To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
April 6, 2022
by Tim Hall, Detroit Workers’ Voice
900 Warrior Met coal miners have been courageously holding out since last April in their long strike against the capitalist mine owners in Alabama. It is the longest strike in Alabama history.
The strike started as an unfair labor practice walkout against bad faith bargaining by Warrior Met Coal over a new contract. The previous contract, settled in 2016, came when the mines switched owners in the wake of a bankruptcy. At that time the miners were forced to accept concessions, including a $6-an-hour pay cut, reductions in health insurance and retiree pensions, and eliminating retiree health care to 2000 miner retirees and other benefits. The miners are now trying to recover these grievous losses. The company has plenty of money: since Warrior Met Coal took over the mines, it has reported millions of dollars in revenue, while the workers were working extreme overtime. Warrior Met management says, “we have the money to pay what you’re asking, we do not have the desire to.” They want to starve the workers out. They are believers in this traditional capitalist mine-owner program.
Today the miners continue their struggle despite the obstinacy of
the owners, ever greedy for more blood from the workers. The miners
have fought vigorously. They have held rallies and marched at the
Alabama state capitol in Montgomery to expose the state government for
using public resources to support the employers: the government has
been using state troopers to escort strikebreaking scabs across the
picket lines and into the mines throughout the strike. Miners also held
rallies, one in New York City outside the offices of Black Rock
Investment Group, the largest shareholder of Warrior Met Coal.
Community support has come in the form of solidarity statements from
other unions, a community rally and visits by various politicians. As
of November 2nd, the strike has cost the company $6.9 mil. (1)
Miners on the picket lines have been hit or narrowly missed by vehicles driven by company supporters; they have rightfully resisted these attacks. In October Warrior Met got a judge to issue an injunction banning picketing altogether. This is a local injunction issued by a local judge of Tuscaloosa County to protect an employer. (2).
The injunction was first issued on October 15th and then re-issued in November. The union protested to the National Labor Relations Board against the injunction, and a bureaucratic back-and-forth went on (Warrior Met moaning that the workers threw “jackrocks” at those who were stealing their jobs) until a hearing with an administrative law judge of the NLRB was held on March 14, 2022, for which no decision has been announced. (3) It is now April and the miners have been holding on by their shoestrings while the Democrats, who now control the NLRB, enjoy their pleasant lives and do effectively nothing. This is the NLRB under Democratic leadership, what the labor bureaucrats and Democratic politicians have been advertising since Biden's election as a great cure-all for workers' problems. For six months nothing has been done by the NLRB. Let the miners starve – say the Warrior Meet owners and the Democratic NLRB in harmony. At a rally Nov. 18 Liz Shuler, President of the national AFL-CIO, called the injunction “a tactic.” Brilliant. And what is your tactic in return? Apparently it's OK for the Dems on the NLRB to sit on their hands and the workers to vegetate and risk defeat.
And what are the leaders of the miners' union, the UMW, advocating in the struggle at the mine? Apparently the workers must hunker down and wait and try to live on meager supplies for over a year and now longer while the union leadership dickers with the company and the NLRB – until the strike is settled poorly or outright lost (Warrior Met, flush with money, is holding out for outright union defeat). That is the tactical plan. No effort is made to spread the strike to other mines. No effort to mount more vigorous marches, especially in the local area, which is not far from the Amazon facility in Bessemer, where another union is attempting to get recognition. A rally in front of Amazon would bring nationwide publicity against Warrior Met and also stimulate the union organizing that is going on inside Amazon. But apparently that would be too imaginative and inspiring to both bodies of workers. And no call is given for mass pickets to defy the injunction. Passivity is the “tactic” of the UMWA and the AFL-CIO, not surprisingly.
The voracious mine-owner capitalists and all their lackeys in
Warrior Met management, with the help of their flunkey judge, the
Democrats and their darling little National Labor Relations Board, the
leadership of the United Mine Workers, and the leadership of the
national AFL-CIO are effectively working together to defeat the miners.
But the workers persist in their just strike. Good for them!
Solidarity with the striking Alabama coal miners at the Warrior-Met mines!
May they find ways to win their just struggle!
(1) The Guardian, Jan. 25, 2022, Michael Sainato, “Alabama coal miners on strike for 10 months vow not to be ‘starved out’".
(2) Bloomberg Law, Nov. 26, 2021, Ian Kullgren, “Picketing Alabama Miners Stopped by Rare Non-Federal Court Order”.
(3) National Labor Relations Board Administrative Law Judge Decisions, March 2022. <>
Picture: Alabama coal miners on strike
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