Picketing Alabama Miners Stopped by Rare Non-Federal Court Order

Date: November 26, 2021

“As an Alabama coal miners’ strike neared the eight-month mark, a Tuscaloosa County judge took an unusual step: prohibiting union workers from picketing outside properties owned by their employer.

The order was a rare incursion by a local court into a private-sector strike—an activity protected under federal labor law for nearly a century. The United Mine Workers of America, which represents workers at Warrior Met Coal Inc., called the move unconstitutional, saying it violated their federal rights in addition to the First Amendment.

Judge James Roberts Jr. of the Circuit Court of Tuscaloosa County, was not convinced by the union’s arguments. On Nov. 15, he doubled down on a temporary restraining order issued weeks earlier barring picketing outside mines or offices owned by Warrior Met, extending it until Dec. 2.

The temporary restraining order was the latest flash point in what’s already one of the longest miners’ strikes in U.S. history. It was a stark departure from the normal process for settling labor disputes, where parties file federal complaints to the National Labor Relations Board, and it represents a rarely used method on the employer’s part to circumvent the Democratic-controlled NLRB in favor of a friendlier venue, lawyers and legal professors said.

“This is an extraordinarily rare occurrence, to use a state court to stop picketing during a strike,” said Cathy Creighton, a union attorney who directs the Cornell University School of Labor and Industrial Relations satellite branch in Buffalo, N.Y. Creighton said she’s seen it successfully done only three times during her 30-year career.

Making an end-run around the NLRB can be an especially effective method in the South, where anti-union sentiment runs deep. The rate of union membership in Alabama is lower than in most other states, and 70% of voters there approved a “Right-to-Work” constitutional amendment in 2016 that ended required union membership in workplaces covered by a collective bargaining agreement.
Violence on Picket Line

The judge’s initial order, issued Oct. 27, followed violence on the picket lines, where about 1,000 workers have been on strike since April.

Warrior Met Coal released a video in October showing picketers blocking cars carrying replacement workers to company facilities.

In one instance, the video shows workers breaking a window of an SUV and attacking a man as he stepped out of the vehicle. In another, a man, identified by the company as a local union official, smashed the windows of a parked truck with a hammer.

“While the UMWA has portrayed their actions as ‘peaceful protests,’ in recent weeks striking workers have escalated the amount and severity of criminal behavior,” The company said in a statement Oct. 25. “In addition to interfering with the entrance and exit to our facilities, picketers have increased attacks on personal vehicles, property, and uninvolved community members near the company’s property.”

The company’s video was enough to persuade the judge, who prohibited workers from assembling within 300 yards of about a dozen Warrior Met facilities.

United Mine Workers denies the allegations of violence. In an interview, union spokesman Phil Smith said union members have never instigated confrontation but have, at times, responded when Warrior Met officials used force to break their picket lines.

“Any time out members are involved in anything on the picket line, it’s retaliatory,” Smith said.

The union filed a complaint with the NLRB alleging that Warrior Met has refused to bargain in good faith—a violation of federal labor law—but hasn’t received a response, Smith said. The company filed a separate NLRB charge against the union on Oct. 21, records show. The agency hasn’t publicly released the charge.

A Warrior Met spokesman referred Bloomberg Law to the company’s chief legal officer, who didn’t respond to a calls and emails seeking comment.

Union officials said the company’s pursuit of a local court order is little more than legal posturing.

“It’s a tactic. They seek an injunction from a court to restrict any kind of protests,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler told Bloomberg Law at a protest in Washington on Nov. 18. “[It’s] trying to shut down freedom of assembly right here in the United States of America.”
Nomad Strikers

The unrest dates to 2015, when Walter Energy, which owned a number of mines in central Alabama, filed for bankruptcy. The company’s assets were acquired by a group of creditors under the Warrior Met banner, according to local news reports. As part of the reorganization plan, workers were forced to accept steep cuts on health care and retirement benefits, including for workers who had already retired, United Mine Workers Secretary-Treasurer Brian Sanson said in an interview.

The union had hoped to restore some of the cuts in the next contract, Sanson said. But negotiations failed to produce results, and workers went on strike when the current contract expired April 1. They’ve been off the job ever since.

“When the contract expired, they absolutely just said no,” he said.

With their picket lines broken, the union has been taking its demonstrations elsewhere. This month, camouflage-clad picketers marched outside the offices of financial firms in New York and Washington that invest in the mine. UMWA President Cecil Roberts was arrested with several others at a Nov. 4 demonstration in New York.

The strike forced Warrior Met to shut down one mine and significantly reduce operations in another, executives said on a Nov. 2 earnings call.

Yet the third quarter of 2021 was still the company’s most profitable for the company since the onset of the pandemic. It raked in $38.4 million over that time compared to a loss of $14.4 million during the same period last year—and that was accomplished despite losing at least $7 million due to the strike.

While workers nationwide enjoy increased leverage amid a national labor shortage and congestion at the ports, it’s a more complicated picture in the coal industry, which struggled early in the pandemic but appears to have rebounded. The positive financial report could deepen the standoff, hardening the union’s demands for a greater share of profits while easing pressure on the company to meet them.

“While we are disappointed that the union continues with the strike, we continue to negotiate in good faith to reach a resolution,” mining company chief executive officer Walter Scheller said on the earnings call.”

Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders: Equity firms ‘made off like bandits’ while striking Alabama coal miners struggle

Source: AL.com

Date: November 23, 2021

Author: William Thornton

“Three U.S. senators are asking for answers from two private equity firms that they say helped create the conditions that led to the ongoing Warrior Met Coal strike in Alabama.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren, (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt), and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) sent a letter to two firms, Apollo Global Management and Blackstone, which previously owned Warrior Met Coal. In six-page letters to the firms, the senators also ask for details regarding the time their companies were invested in the coal company.

At issue are decisions they say that kept the company alive yet stripped miners of pay and benefits while eventually paying more than $1 billion in dividends to shareholders.

“While workers endured severe cuts to pay and benefits after the Warrior Met takeover, Apollo and the rest of the private equity consortium appear to have made off like bandits,” one of the letters reads.

Members of the United Mine Workers of America began a strike against Warrior Met Coal on April 1, citing concessions they say were made as Warrior Met emerged from the bankruptcy proceedings of the former Walter Energy, which declared bankruptcy in 2016. Union members contend they made numerous concessions in pay, benefits, holidays, overtime and in other areas to keep the company going and get it out of bankruptcy.

Union members have twice picketed the New York offices of BlackRock, an investment management corporation that is the world’s largest asset manager, not to be confused with Blackstone.

The senators said they have been concerned that “some private equity firms pursue strategies that extract value from portfolio companies at the expense of workers and communities.”

According to the lawmakers, Warrior Met returned at least $1.4 billion in dividends since the company went public in 2017, including nearly $800 million special cash distributions in 2017 alone, funded in part through debt. Within two years, Apollo, Blackstone, and the other private equity firms that had owned Warrior Met sold their shares, the senators said.

“These strategies include loading debt onto companies to fund payouts for the private equity firm and its executives, engaging in severe cost-cutting measures that harm workers and consumers, and quickly cashing out after extracting as much value as they can,” the letter states.”

Protesters rally in Newport Beach to show solidarity with striking mine workers

Source: LAtimes
Date: November 18, 2021
Author: Andrew Turner

“About two dozen people demonstrated outside the BlackRock corporate office building in Newport Beach Thursday morning to support mine workers who have gone on strike in Alabama.

In April, about 1,100 employees of Warrior Met Coal walked off the job to fight for issues such as better wages, affordable healthcare, and reasonable rest and time off.

As part of their call for action, demonstrators decided to take their grievances to offices of BlackRock, a private equity firm with shares in the mining company.

Michael Dalpiaz, international District 22 vice president for the United Mine Workers of America, said similar protests were being held outside of BlackRock offices around the world, including in Boston, Denver, New York City, Washington, D.C. and Melbourne, Australia.

“Wherever they are, we’re going to be, because they own the mine, and they’re screwing the workers,” Dalpiaz said. “So wherever they are, we’ll be there, because people on that street and in that building need to know what BlackRock’s all about.

“A lot of investments, a lot of our people invest their money into that place, and I’ll tell you, if I had a nickel in BlackRock, it would be gone by now because of how they treat their people. That’s wrong. It’s unethical, and they shouldn’t do it.”

Demonstrators wore shirts and held signs that said, “We Are One,” with the United Mine Workers of America logo on them. Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley addressed the crowd and called for the workers to be taken care of.

“We’ve been through so much in the last 21 months,” Foley said. “And the fact we cannot get a company that is employing people who are doing the most difficult work — life-threatening work, health-threatening work — to be able to support their workers is just tragic, especially at this point in time.

“To have to be on strike for nearly a year, right before the holidays, as the pandemic has continued to rage through our country is just unacceptable, and so that’s why I came out today.”

Gloria Alvarado, the executive director of the Orange County Labor Federation, said several labor groups came out to support the mine workers.

“The reality is this is all really about labor,” Kaitlin White of the Assn. of Flight Attendants said. “Labor supporting labor and being a part of helping each other. We’re at a time where we’re slowly making it harder and harder to earn a living wage, and the Association of Flight Attendants believes that people shouldn’t have to struggle. Workers should be appreciated by their companies, no matter who we work for.”

D’Andre Wright, vice president of external affairs for Warrior Met Coal, said the company had no comment on the matter when reached by phone about the protests Thursday.”

Preservation work at the Ludlow Massacre site revealed hidden symbols. They’ll never be seen again.

Source: cpr.org
Date: November 18, 2021
Author: Shanna Lewis

“The Ludlow Massacre more than a century ago was one of the most violent events in U.S. labor history and a wake-up call for the nation about brutal and often deadly coal mine work.

Recent preservation efforts at the site about an hour south of Pueblo have revealed symbols hidden for around a hundred years.

In 1914, southern Colorado coal miners were on strike to fight for safe working conditions and fair wages. On the day after their Greek Easter celebration, bullets flew through the sprawling United Mine Workers Ludlow tent colony. To escape the violence, four women and 11 children climbed into a hole dug in the ground beneath a tent. Then company thugs torched the encampment.

“My grandmother and another woman were the only two people who walked out of that pit alive,” Mary Elaine Petrucci told KRCC in 2014. She said the others suffocated in the dirt cellar as the tent colony burned.

In total, 21 people were killed in the fire or shot to death that day. Now a solemn granite monument stands on the windswept prairie near the mountains. Near the memorial’s base, there’s a heavy metal door covering concrete stairs leading into what was the cellar.

“It’s sacred ground to me,” said the UMW’s Bob Butero.

The union erected the monument in 1918, Butero said, and soon after they lined the walls of the earthen pit with concrete.

But after a century, the old concrete was crumbling, so this fall a historic restoration company came in to stabilize it. A backhoe dug around the outside of the cellar to expose the exterior walls. As contractor Andy Carlson removed soil he saw some raised lines in the concrete.

“We realized it was a cross that was basically formed into the concrete and was now visible probably for the first time ever since the miners walled up the place from the inside,” Carlson said.

Contractors cleaned more dirt from the concrete to reveal the shape of a shield surrounding the cross, impressions of symbols that had apparently been carved into the original earthen walls of the cellar.

“It just made this amazing sight to have this little structure with a cross on it,” Carlson said. “It almost looked like it was a chapel of some sort.”

Inside the old vault, now encased in new concrete, Butero pointed to the section of the interior wall.

“As you could see (there) was no evidence of the cross or anything on here,” he said. “So that was all on the other side. If we would’ve never excavated it, it would have never been exposed.”

They don’t know who made the symbols or when, according to Butero.

Archeologist Karin Larkin said something else turned up too.

“Between the cellar and the monument, we actually found a tent stake that was still in situ – in place. We could see the burnt ground surface,” she said. “That tent stake would have been holding down the tent that covered the cellar, the death pit, where the women and children were killed.”

Larkin curates the Ludlow Archeological Collection at University of Colorado Colorado Springs. She said the tent stake and other Ludlow artifacts help tell a more complete story about what happened there. But, she said, it’s more than that.

“This tent stake, even though it’s not an animate object, was here and witnessed this event,” she said. “It’s a tangible reminder of this terrible event.”

Although the strike failed to change much in 1914, Butero said it got the nation’s attention on the deadly working conditions in coal mines. Eventually, safety regulations were put in place along with fair wages.

“All of that was what these people died for. I stand on these people’s shoulders for mine health and safety,” he said.

The archeologists, historians and union photographed the symbols before enclosing it with new concrete, covering the symbols again and putting the dirt back around the cellar.

“Until we uncovered it from the outside, no one had ever seen this cross because even the folks who were pouring the (original) concrete didn’t see the concrete cross,” Carlson said.

“For about a week, it was exposed. Now it’s gone forever because with 10 inches of new concrete on it, it can never really be revealed again. It would be destroyed if anyone tried to look at it.”

The Ludlow Massacre Memorial site is expected to reopen to the public soon.”

Impact still felt 53 years after Farmington No. 9 mine explosion

Source: Times West Virginian

November 14, 2021

MANNINGTON — West Virginians are especially watchful of coal miners and their families.

Marion County residents are protective of the history of one tragic event that happened right here in our backyard.

On Nov. 20, 1968, the Farmington No. 9 mine exploded, killing 78 of the miners trapped inside.

Those miners and their families were honored Sunday at the Farmington No. 9 Mine Disaster Memorial on Flat Run Road in Mannington during a ceremony coordinated by District 31 of the United Mine Workers of America.

On the day of the explosion, tremors were heard miles away. At the site, flames reached 150 feet into the air. The fire continued for a week. After nine days, rescue crews were told that there was no possibility of finding any survivors.

The mine was sealed later that month to squelch the fires still burning within. Nearly a year later, the mine was unsealed in an attempt to recover the missing miners’ bodies. The search continued until April 1978, at which point the bodies of 19 miners had still not been found.

Although Sunday’s ceremony was virtual, several speakers and family members were there to lay wreaths and participate in the service.

“Not only did [the explosion] rock the hills, but also the lives of the widows, the mothers, the fathers, the children, the grandchildren and the grandparents,” said UMWA District 31 Vice President Rick Altman, presiding over the service.

Also on hand was Rev. Richard Bowyer, who has been involved in the memorial service since its inception.

“After coming to Fairmont, I was elected to the board of directors of the Fairmont Clinic, which, in those days was primarily a clinic serving coal miners and their families,” Bowyer said.

Three months before the deadly explosion, Bowyer was given a tour of No. 9.

“Some of us spent about two hours in a complete tour of Farmington No. 9,” Bowyer said. “It’s the only coal mine I was ever in and I’ve not been inside a mine since that time.”

When the explosion occurred, Bowyer was sent in as the lead pastor on site to assist. As events unfolded, Bowyer’s role was to “assist those who were responding to the suffering and agony and grief of the families and loved ones of those who were trapped below,” Bowyer said.

“This gathering has been extremely meaningful to me in my life, and that total experience has been profound in the shaping of my ministry in subsequent years,” Bowyer said.

UMWA International Secretary-Treasurer Brian Sanson spoke to the group virtually.

“This is a tragedy [where] a coal company blatantly disregarded the safety of miners, and as a result, there was a huge loss of life, affecting generations of families,” Sanson said.

Keynote speaker UMWA President Cecil Roberts spoke about actions of the surviving families that are still relevant today.

“There was not a single law on the books to protect these miners on the federal level,” Roberts said. “There were no orders out there saying, ‘You have to do things this way, company.’

A grassroots movement, started largely by the wives and mothers of the Farmington miners, began to gain strength.

“There was a conversation that was started by the widows, by the family members, locally, that this should never happen to another family in America. [They said], ‘We’re going to Congress, we’re going to demand that the federal government pass health and safety laws to protect all coal miners in this nation,’” Roberts said.

A month after the explosion, a conference was held in Washington, D.C., where Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall presided. His appraisal of the Farmington disaster was sharp.

“Let me assure you,” Udall said, “the people of this country no longer will accept the disgraceful health and safety record that has characterized this major industry.”

When legislation was proposed, Roberts said he heard the same objections from coal industrialists that he had heard for years.

“The coal industry said, ‘This will put us out of business,’ and we’ve heard that a million times no matter what we’re talking about, whether it’s workers compensation, black lung benefits or making the mines safer,” Roberts said.

Roberts said the mines became safer and remained productive.

A year after the Farmington No. 9 mine explosion, Congress passed the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, which most people know as the Coal Act.

“It was the first federal legislation that protects coal miners,” Roberts said. “It gave you a right to a safe working place if you were a coal miner, and it put fines on coal companies if they did the wrong thing.”

To the families of the miners, Sanson said, “Your sacrifices have not been in vain. [You have] ensured strong health and safety laws for coal miners across this country. The work you have done over the decades to ensure that coal miners can go to work and come home safely cannot be measured.”

Written By: Lori L. Riley

Alabama Miners Are Still on Strike After 8 Months

Source: jacobinmag.com
Author: Nora De La Cour
November 8, 2021

“Last week, more than 500 coal mine workers picketed in New York City, joined by a diverse army of other labor movement members and supporters. The mine workers, who extract coal for steel production, are now in the eighth month of their strike against Warrior Met Coal in Brookwood, Alabama. Their aim is to force Warrior Met to restore the pay, benefits, and schedules they had before their previous employer, Walter Energy, declared bankruptcy and auctioned off its assets in 2016.

On Thursday, the mine workers marched to the headquarters of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager and Warrior Met’s biggest shareholder. After the rally, five United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) members and the union’s president, Cecil Roberts, sat down in the street and refused to move. The six were handcuffed by the New York Police Department and arrested for their act of civil disobedience.

The striking workers brought their picket to the middle of Manhattan because they have been barred from gathering outside the Brookwood mines. On October 27, a Tuscaloosa County circuit judge issued a temporary restraining order stopping all UMWA picket activity at Warrior Met. The injunction, which has been extended through November 15, blocks strikers from gathering within 300 yards of any mine entrance or exit.

That’s a huge restriction. As Haeden Wright, president of the UMWA auxiliary for two of the striking locals, explained to Jacobin, moving the pickets three football fields back from the mines “could put you on a completely separate road from Warrior Met property.” In in an interview with Jacobin, labor scholar Steve Striffler called the restraining order “an unconstitutional act that effectively takes away the miners’ right to free speech and assembly at the conflict’s most important sites.”

The injunction is the apparent product of an aggressive campaign by Warrior Met to spread the misleading narrative that UMWA members are engaging in violence and vandalism on the picket lines. Labor journalist Kim Kelly reported that Warrior Met hired the public relations firm Sitrick and Company to “neutralize the opposition” and “reframe the debate” around a strike that has garnered local and national support despite embarrassingly insufficient coverage from the corporate media.

The injunction, Striffler says, is the latest evidence of “local government siding with coal companies” — a tradition with deep roots in coal country. But the tradition of cross-racial miner solidarity has roots that run just as deep, and the union miners and their families have held strong thus far despite the most recent effort to break their collective power.

The Origins of the Strike

Warrior Met Coal was formed in 2015 to purchase the remains of Walter Energy. The same year, a federal bankruptcy judge ruled that Walter Energy and its successor could disregard the bankrupt company’s commitments to miners and their families. In a bid to save jobs and retiree benefits, the UMWA agreed to a subpar contract mandating profound sacrifices. The workers’ understanding was that if they helped the company out of its financial straits, they would be made whole in the next contract.

The immediate concessions were enormous: Worker pay was slashed between $6 and $8 an hour, bringing it below the industry standard for unionized miners. Health insurance was downgraded from 100 percent coverage to an 80/20 system with massive out-of-pocket costs — no small concern in one of the country’s most physically hazardous occupations, with high rates of life-altering injuries and more than 10 percent of long-term miners suffering from black lung. Workers saw their pensions exchanged for threadbare 401(k)s. They lost most of their overtime pay, all but three holidays, and thirty minutes of paid lunch time. (Warrior Met miners eat their lunch underground in some of the deepest coal mines in North America, near dangerous methane gas and coal and silica dust.)

To make matters worse, Warrior Met implemented inhumane scheduling practices. Workers could take up to three days off if a loved one died, but under the company’s “four-strike” policy, a fourth day off was cause for termination. Haeden Wright said that workers like her husband, Braxton, “could be scheduled seven, ten, twenty days straight” with shifts sometimes stretching as long as sixteen hours. Such schedules add deadly, unnecessary risks to an already high-risk profession and prevent miners from seeing their children and other loved ones.

Companies in coal mining and other forms of resource extraction are particularly vulnerable to takeover by private equity firms like BlackRock, because as the UMWA’s director of communications and governmental affairs, Phil Smith, explained to Jacobin, “the entire industry is distressed.” When management decisions are made in Manhattan boardrooms, it’s that much easier to ignore the needs of the workers whose toil makes BlackRock and its peers so valuable. So, although the Brookwood miners delivered Warrior Met from ruin, producing “ungodly amounts of coal” and billions in profit, they were nonetheless told they had no right to demand a return to their previous contract. Consequently, on April 1, around 1,100 of them walked off the job.

While the work stoppage has cost Warrior Met dearly, the company continues to enjoy a highly profitable quarter thanks to increased demand for American metallurgical (“met”) coal resulting from trade tensions between Australia and China.

Government-Business Collusion

From the start of their strike, the UMWA miners have faced collaborative opposition from Warrior Met and local and state government. An earlier court injunction limited the size of pickets, first to six strikers at any given outpost, then upon appeal, to ten. The mines’ remote locations made it easier for strikers to be threatened with physical danger.

Multiple brazen vehicular attacks on picketers were caught on video, but nevertheless dismissed by Alabama law enforcement. Miners and their family members have been injured and even hospitalized as a result of these “company-inspired” hit-and-runs, yet when the UMWA filed unfair labor practice charges with the regional National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) office, the charges were dismissed.

According to UMWA’s Phil Smith, in addition to the vehicular attacks, strikers have seen brandished firearms and death threats on the picket lines. Local and state police have made no effort “to follow up on any of that.” Meanwhile, Alabama troopers have been escorting replacement workers (scabs) to and from the mines on the public’s dime — acting, in Smith’s words, as “Warrior Met’s security apparatus.”

The lopsided state response has created a situation in which strikers and their families logically believe they must defend themselves. According to both Smith and Wright, the alleged instances of striker violence that Warrior Met has pushed out through local outlets were all in response to provocations, mainly by management. “There is no question,” Smith said, “that the [temporary restraining order] was issued in the shadow of a highly-edited video put out by the company that purports to show unprovoked actions by UMWA strikers. The premise of that video is false.”

Striffler put it simply: “This restraining order simply goes too far, is unconstitutional, and is designed to break [the] strike.”

Picket lines are rarely characterized by cross-class congeniality. If playing nice was effective in conflicts with cutthroat bosses, strikes would not be needed in the first place. But whatever grievances they choose to air, striking workers are entitled to their First Amendment freedoms. As Cecil Roberts aptly put it, the Constitution protects workers’ right to “stand on the side of a road and call a scab a scab.”

Why the Warrior Met Strike Matters

National outlets are finally beginning to cover the Warrior Met strike, but they have been extremely slow to acknowledge the seriousness of what’s happening in Alabama. In recent years, the corporate media has tended to treat coal miners as relevant purely as a potential source of red votes, should Democrats demand substantive climate legislation.

Even left-leaning publications have seemed to shy away from a story involving the four-letter word: coal. Never mind that the metallurgical coal miners in Brookwood are arguably part of a renewable energy supply chain, considering they extract coal that is sent to China to make steel for windmill parts.

But regardless of how their labor is used, when employees in extractive industries attempt to check their bosses’ power, they are standing up for all of us. Private equity firms like BlackRock are happy to bet on the markets and burn through workers’ bodies and the climate alike when it suits their bottom lines. While courts, police, and capital align to crush the striking UMWA miners, we’d all do well to ask the question Florence Reece posed melodically back in 1931: ‘Which side are you on?'”

Alabama coal miners protest BlackRock in NYC

Source: USA Today

November 4, 2021

Striking miners from Alabama protested outside BlackRock headquarters in New York on Thursday, demanding higher wages and better working conditions. (Nov. 4)

Striking Alabama mine workers bring protest to New York City

Source: CNN Business

November 4, 2021

Striking Alabama mine workers bring protest to New York City

New York (CNN Business) Mineworkers have been on the picket line outside of two mines owned by Warrior Met Coal in rural Alabama for the last seven months, waging one of the longest US strikes this century.

On Thursday they brought that protest to the streets of New York City.

Six members of the United Mine Workers of America were arrested for disorderly conduct in New York City Thursday as part of a rally in front of the Manhattan offices of BlackRock, the powerful asset manager that holds $167 million worth of the mining company’s stock on behalf of clients. That 14% stake in Warrior Met Coal (HCC) makes BlackRock (BLK) its largest shareholder.

Nearly 1,000 miners have been on strike against the coal company in Alabama since April 1, after union members voted down a contract they say does not make up for lost income they incurred in their previous contract from 2016.

“These workers have had enough of this,” said Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, who was among those arrested Thursday at the rally. “We’re not asking for something outrageous. We’re not wanting to be millionaires or anything like that. They’re basically wanting to get back to where they were five years ago.”

Several dozen workers were bused in from the Alabama picket line. One of them is third-generation coal miner Brian Kelly, who was also arrested Thursday.

“I’m on strike for my family and for my brothers and sisters in the mines. We go down there, it’s a dangerous job, put your life on the line,” said Kelly. The mines reach 2,000 feet underground, making them the deepest coal mines in North America, according to the union.

“We love our jobs, but we’re not getting any respect, we’re not getting any time off — we get Thanksgiving off, Christmas Eve and Christmas as far as holidays — the rest of the holidays we have to work while our families are celebrating holidays,” Kelly said.

Workers flexing muscle

The strike is just one of the many signs of unions flexing their muscle around the country. With employers having difficulty hiring workers, union members are demanding what they see as their fair share from companies that are doing well financially.

On Tuesday 10,000 striking members of the United Auto Workers at John Deere (DE) rejected a second tentative labor agreement, extending the strike that started October 14. The rejected deal would have given them an immediate 10% raise, an $8,500 signing bonus as well as other raises and improved benefits during the life of the contract.

On Wednesday 3,000 student workers at Columbia University in New York City, including graduate students working as instructors, went on strike.

About 1,400 workers are also striking at Kellogg. And data from Cornell University’s labor studies department counts 200 strikes so far this year, including 38 that started in October alone, the most of any month this year. Nearly 29,000 workers have gone on strike so far in 2021.

The Warrior Met Coal strike has halted operations at one of the two mines the company operates in Alabama and has limited operations at the other. But the company continues to extract coal at one of the mines using management staff and 200 hourly workers who are willing to cross picket lines and report to work.

The company’s most recent financial report shows production is down 40% in the three months ending September 30, compared to a year ago. But coal prices have more than doubled during that time, allowing Warrior Met Coal to ride out the loss of production.

The coal mined by the company is used for steel mills, not power plants. And all of its coal is shipped to overseas mills, not the US mills that still make steel out of raw materials rather than melted scrap steel.

Demand driving prices

Coal prices are up significantly because of trade tensions between Australia and China, which has resulted in an unofficial ban by China on Australian coal imports. Chinese steel mills are a major consumer of the kind of coal that Warrior Met Coal ships.

But while it is expected that prices will fall once Australia is able to ship coal to China again, company officials say that they believe strong demand for steel worldwide means Warrior Met Coal’s profit outlook is good.

“We recognize that the likelihood of pricing reset is high,” CEO Walter Scheller told investors this week. “However, when a reset does occur, we expect pricing to remain above historical averages due to the strong market fundamentals.”

The company said that the strike has cost it $16.2 million in increased costs in the most recent quarter, not counting lost sales from reduced production from the closed mine. But it said it should be able to meet customer demands for its coal even with one of the mines shuttered.

BlackRock declined to comment on the protest. Warrior Met Coal officials defended their position on the strike, saying that it values and appreciates its employees’ hard work, but that it needs to contain costs in order to remain financially stable in volatile coal industry.

But the company is clearly doing very well in the current market with the price for its coal at record highs. And its financial success is a key factor in the strike.

The previous owner of the mine, Walter Energy, filed for bankruptcy in 2015 due to a steep drop in the price of coal. The union says it agreed to deep concessions, including reduced pay, with workers having to pay more for health insurance and cutting health benefits for 2,500 retirees, along with changes in retirement benefits in order to help the company emerge from bankruptcy. The union says the average hourly wage for workers at the mine is now $23 an hour, down $6 an hour from their pay before the bankruptcy.

Those concessions have saved the company a total of $1.1 billion since it emerged from bankruptcy through the formation of Warrior Met Coal, according to the union.

But the company said it doesn’t believe it should have to restore the pay and benefits the workers previously received.

“When the 2016 collective bargaining agreement was negotiated, no representative of Warrior Met Coal ever indicated to the union in any way that specific terms of any previous contract under which they had worked would be restored in future contracts,” said D’Andre Wright, the company’s vice president for external affairs. “Our priorities have always been keeping people employed and working safely with long-lasting careers and ensuring the company remains financially stable in a particularly volatile coal market.”

He said the company’s employees are among the top 10% of wage earners in Alabama, and that employment at the mine has tripled since 2016. That means that 60% of the current workforce were not working at the mines under the earlier, more lucrative contract, he said.

Strikers are getting union strike benefits of $400 a week, less than half of what they earned from a 40-hour week. Some are able to find temporary employment to help supplement their incomes, even if those jobs don’t pay as well as their mining jobs.

The union says a recent court order keeping strikers at least 300 yards away from the entrance to the mines constitutes an improper elimination of members’ “free speech rights and freedom of assembly.” It said that is why it is moving its protest to BlackRock’s New York offices.

Warrior Met Coal says the court order was justified by picket line violence and posted a video showing vehicles being hit by picketers and windows being broken in buses carrying non-striking workers past the picket lines.

Written by: Vanessa Yurkevich and Chris Isidore

Striking Alabama coal miners protesting again in New York

Source: AL.com
November 4, 2021

Striking Alabama coal miners protesting again in New York

The president of the United Mine Workers of America was arrested in New York City this morning at a protest in its ongoing strike against Warrior Met Coal in Alabama.

Members picketed the Manhattan offices of BlackRock at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue. BlackRock, an investment management corporation that is the world’s largest asset manager.

Before noon, UMWA President Cecil Roberts was handcuffed, along with five other people, according to the union.

The union says BlackRock is the largest shareholder in Warrior Met Coal, the Alabama company the UMWA has been on strike against since April 1.

Miners staged two protests outside the BlackRock offices in June and July.

Last week, a Tuscaloosa County circuit judge issued a restraining order against picket line activity by the UMWA at Warrior Met Coal sites.

The action came after the company issued a statement saying the level of violence taking place along the picket line had “reached a dangerous level.”

United Mine Workers of America International President Cecil E. Roberts said the order contains provisions that are “unconstitutional.”

About 1,100 miners walked off the job April 1, striking for better pay and benefits.

The current 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 in pay, benefits, holidays, overtime, and in other areas to keep the company going and get it out of bankruptcy.

Earlier this week, Warrior Met reported business interruption expenses were $6.9 million in the third quarter, which were non-recurring expenses directly attributable to the strike, the company said.

The expenses included security, labor negotiations, and other expenses.

Written by: William Thornton | wthornton@al.com

Union Plus: Cash Back Shopping

Source: Union Plus

Did you know you can get paid to shop? It’s true. Sign up for BeFrugal and earn cash back whenever you make a purchase!

How does BeFrugal Work?

Earning cash back is super easy when you shop with BeFrugal.

1. Start browsing on BeFrugal to find your favorite stores — there are more than 5,000 online retailers to choose from.

2. Click on a coupon or the “Shop Now” button. You will be taken to the retailer’s website to complete your purchase as you normally would. The cash back you earn will then be automatically added to your BeFrugal account.

3. When you’re ready, you can request your cash via check, PayPal, direct deposit, Venmo, Zelle or gift card. It’s that easy

For more information, please visit Union Plus.