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Source: Tuscaloosa Thread

July 12, 2021

Picture this: you’re driving in the Alabama heat with your two-month-old child. It’s late; you’re tired, and you’re ready to get back home when you have the sinking realization that you car is about to run out of gas.

Local resident Lacy Brown found herself in this exact situation.

The young mother was driving along County Road 99 near Brookwood with her two-month-old sitting in the back. Her car slowed to a stop when she realized that her car was out of gas and she had no way to call for help, as he phone was out of service.

At least 20 cars passed by her, and no one slowed down to offer her assistance. Brown said she’d lost hope until she was approached by a car full of United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) miners on their way home from the picket line.

Brown’s car had not stopped too far from the Warrior Met Coal plant where hundreds of miners are still on strike alleging unfair labor practices.

The miners drove into town to get a can of gas and returned to fill Brown’s tank. She said she offered them money for their help, but they all refused.

Brown took to social media Thursday to express her gratitude toward her good Samaritans. She said she didn’t know any of the miners that stopped to help.

“I’m tired of the name calling and shaming of these men,” Brown said in a Facebook post. “They are good folks that just want to be treated and compensated fairly at their dangerous job. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover and/or go off other people’s opinions.”

Over 1,100 miners at Warrior Met began a strike on April 1 of this year, and there is no sign of an end anytime soon. Warrior Met Coal has offered contract changes to the miners; however, no agreement has been met. The miners have also faced alleged vehicular assault by non-union workers while at the picket line.

Written by: Noah Lueker

Source: LaborPress.org

June 23, 2021

NEW YORK, N.Y.—You take a six-dollar pay cut and what do you get? Five years older and no respect for the sacrifices you made to get your employer out of bankruptcy, say the striking Alabama coal miners who protested outside the Manhattan offices of three hedge funds on June 22.

“They told us, since we bailed them out, they would take care of us,” says Brian Kelly, president of United Mine Workers of America Local 2245, one of more than 1,000 miners who’ve been on strike at two mines in Brookwood, Alabama, since April 1. But instead, he says, “they’re bringing in scabs to work and trying to get rid of the older workforce.”

Warrior Met Coal, which operates the two mines, about 15 miles east of Tuscaloosa, was bought out by a consortium of 20 to 30 hedge funds in 2016 after its previous owner, Jim Walter Resources, filed for bankruptcy, says UMWA spokesperson Phil Smith. Local 2245 then agreed to major concessions to help the company regain solvency: Along with the $6-per-hour pay cut, their health-care costs were increased from a $12 copay to a $1,500 deductible; the union had to negotiate a $25 million Voluntary Employees’ Beneficiary Association plan to continue retirees’ health care; and extra overtime pay for Sundays and holidays was eliminated.

“They’re making us work seven days a week, up to 16 hours,” says Kelly, who’s worked in the Brookwood mine for 25 years, following his father, uncles, and grandfather. “Now we’re forced to work every holiday except Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and Christmas.”

The company’s current contract offer, instead of restoring the $6 pay cut, is a five-year deal with a $1 an hour increase, with another 50 cents coming in its fourth year, says Kelly.

“This company has prospered,” says Dedrick Gardner, who’s worked in the mine for 13 years. “We worked a whole year during the pandemic. The mine didn’t shut.”

That brought the miners to the offices of three of the hedge funds that own Warrior Met: In the morning, they protested outside BlackRock Fund Advisors, the largest stockholder, holding 13% of the company, according to Smith. In the afternoon, they split into two groups, one at State Street Global Advisors, which owns 11%, and the other at Renaissance Technologies, which owns 4%.

Outside State Street’s Sixth Avenue offices, about 25 miners and supporters from other unions — the International Association of Theatrical and Stage Employees, the United Food and Commercial Workers, and Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union Local 338 — marched in an oval, chanting “No Contract, No Coal” and “Warrior Met Has No Soul.” Rain cut it short an hour early.

“These hedge funds are among several entities that invested in Warrior Met five years ago when the company emerged from bankruptcy,” UMWA International President Cecil E. Roberts said in a statement. “But they insisted on dramatic sacrifices from the workers, to the tune of $1.1 billion. The company has enjoyed revenues amounting to another $3.4 billion since then, much of which flowed into these funds’ accounts. It’s time to share that wealth with the people who created it — the workers.”

Company executives got bonuses of up to $35,000 early this year, according to the UMWA. The Brookwood miners now average about $22 an hour, the union says. Kelly says he makes about $60,000 a year.

Contract talks have made little progress since early April, when the miners rejected a proposed agreement drawn up a few days into the strike by a margin of 1,006 to 45. Smith says he doesn’t expect them to resume until after July 4.

“They really haven’t moved very far from the contract that got voted down,” says Smith. “I don’t think they got the message.”

Aside from pay, union officials say, a main dispute is that management is demanding the power to fire strikers and to give strikebreakers and new hires seniority. Earlier this month, there were at least two incidents where drivers entering the mine site in pickup trucks hit picketers. Warrior Met management responded that it has an injunction that “specifically prohibits picketers from interfering, hindering or obstructing ingress and egress.”

“They want to put the new hires and scab miners to the front of the seniority line,” says Kelly. “I’ve been there 25 years. That’s not going to happen.”

Safety has become a major concern. The foremen the new management brought in, Kelly says, came from West Virginia and Kentucky, and don’t understand the kind of mining they do at Brookwood.

The Alabama mine, which extracts a specialized variety of coal used in making steel, is much deeper than a typical Appalachian “drift mine,” he explains. Its shaft goes down 2,000 feet, and the miners have to travel as much as 10 miles to reach the coal face.

“You can’t walk out if something happens,” he says.

Mining coal at those depths also releases a lot of methane gas, which is toxic, inflammable, and explosive. In the last two years, Kelly says, there have been more “ignitions” — small fires starting from pockets of methane igniting — than he’s seen in his previous 20 years on the job.

“They are building a big potential to have something blow up,” he says.

It’s a peril he knows too well. On September 23, 2001, 13 miners at Brookwood were killed in a methane explosion.

“If you don’t run safe, you won’t run more coal,” Kelly says. “You’ve got to have air to push the dangerous gases out.”

Written by: Steve Wishnia

Source: AL.com

June 22, 2021

About 14 striking Alabama mine workers have taken their case to Wall Street this morning.

Chanting “no contract, no coal,” the miners today launched the latest step in a strike that began April 1 for a new contract with Warrior Met Coal.

United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts and union members plan to protest in front of the Manhattan offices of several hedge funds the union says are the reason the contract negotiations are stalled.

“These are the ones that can be responsible in seeing that we get a decent contract,” UMWA Legislative Director Phil Smith said by phone this morning.

The miners, along with other supporters, plan to protest in front of BlackRock Fund Advisors, State Street Global Advisors, and Renaissance Technologies.

They will also get support from other unions as well. Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale, Department Store Workers Union and Sara Nelson, Association of Flight Attendants president, are scheduled to join them. A spokeswoman for the RWDSU said that Appelbaum will take part as miners participated in demonstrations for the Amazon union drive in Bessemer earlier this year.

More than 1,100 workers at Warrior Met Coal hit the picket lines on April 1, striking for better pay and benefits. Warrior Met produces coal used in steel production in Asia, Europe and South America.

The previous agreement with the union was negotiated as Warrior Met emerged from the bankruptcy proceedings of the former Walter Energy, which declared bankruptcy in 2016.

Nearly two weeks into the strike, it appeared a settlement had been reached, but that was rejected after the union members “emphatically” voted down the tentative agreement, saying it was not sufficient, according to the United Mine Workers of America. The union contends it made serious concessions in 2016 to keep the company operating, which the new contract did not redress sufficiently.

Smith said morale among union members remains strong, though some members have crossed the picket line.

“They’re holding strong,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of support, auxiliaries feeding families,” he said. “There’s a lot of dedicated people who are determined to see this thing through, no matter what it takes.”

Written by: William Thornton

Source: The Nation

June 11, 2021

Alabama is a beautiful place filled with contradictions and complexities, but there are a few things that my time there has taught me that this state holds sacred. God, football, and barbecue top the list, of course (Roll Tide!), but for a group of coal miners in Tuscaloosa County, there’s another hallowed institution perched up on that pedestal: the union.

While Alabama itself may be a “right to work” state with a blood-red Republican legislature, its labor bona fides run just as deep, and its people are no strangers to organizing for the common good. The labor movement in Alabama is tough, determined and nimble; it has to be, given what it’s so frequently come up against from anti-worker politicians and powerful corporations. This past year, a high-profile union drive at an Amazon warehouse in nearby Bessemer, Ala., captivated the nation—but really, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise, given the area’s grounding in the civil rights movement and its unionized industrial past. A few days after the sad results of the Amazon election were announced (and national attention turned back away from the Deep South), a small coal-mining community in the rural region between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa came together to launch one of the largest strike actions in Alabama’s recent history.

On April 1, 2021, 1,100 miners at Warrior Met Coal in Brookwood pulled off their hard hats, hung up their reflective gear, and walked off the job. Their union, the United Mine Workers of America, had called a strike—the first one to hit the state’s coal mining industry in four decades—and the workers knew what was coming. There’s a deep generational memory in these mines. While many of this latest crop of workers hadn’t been around (or even alive) the last time coal miners in the area went on strike, their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers surely were, and passed down that knowledge to their kin. The union has been a part of life in those mines since 1890, when John L. Conley founded the UMWA’s District 20 in Alabama, which remains one of the most racially integrated UMWA chapters in the country, where about 20 percent of workers are Black. Crossing a picket line is a mortal sin here, an unthinkable betrayal that is enough to earn a permanent black mark on one’s reputation and standing in the community.

A hundred and thirty-one years later, the current members of District 20 are out on an unfair labor practices strike against Warrior Met, citing the company’s conduct during negotiations, and have been for over two months. It wasn’t initially expected to last this long. About a week into the strike, the company and UMWA leadership came to a tentative agreement, but after it was presented to the membership, they voted overwhelmingly to reject the offer and stay out on the picket line.

As multiple striking miners told me, the company’s offer didn’t improve enough on the current contract, which was implemented five years ago when Warrior Met bought the mines. The previous owners, Jim Walter Resources, had gone bankrupt, which resulted in mass layoffs; when Warrior Met bought the company, executives promised to rehire the bulk of the workforce on the condition that they accept a subpar contract—and calling it merely subpar is generous. Pay was slashed by $6 per hour to an average of $22; workers lost many of their paid holidays, some of their time off, and their ability to earn overtime pay; and their health insurance costs went way up while safety standards and working conditions went way down. A severe policy for absences from work that eliminated any flexibility whatsoever in case of unexpected sickness or emergencies was also enacted; as one miner’s wife described it to me, it’s a “four strikes and you’re out” system, which felt especially onerous considering the heavy toll that the work takes on the workers’ bodies, and the fact that the majority of them are parents.

Nonetheless, the miners signed on the dotted line back in 2016 with the understanding that, five years later, when the company was on its feet, they’d be rewarded with a better deal. While Warrior Met’s finances improved considerably during that span and remain robust even in spite of the pandemic’s impact, that time is up—and the company has shown zero interest in holding up its end of the bargain or in transferring any of that wealth to the workers who created it. On top of that, with a spate of recent attacks being attributed to company employees, Warrior Met has also shown that it has no qualms about playing dirty—even when that places its own workers’ lives at risk.

The Warrior Met picket line is really a grouping of 12 small outposts, stationed in front of each entrance to the sprawling mines. Many of the mine entrances are isolated, set down wooded country roads with no cell-phone service; there are never more than a few people out there, because the company finagled a court injunction limiting the number of people allowed on the line at a time. It also called in both state and local police as well as its own private, armed security to surveil the pickets and enforce the cap, which began as a paltry six but was bumped up to 10 following an appeal. Both the company and the union fly drones overhead to keep an eye on the lines, and police are a constant presence at the larger entrances.

It’s a recipe for tension, especially when the scabs and supervisors pass in and out and the community is small enough for folks to know exactly who has sold them out by crossing that line. At the end of May, after leading 300 miners on a march, 11 UMWA leaders were arrested for blocking the entrance to Mine #7 and refusing to leave; they were taken to the Tuscaloosa County Jail and kept overnight. The company’s silence at the bargaining table has grown deafening, and those escalating tensions have recently reached a fever pitch, as the UMWA alleges that company employees have begun waging blatant acts of violence against the striking miners.

Thanks to the watchful eye of the UMWA’s drone, footage of a brazen vehicular attack surfaced earlier this week. It was the third such attack on the strikers in as many days, and in each instance, UMWA leaders allege that a truck was driven directly into the picket line. I was able to review footage of the incidents, which shows exactly that—a black pickup truck turning off the highway and driving straight for a group of striking workers; a man is seen connecting with the hood of the truck, and stumbling backward from the impact. Multiple police reports have been filed and at least one arrest has been made, but strikers say that local police have shown little interest in pursuing the perpetrators. In one case, police are actually looking to arrest one of the victims, on the allegation that they used pepper spray on the driver in self-defense. Meanwhile, several strikers have been sent to the hospital with injuries. As UMWA International President Cecil Roberts commented, “Warrior Met seems to believe that it is all right to strike people with cars as they engage in legal, protected activity. This is a dangerous course of action that can swiftly lead to events spiraling out of control.”

Amy Pilkington’s husband, Greg, a six-year veteran of the mines and a coal miner’s son, is one of the miners who was injured in the attacks. She says that as a truck barreled through a picket line earlier this week, the truck hit a heavy burn barrel, throwing it against Greg’s leg. Doctors say that the impact left him with a torn meniscus. Back in 2016, he was badly injured in an accident underground, and sued Warrior Met; his wife was unsure if he had been specifically targeted as a result, but all the same saw it as part of a dangerous pattern. “They’re all right now really being targeted,” she explained.

“But I’m not going to give up, because that’s what they want,” Pilkington relayed from Greg, who was sitting next to her as we spoke on the phone. “That’s part of their agenda, to scare us off or physically and mentally make us to where we don’t want to fight anymore. [And] I grew up in the union. I know my dad and them picketed back in the ’80s, and it was a whole lot worse than what is going on now. I’m not going to, but if I was to give up this spot, my dad would probably come back to haunt me.”

The strike continues, even as the miners are now faced with the additional worry of company violence on top of the day-to-day struggle of keeping their kids fed and a roof over their heads. Unlike many unions, the UMWA does have an active strike fund, so members are able to draw biweekly $650 strike checks as long as they spend 16 hours on the picket line per week. But those checks only go so far, so the UMWA Auxiliary, which is run by miners’ spouses, family members, and retirees, has also organized a formidable strike pantry operation that takes in donations to provide groceries for over 200 families per week. It’s truly a community effort, in an area where entire generations of families are tied to the mines by blood and coal dust.

While the metallurgical coal produced at Warrior Met will continue to be in high demand in rapidly industrializing nations in Europe and Asia, the US coal industry as a whole is already in the midst of a sharp decline. Securing a strong union contract is one way that these workers can protect their livelihoods, and ensure that they’re not left behind as the country fitfully transitions to a post-coal future. Coal mining is inarguably a dirty, deeply environmentally unfriendly job, but for now, someone’s got to do it, and they deserve to be compensated fairly for their labors.

It has been a hard slog, and will undoubtedly get even harder, but the miners are determined to win. The Pilingtons and their brothers and sisters in UMWA District 20 aren’t backing down, come hell, high water, or (God forbid) another boss’s F-150. As they’ve made clear, Warrior Met can’t scare them; they’re stickin’ to the union.

“In this day and time you have to have a union to support you,” Pilkington, who is herself a member of the Alabama Education Association, explained. “Companies are so greedy that they’re going to take care of their selves and they don’t give a flying fart about their employees, as long as they’re getting their money. That’s all they care about. And it’s not right to the worker. We deserve just as much as these people that are sitting in offices.”

Written by: Kim Kelly

Source: WBRC Fox 6 News

June 8, 2021

BROOKWOOD, Ala. (WBRC) -Things are apparently getting heated at the on-going strike at the Warrior Met Coal plant. Union officials say some workers are turning to violence.

The United Mine Workers of America tells WBRC, some of its members have been hit by cars three times in the past three days while on the picket line.

In video, you can see a red truck bumping someone picketing outside Warrior Met Coal.

The other video shows a black truck hitting someone else as it made its way into the plant.

UMWA feels this is the company or some of its workers way of not allowing its workers to rightfully protest. The coal miners say they are looking for equality and fair treatment on the job.

This latest incident comes after a number of arrests took place in recent days among workers who are picketing.

“We’ve done nothing to provoke these attacks. They really kind of changed the dynamics here and assumed that they’re going to adopt a violence stance against people are who engaging in a peaceful activity,” Phil Smith with UMWA said.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office is not aware of any police reports filed yet, but they have increased patrols to keep the peace.

UMWA’s president is calling on Warrior Met Coal to come to the bargaining table in good faith, ready to hammer out a fair and reasonable agreement.

We’ve reached out to Warrior Met Coal but haven’t heard back yet.

Written by: Josh Gaunt

*To watch the video of this news article click here

Source: Workers World

June 2, 2021

Centreville, Ala.

May 31 — In Brookwood, Ala., the 1,100 miners of United Mine Workers (UMWA) Local 2245 are entering the ninth week of a strike begun April 1 against Warrior Met Coal. The company has refused to meet the miners’ just demands, and the bosses brought in nonunion workers to replace the strikers. Business Wire describes Warrior as “the leading dedicated U.S.-based producer and exporter of high quality metallurgical (‘met’) coal for the global steel industry.” (Feb. 24)

Three hundred striking workers marched to Mine #7 on May 25 to confront the strikebreakers, chanting, “We are Union! UM doesn’t break!” Black strikers on bullhorns called out by name the scabs who were crossing the picket line: “Get out from behind the truck, D__! Come back where we can see you!” Mine worker unionization in Central Alabama has a tradition of Black and white worker organizing that goes back 100 years, in defiance of state segregationist law and policy.

A group of miners sat down in the road to block the entrance; eleven were eventually arrested. One miner said, “We don’t feel like we’re breaking the law, when this company is trying to destroy our people.” (perfectunion.us)

When those arrested were released later in the day, they joined a union rally in progress, where speakers included Cecil Roberts, UMWA international president, and Liz Schuler, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO.

In 2016 the miners accepted a drastic $6-an-hour pay cut and sacrificed health benefits to bring the company out of bankruptcy. Management promised the cuts would be restored once the business was solvent.

In a 2020 end-of-year statement Warrior CEO Walt Scheller said: “Despite the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on met coal demand and pricing worldwide, we were pleased to be cash flow positive again in the fourth quarter and nearly break even for the year.”

But when the miners demanded restoration of their pay and benefits, the company offered a contract with only a $1.50-an-hour increase and kept in place brutal discipline and firing policies. The company contract offered nothing to improve unsafe working conditions. After walking out, the miners voted 1,006 to 45 to reject the company offer.

The miners labor in one of the world’s most life-threatening workplaces. The Brookwood mines are 1,400 to 2,100 feet underground — some of the deepest vertical-shaft coal mines in North America. In 2001, methane gas explosions and a cave-in at one of the mines killed 13 workers, including a former high school classmate of this writer.

Coal is extracted in the Warrior Met mines with highly mechanized “longwall” machines. Dire physical risk is omnipresent, including methane gas explosions, strata failure that shears limbs, dust that permanently damages lungs, longwall mechanisms causing head and neck injuries, and deafening machine noise.

The company’s hard line, which is keeping experienced miners out of work, is also having a damaging impact on the surrounding environment, as inexperienced picket-line crossers are expected to run complicated machinery. Nelson Brooke with Black Warrior Riverkeepers says a polluted wastewater discharge smelling of chemicals is now flowing into local creeks from Warrior Met. These are creeks where children of the workers swim in the summer. Brooke says the Alabama Department of Environmental Management should immediately shut down Mine #7 and issue a cease-and-desist order to the company. (abc3340.com, May 3)

Weekly solidarity rallies are being held at Tannehill State Park. Community support, including fundraisers and a food pantry, is helping the striking miners and their families keep going.

Written by: Minnie Bruce Pratt