effects.”
Eyewitness News reached out to the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training for its reaction to the bill but have not heard back.
On Tuesday, the bill has its second reading in the House.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Multiple speakers at a House of Delegates public hearing Monday challenged a proposal on the state Office of Miner’s Health Safety and Training, sharing concerns about how changes could affect miner safety.
House Bill 4840 would shift the agency’s goals from enforcing and executing the state’s mining laws to assisting mine operators and providing “alternative mechanisms of enforcement.” Compliance visits to mines would happen as frequently as the office’s director would deem necessary.
Most speakers opposed the bill, saying the legislation would reduce safety for coal miners.
“Every one of these laws that’s written, state and federal, they’re not wrote by ink. They’re wrote by blood,” said Barry Brown, a coal miner with 32 years of underground mining experience. “Every one of these laws has blood on them. … Doing away with the state department and their enforcement, I think, would be the worse thing that this state could do.”
The agency currently focuses on inspecting mining locations and issuing penalties against operators. Officials also work with federal agencies on investigations.
“We keep cutting walls and stuff. We keep taking shortcuts,” Brown said. “I’m a union guy, and I believe when you take shortcuts, that is when things are going to happen, and we’re opening up the doors for this.”
Chad Francis, a representative of the United Mine Workers of America, criticized multiple parts of the bill’s provisions, including a reduction in apprenticeship hours and the change in the agency’s mission.
“Anyone who can comprehend this bill knows it does nothing to make mines safer,” he said.
Francis added, “If coal companies always did what was right, we wouldn’t need inspectors to write violations to help keep mines safe.”
UMWA President Cecil Roberts spoke against the legislation on Monday’s “MetroNews Talkline.”
“I’m upset that anyone in the state of West Virginia that knows anything about coal mining can’t possibly believe we need less enforcement in the coal industry,” he said.
The public hearing took place hours after state officials confirmed the death of a coal miner at a McDowell County site. Steven Hively, 52, of Philippi was working underground at the Ramaco Resources Berwind Mine when he was pinned by an air drill.
“We should tell those who are sponsoring this legislation that the first agency on the scene this morning was not MSHA, it was the state,” Roberts added. “I would submit to you the miners in West Virginia need all the protection that they can get.”
West Virginia Coal Association President Chris Hamilton spoke in favor of the measure during the hearing; he contended companies excel in examining their mines and ensuring miners are trained.
“Despite what you regularly hear from some, the coal industry takes great pride in its safety program and overall mine safety performance record,” he said. “No other program receives more attention or has greater resources dedicated to it.”
The House of Delegates on Tuesday will consider the measure on second reading.
Here’s an in-depth look at how ongoing business practices have impacted striking blue-collar workers for one west Alabama coal producer.
BROOKWOOD, AL — There’s a little wooden shelter at the intersection of Lock 17 Road and Miners Memorial Parkway in Brookwood that sat vacant on Friday. The site, which is scattered with weathered black and yellow picket signs supporting the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), was silent save for the bustle of traffic.
Severe storms had done a number on the picket line, which had been active for 325 days as of the publication of this story. The site’s portable toilet had been blown over by the wind and some of the ground signs were upended.
The empty picket line also stood in stark contrast to the operations directly across the road in the seemingly-busy offices of Warrior Met Coal.
But it was around the same time this reporter was leaving the site that Braxton and Haeden Wright, along with numerous other striking UMWA members, prepared to board a flight back to Alabama from Washington, D.C.
The purpose of their visit was the invitation to testify on the strike before the Senate Budget Committee on Capitol Hill, with discussions focused on the role had by massive private equity firms on workers at companies like Warrior Met Coal, along with potential legislation to wrangle in the extravagantly-wealthy firms.
As the strike nears its one-year mark, Patch took an in-depth look at the events that culminated in hundreds of dedicated coal miners walking off the job to fight for better pay and treatment.
‘Like Russian Roulette With Bills …’
Braxton Wright has worked at the mine in Brookwood for nearly two decades and is from a proud mining family. He was also one of more than 1,000 union employees of Warrior Met Coal to go on strike last April after negotiations fell through on a high-stakes collective bargaining agreement.
Since then, the union has held weekly rallies at Tannehill State Park, along with picketing the company’s offices in Brookwood and those of its largest shareholders in places like New York City. UMWA leaders have also reportedly turned down a total of nine attempts at a compromise on the part of the publicly-traded metallurgical coal supplier, with the union insisting that only minor words had been changed.
The surrounding community is overwhelming in support of the striking miners, with the local high school football team even sporting pickaxe stickers on their helmets last season in a show of solidarity. But the last year has not been an easy one, as families throughout west Alabama have seen their budgets squeezed due to loss of income from the strike. This is a problem compounded by soaring inflation and supply chain issues that have provided little reprieve.
“It’s been difficult,” Wright responded when asked by Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders to explain his family’s situation. “We’ve had to cut back on non-necessary items. We don’t get to go out maybe as much as we used to. Vacations are cut off or ended … My wife was sick and her pay was even cut out for a month. It was kind of like Russian Roulette with bills. You throw them out on a table and pick out which one you’re going to pay at the time.”
He went on to say that while many of the striking miners have picked up other jobs or found ways to make ends meet, it’s nothing close to the same level of financial security their families had been accustomed to. Coal mining salaries do offer the chance at a comfortable existence, but the trade-off comes in the long hours and inherent dangers of the profession.
“It’s difficult to tell your children that you can’t do things because you’re not at work right now, that you’re on strike,” Wright said.
Indeed, the last year has been one of the hardest for many families, but as UMWA International President Cecil Roberts argued during the committee hearing, the problems facing miners in Brookwood are historic in nature and date back to the business practices that ultimately forced its previous incarnation — Walter Energy — to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2015.
In the aftermath of the bankruptcy, which was due to a financially-overextended company in a metallurgical coal market that had gone belly-up due to a range of factors, it would be two outside private equity firms, Apollo Global Management and Blackstone, to lead the charge to profit from the restructuring.
And where two vultures are circling, more are almost always sure to follow.
Their efforts were more than successful, too, with both firms scoring massive profits and selling all of their shares by 2019. What wasn’t understood at the time, however, was how this would open the door to a revolving cast of private equity firms to buy huge portions of shares, before cashing out profits once the per share price gets high enough. It’s a common practice, as pointed out during the Senate hearing, and one that allows behemoth investors to exert unmitigated influence as majority shareholders.
That’s not to say turnover is prevalent in the boardroom at Warrior Met. In actuality, it often goes overlooked that Warrior Met Coal CEO Walt J. Scheller has held the company’s top job since 2011, weathering its bankruptcy, restructuring and the current strike. It would be months before his promotion that Walter Energy in April 2011 purchased Canadian coal producer Western Coal for a staggering $3.3 billion — a decision cited throughout its federal bankruptcy hearings as the fatal misstep that drove the company to bankruptcy when the bottom eventually fell out of the metallurgical coal market.
And after the company brand was changed to Warrior Met Coal, a new collective bargaining agreement was reached that UMWA said left them little in the way of options. But, in a show of good faith and to help save their jobs, union miners agreed to a 20% pay cut for the five-year term, which came in the range of $6-$8 an hour for employees, depending on their pay grade.
As Roberts explained on Capitol Hill Thursday, these concessions by UMWA members resulted in $1.1 billion in savings for the company and is widely-lauded as the component of Walter Energy’s restructuring that saved the company. During these trying five years, miners labored under the impression that their pay and truncated benefits would be restored once the company had returned to profitability. But it wouldn’t happen.
It’s important to note at this point that, during these lean times of pay cuts and uncertainty for employees, Warrior Met Coal returned to the New York Stock Exchange as a publicly-traded company in 2017 and has gone on to pay out more than $1 billion in dividends to shareholders. Of these profits, the vast majority went to large private equity firms that Sanders argued might wield more influence than the president of the United States.
Then, in April 2021, that five-year collective bargaining agreement was set to expire. However, the deal presented by Warrior Met Coal at the bargaining table was met with overwhelming opposition by the union members affected. For instance, as it stands, the company has been unwavering in its offer of a $1.50 hourly pay raise phased in over the five years of the proposed deal, falling well short of bringing the take-home pay of miners to levels prior to the previous labor agreement.
The measure has been put to a UMWA member vote only once since the strike began, failing 95-5 in a show of solidarity from the coal miner’s union.
But on Capitol Hill Thursday, the political divides were visible in the protracted labor strike and show just how difficult shoring up outside support can be, even among policymakers in Alabama.
‘A moment of unprecedented corporate greed’
Former Democratic presidential candidate and longtime Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders chairs the Senate Budget Committee and, along with his Senate colleague Elizabeth Warren, has been a vocal proponent for labor rights and an ardent supporter of unions like UMWA.
Sanders presided over the hearing Thursday, making it clear that the goal was to highlight the practices and influence of private equity firms, in addition to the impact had on the blue-collar workers they employ. The entire discussion was backdropped by the UMWA strike in Brookwood, which many view as a case study in the need for reform.
“What is happening at Warrior Met is not an aberration,” Sanders said. “At a moment of unprecedented corporate greed in this country, attacks against workers are taking place in company after company, industry after industry. Here is a dangerous reality: never before in the history of the United States have so few owned so much and had so much power over our economy.”
To underscore his point, Sanders then said three companies — BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street — own upwards of $22 trillion in assets. This amount is nearly equal to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and more than five times higher than the GDP of Germany.
He claimed these companies present themselves as passive investors not involved in the day-to-day decision-making of the companies they partially own. However, the liberal senator went down a long list of industrial and business sectors where the firms do wield considerable influence as majority shareholders.
Medicine. Transportation. Health care. Commodities. Manufacturing. The list goes on and truly underscores the power in the hands of just a few companies.
For instance, Sanders said the three aforementioned private equity firms are major shareholders in more than 96% of all S&P 500 companies — the absolute best of what’s available on the stock market.
This scope of influence also includes Warrior Met Coal, as two of the largest firms are also the company’s two biggest shareholders.
According to the latest available financial data, BlackRock Fund Advisors owns 6.7 million shares in Warrior Met Coal, representing a 13.22% shareholder stake in the company. This makes BlackRock the largest shareholder in the company, with its stock options valued at $178 million.
BlackRock is trailed by The Vanguard Group, Inc., which owns approximately 12% of the Warrior Met shares available — a total that carries an estimated sales price of $159 million. And when looking at the next eight largest shareholders of Warrior Met Coal, another 25% of the company’s stock options are owned by a range of investment firms and holding companies.
State Rep. Chris England, a Democrat from Tuscaloosa, has been one of the few area lawmakers to publicly lend his support to the strike. In a statement to Patch, he expressed his distain for the business practices that led to the Brookwood-based coal supplier cutting the pay for its employees and trying to starve out the union.
“It is extremely hard for me to believe that a company making record profits won’t come to the table and negotiate a fair contract with better wages and benefits for the very people that helped save it from bankruptcy,” he said on Friday. “It is even harder for me to believe that Alabama elected officials have been silent on a year-long strike, which essentially means they are siding with an out of state private equity firm over Alabama’s workers.”
On Capitol Hill, Sanders mentioned that both Scheller and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink were invited to testify before the Senate Budget Committee on Thursday, but did not show.
However, Alabama Republican U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, in his first term in Congress, was in attendance and armed with skepticism. His primary argument focused on the actual authority of the committee, going on to say it’s not the place of Congress to get involved in labor disputes between labor unions and companies.
“It’s clear the purpose of this hearing is for the majority to push a political agenda,” the former Auburn football coach said. “This hearing is what I call the ‘Dream Democrat Political Parlay,’ where members can be pro-union, anti-Wall Street and anti-mining production, all in one hearing.”
Tuberville has shied away from expressing any support or lending involvement to the large-scale strike in the state he represents. The junior senator also went so far as to mention the average miner salary as being an attractive one, even with the current pay cuts still in place from when the collective bargaining agreement was renegotiated following Walter Energy’s bankruptcy.
“The jobs at Warrior Met Coal pay an average wage of over $97,000 annually,” he said. “This is one of the top average wages in the state. Since Warrior Met was established in 2016, it has created an additional 600 jobs.”
One data point Tuberville conveniently overlooks, though, can be seen in the extravagant bonuses paid out to Warrior Met executives, even during a time of crisis when many of its striking employees had to rely on the generosity of the community and the deep, but limited, pockets of the UMWA.
For instance, CEO Walt J. Scheller received an annual bonus of $4 million during the last contract term, all while employees agreed to work long hours for less pay. And, in an interesting contrast, this bonus, by itself, is nearly equal to the $4.3 million in aid that has been distributed to date by UMWA to its members on strike in Brookwood.
“No entity should have that kind of power delegated to them by the laws that were passed in this location we’re sitting,” UMWA’s president said in an impassioned response. “Bankruptcy laws are horrendous for working class people.”
Indeed, the true human toll exacted by the business practices of private equity firms and the boardrooms they control at companies like Warrior Met can be seen in the stories told by UMWA members on the picket line. People like Braxton Wright.
“When you’re required to work 12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week, you’re lucky to see your spouse or children more than a few hours a day,” he told the committee. “Spouses used to not have to have second jobs or work at all. The children saw both parents less as a result of the cuts and the bankruptcy contract … Knowing my child deserved to have time with both parents, these have been the voices of hundreds of children whose parents work at Warrior Met.”
And it’s this impact in the home that represents another easily-overlooked aspect in the 11-month battle for a fair labor contract both sides can agree on.
Wright then explained the company’s disturbing “four strike” policy for absences and showing up late to work. It’s a simple and straightforward requirement, but one that fails to factor in the nuanced realities of everyday life for its employees. It also stands as a sterling example of a company culture fostered by years of millionaires in corner offices asking their hardworking employees to do more for less — all while large shareholders rake in profits and cash out once the getting is good.
For instance, if a Warrior Met Coal employee shows up a couple of minutes late, they are given a strike and still have to work a full shift. The employee is terminated outright following the fourth violation.
“My brothers and sisters have been given strikes for having accidents on the way to work and being late,” Wright said, his voice full of emotion. “Our spouses learned not to call and tell us about accidents or emergencies until after we were done with our shift, out of fear of us receiving a strike.”
These are more than passing anecdotes for Wright, who was working 12-hour overnight shifts when his daughter was admitted to the hospital.
“My wife was afraid to tell me she had been admitted until my shift ended at 7 (a.m.), because, if I left, she knew I would receive a strike. I worked my shift in Brookwood, then drove to the hospital and then drove back to the mines. Back and forth for three days in order to be with my family.”
Above all, though, the entire argument from Wright and UMWA comes down to fairness.
“They exploit our work,” Wright said. “They work us on skeleton crews with less than what we had before the strike, but then we have to watch them sit in the office and make $4 million a year or $1.2 million a year as a secretary, and say we don’t deserve what we make now.”
