Source: CoalZoom.com

August 17, 2021

History repeated itself as hundreds of miners spilled out of buses in June and July to leaflet the Manhattan offices of asset manager BlackRock, the largest shareholder in the mining company Warrior Met Coal.

Some had traveled from the pine woods of Brookwood, Alabama, where 1,100 coal miners have been on strike against Warrior Met since April 1. Others came in solidarity from the rolling hills of western Pennsylvania and the hollows of West Virginia and Ohio.

Among them was 90-year-old retired Ohio miner Jay Kolenc, in a wheelchair at the picket line — retracing his own steps from five decades ago. It was 1974 when Kentucky miners and their supporters came to fight Wall Street in the strike behind the film Harlan County USA.

“Coal miners have always had to fight for everything they’ve ever had,” Kolenc said. “Since 1890, when we first started, nobody’s ever handed us anything. So we’re not about to lay our tools down now.”

The longest that miners ever went on strike was for 10 months in 1989 against the Pittston Coal Company in West Virginia, defending hard-won health care benefits and pension rights. Some 3,000 miners got arrested in that strike. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who passed away on August 5, was president of the Mine Workers (UMWA) at the time.

In Manhattan, mixed in the sea of camouflage T-shirts outside BlackRock was a smattering of red and blue shirts — retail, grocery, stage, and telecom workers. The miners and supporters circled the inner perimeter of four police barricades, chanting “Warrior Met Coal ain’t got no soul!” and whooping it up.

Postal and sanitation trucks honked in solidarity. “You’re in New York City,” Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts told the crowd. “When somebody comes by driving a trash truck, they’re in a union. Chances are, somebody comes along with a broom in their hand, they’re in a union.”

“Where’s Our Money?”

The strikers are fighting to reverse concessions that were foisted on them in 2016 when newly formed Warrior Met Coal bought two mines and one preparation plant from Jim Walter Resources during bankruptcy proceedings. BlackRock became one of the three majority shareholders in the new company.

Since then, the union calculates that workers have forked over $1.1 billion in pay, overtime, vacation, safety, health care, and other benefits to help the company regain solvency. Today 26 hedge funds have investments in Warrior Met stock, signaling their confidence in its profitability.

“We want everything back. And then some. That’s the message we’re trying to send to BlackRock,” said Michael Wright, a miner for 16 years.

Warrior Met produces coal used in steel production in Asia, Europe, and South America. In response to the strike it has scaled back production, left one mine idle, and stopped stock buybacks, Bloomberg reported. The strike has cost the company $17.9 million, according to its second-quarter earnings report.

Shortly after the miners walked out, management returned to the table with an offer that would have recouped just $1.50 of the $6 cut in wages from the 2016 contract and left intact punitive disciplinary policies and benefits concessions. The miners voted it down, 1,006 to 45.

“We come back to the table and they’re offering less what we were making originally,” said Brian Seabolt, another 16-year coal miner.

“We go underground to sacrifice our lives for our families,” said Wright. “They’re making billions of dollars. Where’s our money?”

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has burnished his public image as a benevolent capitalist concerned about climate change and social justice. The strikers hope to gain leverage by tarnishing that image.

BlackRock has a shield that makes that harder: two-thirds of its investments are in index funds, passively managed portfolios that bundle together investments regardless of social impact.

But it’s even harder to hit it hard enough in the pocketbook to have an impact: Warrior Met makes up just a tiny fraction of BlackRock’s portfolio. The asset manager had a record $9.5 trillion in assets under management at the end of June.

Nonetheless, to hurt profits, strikers were blocking scabs from entering the mines — until the company obtained an injunction to stop them. Despite that, the mines produced only 1.2 million tons of coal during the second quarter — a million less than the same period last year.

A Grueling Job

Another striker on the Manhattan picket line was Tammy Owens, a former steelworker. She switched to mining because it had better pay and benefits, though the job was grueling. “And then a few years later, I ended up with worse benefits than what I had at the steel plant,” she said.

Since the strike, she has picked up a side job to provide for her family. The union has also distributed $4.3 million to miners to cover health care.

Besides pay and benefits, the 2016 concessions included a punitive attendance policy that one miner’s wife described to journalist Kim Kelly as “four strikes and you’re out.”

“If I had a heart attack, they can give me a strike,” Owens said. “They don’t accept a doctor’s excuse. Even if I have something contagious that I can give to other people — pneumonia, the flu, strep throat, you name it — you have to come to work.”

Excessive overtime is another flashpoint (shades of Frito-Lay and Amazon). Miners have been forced into 12-hour shifts stretching into weekends — without the double pay on Saturday and triple pay on Sunday that they used to get.

And health care looms large. Costs shot up; the company now covers only 80 percent of the premium. “We need 100 percent,” said miner Dedrick Gardner. “Considering the work conditions in a coal mine, health care is vital. You’re dealing with silicosis, black lung, diesel, smoke.”

Black lung is caused by breathing in coal dust. The dust silts up the lungs, scarring and destroying them.

“Health insurance went from $12 for seeing any doctor in the world to $1,500 family deductible and co-pays up to $250,” said Local 2245 President Brian Michael Kelly.

Toxic and Dangerous

Safety is a perennial concern. “I work 2,200 feet underground in one of the most gaseous mines in the world,” Owens said. “If something goes wrong, it could blow the top off the ground.”

In 2001, 13 workers died at one of the mines now owned by Warrior Met after a slab of rock fell and set off a methane gas explosion, burning and pounding miners to death with chunks of rock.

Despite that tragedy, the 2016 contract eroded safety standards. And the situation is presumably even worse for the scabs inside now.

“Nonunion mines are continuously known for cutting corners and creating unsafe working environments in order to increase production,” said union spokesperson Erin E. Bates via email. “Warrior Met Coal is currently mining and processing coal with unskilled workers. We are concerned it is only a matter of time until someone gets seriously hurt.”

Without the union watchdog, apparently the company’s environmental practices slipped too. Shortly after the strike began, wastewater from one of the mines suddenly turned local creeks black with pollution.

Written by: Luis Feliz Leon

Source: In These Times

August 6, 2021

To get to the big ballpark in Brookwood, Alabama, you drive down the Miners Memorial Parkway. The road goes by the local headquarters of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), and close to the Miners Memorial monument, which remembers 13 miners killed in a 2001 explosion. A lot of coal miners work in Brookwood, and a lot have died here. Right now, more than a thousand are on strike there, at the Warrior Met Coal. It sits just off the same road.

On Wednesday morning, a line of buses lumbered down the winding road through the woods, and a line of pickup trucks piled up behind them. All passed the ​“We Are One” UMWA signs lining the road for miles before turning into the ballpark, where the sprawling open grass was dotted with tents and a stage. Entire families, most of them in camouflage UMWA t‑shirts, lugged their folding camping chairs and shade umbrellas out past the low white tornado shelters and down to the grass. The strike at Warrior Met has been going on for four months. But on this day, the rally was on.

Several thousand people showed up for what was billed as the ​“Biggest labor rally in Alabama history,” a claim too good to check. What was certain was that this was not a single rally for a single local of a single union. This was the entire labor movement, showing up to say that they have not forgotten a long and grinding struggle.

After the Pledge of Allegiance, the national anthem, and a reverend’s prayer to ​“change the mindset” of scabs and coal mining company owners — something even God might find difficult — the rally commenced. For hours, a procession of UMWA officials and leaders of other unions cycled across the stage, giving speeches that varied in inspirational quality. Attendees sought to maneuver their seats into the small patches of shadow that moved slowly across the scorching grass. Enormous quantities of bottled water, Krispy Kreme donuts, and popsicles were handed out from supply tents. People chatted, and prayed, and listened to various singers, and were together.

Many unions had sent buses full of supporters from all across the South. There were more than a dozen CWA members from Atlanta who worked for AT&T, decked out in red shirts. There was a gaggle of UAW members. There were Teamsters, and teachers, and government workers, all proudly in their union t‑shirts. There were union officials from Georgia and Kentucky and Tennessee and South Carolina. There were presidents of locals from other states, climbing the stage to present $500 checks to the strike fund. There was an entire tent full of longshoremen wearing custom-made white t‑shirts that said ​“Port workers in solidarity with mine workers.” They had come from Charleston, Jacksonville, and Mobile, Alabama, on a single bus that stopped in each city, collecting the comrades.

In addition to all the union member guests, at least half of the crowd was made up of retired UMWA members and their families, as if to demonstrate the ​“We Are Everywhere” slogan on all the camo shirts. These people also came from all across the country. One 76-year-old former coal miner nicknamed ​“Mouse” had taken a bus the week before from his West Virginia home up to New York City for a protest that the strikers held in front of the Blackrock headquarters in Manhattan; this week, he had taken another bus 18 hours to Brookwood for this rally. Asked why, he jabbed his finger forward and said, with force, ​“It helps my union brothers.”

Brookwood, Alabama is not a convenient place to get to, even if you live in Birmingham. The fact that thousands of people from across the country had clambered into buses for interminable trips to sit at this rally under the sweltering sun, for people they did not know, was remarkable. I spoke to many of these attendees and, to a person, the question of why they had gone to all the trouble to show up was answered as if it didn’t require any explanation at all. ​“Solidarity,” they said. ​“They supported us, so we’re supporting them.” ​“This is what the union’s about.” To take a 30-hour round trip on a bus was, for them, a no-brainer. This is what the union’s about. For one day, this was just common sense. But in the context of the United States of America in 2021, this was a rare sight to behold.

The crowd at the Brookwood rally was multiracial. Not multiracial like a fashion ad, or a painstakingly assembled corporate board, but a large group of Black and white people united for a common purpose. The UMWA miners who are on strike at Warrior Met now are an integrated group, and so their supporters in the community are integrated as well. There were both Black and white people serving as Marshals at the rally, and helping to run it, and speaking from the stage, and sitting in the crowd. The majority of the people from other unions who had shown up in support were Black. The longshoremen were almost all Black, the CWA workers from Atlanta were almost all Black, and on and on.

Many of the UMWA members in attendance, and certainly most of the older retirees, were white, religious, and Republican. The entertainment at the rally was almost all gospel and religious music. Singer after singer appeared between speeches to proclaim the glory of the Blood of Jesus. One retired miner made it a point to tell me, at the end of an interview, ​“I’m a Trump guy.” Across the grass, some of the Black CWA members from Atlanta toted ​“Strike for Black Lives” signs. At no point during the long, hot day did I see a bit of animosity — or, indeed, even a mention of political differences — between the members of the crowd. (The one exception was a single angry interloper who began pushing people and trying to start a fight before being hustled away by a large crowd of miners. I was told that he was a scab worker sent in to try to disrupt the rally. The fact that he walked out in one piece is a testament to the professionalism of the union.)

I am from the South. I was born in the South, I grew up in the South, and my entire family lives in the South. I have never in my life seen a racially and politically integrated crowd of people in the deep South, utterly united for a cause, as I did at this rally. The only things that come close are church events or football games, which I would argue lack the socially redeeming qualities of yesterday’s event. It is possible, down South, to get a racially integrated crowd where everyone agrees politically, but to get thousands of Black and white people whose politics range from strongly pro-Trump to strongly pro-Black Lives Matter together in a single place, in total unity of purpose, with virtually no conflict, and without being the explicit result of trying to assemble such a crowd to satisfy some sort of demographic diversity goals — well, that just doesn’t happen that much, ever.

This is the promise of unions. Not just better wages, or better working conditions, but a better society. Unions offer a frame for human interaction that does not otherwise exist. Our everyday experience in a society that is racially segregated, unequal, and politically polarized tells us that getting young and old and Black and white and left and right all together for something should be extraordinary or impossible; but at a union rally, where everyone’s common interest is plain to see, it becomes natural. It is only because the strength of unions within southern communities has become so rare that the sight of yesterday’s rally was so abnormal. Were there more strong unions, the South could be a very different place.

What the UMWA offers to the people of Brookwood is a vision of the world in which your enemy does not have to be someone of a different race or different political party. For those who believe in the union, there is a much more compelling enemy. It is an enemy they can see every day that they sit out on the picket line, watching cars drive by them, towards the mine. The back of the stage at the rally held a large banner with a picture of working people on it, and a header that read ​“Which Side Are You On?” One side of the banner said ​“UMWA,” and the other side said ​“Scabs.”

As the rally neared its end, a folk singer got up to perform a song he’d written to the tune of Woody Guthrie’s ​“All You Fascists Are Bound to Lose.”

“I’m gonna tell you scabs, we’re gonna win this strike,” he crooned. ​“And I’ll die a union miner, but you’ll be a scab for life.”

Written by: Hamilton Nolan

Source: The Tuscaloosa News

August 5, 2021

 

They arrived by the busload.

From South Carolina and Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky; from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Virginia, they came to Tuscaloosa County.

Coal miners and coal miner supporters from across the eastern United States descended Wednesday on Brookwood to support the ongoing coal miner strike against Warrior Met Coal Inc., which entered its fifth month on Aug. 1.

“It’s been a long time struggle, so far,” said Cecil Roberts, international president of the United Mine Workers of America.

Since April 1, union coal miners have been in negotiations with the Brookwood-based company for what they call a “reasonable contract” with better pay and benefits.

A tentative agreement was announced less than a week after the strike began, but the union voted that deal down and the strike has been ongoing ever since.

To reinvigorate the effort, the UMWA organized Wednesday’s rally and bused in hundreds of miners from practically every coal-producing state in the nation.

They were joined by others, swelling the crowd to more than 1,000 in Brookwood’s Town Park on Alabama Highway 216, just down from Warrior Met Coal’s central offices.

“This is solidarity,” said UMWA International Secretary-Treasurer Brian Sanson, who came from West Virginia. “They’re here to support their brothers and sisters here on this strike (and) to get this company to start bargaining in a fair and just manner and get these people back to work.”

Sanson is a member of the union’s negotiating team that is trying to reach a consensus with Warrior Met.

So far, the efforts have not been successful, he said, because of the company’s stance.

“I don’t think Warrior Met is bargaining in good faith right now,” Sanson said, repeating an accusation that the union has made from the beginning of negotiations. “There’s a lot of issues – there’s no one key issue – and Warrior Met is just not bargaining in good faith.”

Warrior Met did not respond to a request for comment, but has said from the beginning that its negotiation position is meant to protect itself as well as the long-term employment of its 1,400 or so workers.

“Throughout the negotiations process with the United Mine Workers of America, Warrior Met Coal’s vision has remained on the future,” the company said through a spokesperson, “a future where we provide our employees with a competitive package while protecting jobs and the longevity of the company and its workforce.

“We have always valued and appreciated our employees’ hard work and our priorities remain keeping people employed with long-lasting careers and ensuring Warrior Met Coal remains financially stable in a particularly volatile coal market.”

If that were true, then Wednesday’s rally would’ve been unnecessary, said Larry Spencer, vice president of UMWA’s International District 20.

“Look around, guys. This is what the union’s about,” said Spencer, who also serves as vice-president at large for the Southern District of the Alabama AFL-CIO and vice-president of the West Alabama Labor Council, in addressing the growing crowd.

He said purpose of the gathering, beyond bolstering the protracted strike, was to show Warrior Met Coal that the union would not back down.

“We need to make sure that that company up there knows that we’re going to do this and, if we have to, we’ll be back and we’ll be back and we’ll be back,” Spencer said to rousing applause. “Now, all they’ve got to do is get right. That’s all they’ve got to do. …

“We’re just asking for our fair share, is all we’re asking for. That’s it.”

Warrior Met Coal, which focuses primarily on the mining of nonthermal metallurgical coal for use in the steel production process by manufacturers in Europe, South America and Asia, was created following the 2015 bankruptcy of Jim Walter Resources and its parent company, Walter Energy.

That year, Walter Energy filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, indicating it had around $3 billion in debt with its major holdings in the state being the Jim Walter Resources underground coal mines in Brookwood as well as the rights to unmined coal fields elsewhere in Tuscaloosa and neighboring counties.

 

Written by: Jason Morton & Gary Crosby Jr.

Source: Bloomberg Equality

July 30, 2021

Coal miners from states including Alabama and West Virginia picketed outside BlackRock Inc.’s New York headquarters Wednesday in a bid to get the world’s largest asset manager to pressure Warrior Met Coal Inc. for better wages and employee benefits.

About 120 miners and supporters descended on BlackRock’s offices in midtown Manhattan, carrying signs that read “we are one,” chanting in unison and speaking out against their treatment by the coal company. Union members from other industries joined the picket line, while truck drivers and garbage men who drove by honked in solidarity. BlackRock was listed as Warrior Met’s biggest shareholder as recently as March 31.

More than 1,000 miners represented by the United Mine Workers of America have been on strike for almost five months as they pursue a new collective-bargaining agreement with Warrior Met, a Brockwood, Alabama-based miner of metallurgical coal used in steel making. The workers are seeking support from BlackRock, arguing the asset manager has allowed the coal company to exploit them in labor negotiations and on the job.

“We’re in New York City because we are simply following the money, and demanding that those who created that wealth, the miners, get their fair share of it,” said UMWA International President Cecil Roberts in a statement.

As Warrior Met was looking to emerge from bankruptcy in 2016, the miners took pay and benefit cuts to keep their jobs. That collective-bargaining agreement ended April 1. The miners are now looking for pay and benefit increases beyond what Warrior Met is offering, saying the company has the financial wherewithal to reverse the reduced wages from the last agreement.

Chris Brubaker, 47, who traveled from his home in Jasper, Alabama, to attend the rally, said he took a $6 per hour pay cut in the old contract and Warrior Met is only offering $2 per hour in raises over the next five years.

“All we want is a fair contract,” Brubaker said. “We don’t want no more than what’s owed to us. We go underground in conditions that at any moment can get you killed.”

Warrior Met has been ignoring their workers’ plight while doling out millions of dollars in fees to Wall Street and paying bonuses to upper management, the union and miners said. Mike Wright, 45, of Alabaster, Alabama, said the cuts to miners’ insurance coverage have resulted in higher medical bills and new debt from his diabetes treatment. Wright, the chair of safety at one Warrior Met’s mines, said the deductible model that the company switched to is the cause.

The strike has taken a toll on Warrior Met, which has had to idle one mine and scale back production at another. The ongoing dispute also is among the reasons why the company delayed development of a new project and halted stock buybacks.

“We have and will continue to work with the UMWA to reach a fair and reasonable contract that provides our employees with a competitive package while protecting jobs and ensuring the longevity of the company,” Warrior Met said in an emailed statement.

The union has distributed $4.3 million to striking workers to cover benefits and health-care costs since the walkout began, according to a statement.

The coal miners’ decision to involve BlackRock is the latest example of groups asking the asset manager to take a stand on its investments. The company oversaw about $9.5 trillion at the end of June, with about two-thirds of that in index funds — meaning it’s amassed major stakes in companies through passively managed portfolios. That at times has placed BlackRock in an awkward position, as Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink attempts to position the firm as a leader in environmental, social and governance investing.

Officials at BlackRock declined to comment on Warrior Met. The firm held almost 7.5 million shares of Warrior Met at the end of March, or nearly 14.6% of the company’s outstanding shares.

Written by Fola Akinnibi

Source: ucommblog

July 30, 2021

Miners from Alabama rallied outside BlackRock in Manhattan calling for an end to the months long strike

Since April 1, miners at the Warrior Met Mines in Alabama have been on strike. The workers say they walked out after management refused to reach a fair contract that reduced the long hours that they were working, which often meant working 80 hour weeks including on weekends, and the low pay they were receiving.

With contract negotiations stalled, about 500 miners from Alabama and supporters from Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio jumped on buses and headed to New York on Wednesday to pressure Warrior Met’s largest shareholder, Blackrock, to negotiate a contract now. They were joined outside of BlackRock by members of the New York City labor movement. Some of New York’s largest unions including UWUA 1-2, IATSE, AFA-CWA, and RWDSU Local 338 could be seen in the crowd supporting the miners from Alabama and calling on BlackRock to negotiate with the union. They were also joined by Hollywood Actress and political activist Susan Sarandon.

“I know what it’s like to be a union person, to struggle for what is right, for what’s owed to you,” Sarandon told a crowd. “I stand by you one day longer, one day stronger. And I’ll use my voice, however little it is, to try to tell people around the world and the United States that aren’t aware of what you guys have been doing.”

As speeches were made explaining the struggle of the workers to provide for their families, outside of one of the largest corporations in America, striking miners set up a picket line at the entrance to the investment firm.

“Warrior Met is the creation of a shadowy network of New York hedge funds and investment banks,” said UMWA International President Cecil E. Roberts. “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. All those billions came up to New York to fatten the bank accounts of the already-rich,” Roberts said. “BlackRock is the largest shareholder of Warrior Met stock. We are simply following the money, and demanding that those who created that wealth get their fair share of it.”

While the offices of BlackRock on the Midtown offices are far from the mines of Alabama, the striking workers are trying to bring their struggle and their story to money guys that are financing Warrior Met and who see the mines as just a line item on a profit and loss statement. Earlier in the strike, 14 miners made the trip to New York to hold a more toned-down rally and to gain support from the labor unions in the Country’s most union-friendly city.

About 1,100 miners have been out on strike in Alabama since the beginning of April. The strike has become increasingly violent with reports of multiple people being hit by cars driven by scabs over the past few weeks and months. According to Haeden Wright, the President of the local’s auxiliary group said that there have been at least four incidents of violence including a scab who almost hit one of the worker’s wife’s after he decided to barrel into the crowd of strikers. The strikers were not blocking the road, but were in the section that the police had blocked off for the strikers to protest in.

Unlike other high profile job actions like the Frito Lays strike in Kansas and the union vote at Amazon in Bessemer Alabama, the Warrior Met workers have received almost no media attention outside of Alabama and union news publications like UCOMM Blog. The union hopes that by bringing their fight to the financial and media capital of the United States that they will be able to get their message out about the greedy actions that Warrior Met and Black Rock have taken part in to deprive these 1,100 families of a paycheck for the last few months.

Written by: Kris LaGrange

Source: Coalzoom.com

July 27, 2021

More than 1,000 members of the United Mine Workers of America are planning to once again carry their ongoing strike against Alabama’s Warrior Met Coal to New York City.

Members are planning to picket the Manhattan offices of BlackRock, an investment management corporation that is the world’s largest asset manager, Wednesday morning until noon.

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.

Union members and allies from Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, as well as New York, are planning the show of solidarity as the strike looks to stretch into its fifth month. About 1,100 miners have been 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 – concessions they say total more than $1.1 billion.

Warrior Met produces coal used in steel production in Asia, Europe and South America.

UMWA International President Cecil E. Roberts said the union’s demonstration this week is aimed at the companies supporting Warrior Met.

“We’re in New York City because we are simply following the money, and demanding that those who created that wealth, the miners, get their fair share of it,” Roberts said.

Written by: William Thornton