Labor & Employment Law

We?re Still Mourning the Dead and Fighting for the Living

By Berry Craig

Jeff Wiggins, president of the Western Kentucky Area Council, AFL-CIO, in the Paducah, Ky., union hall.

A century ago, many immigrant coal miners worked long hours at low pay in jobs that threatened their lives and limbs.

George F. Baer didn’t care. As he said:

“They don’t suffer. Why, they can’t even speak English.”

Baer was the chief spokesman for the Anthracite coal trust in 1902, when Pennsylvania hard coal miners, immigrant and native-born went on strike. The miners sought a pay hike, shorter hours, safer working conditions and recognition of their union, the Mine Workers. The strike was settled after President Theodore Roosevelt intervened.

The coal trust was made up of a group of railroad and mining companies that controlled nearly all of the Anthracite mines. Baer was president of the Reading Railroad.

He rates only a few lines in most history books. Even so, Baer is worth remembering.

Because of employers like him?Massey Energy Co. President and CEO Don Blankenship comes to mind?unions still must “mourn the dead, fight for the living.” That’s the unofficial motto of Workers Memorial Day, which will again be observed April 28. (I’m with UMWA President Cecil Roberts. I want to see Blankenship cuffed, zipped in an orange jump suit and made to do the perp walk.)

Unions have marked every April 28 as Workers Memorial Day since 1989. The date was chosen because the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) became part of the U.S. Labor Department on April 28, 1971, and because of a similar April 28 commemoration in Canada, according to the AFL-CIO. Jeff Wiggins, president of the Paducah-based Western Kentucky Area Council, AFL-CIO, says: 

When we observe Workers Memorial Day this year, we will have a special remembrance for the 29 West Virginia coal miners who died because Massey Energy put profit ahead of safety. Meanwhile, our prayers go out to their families.

Wiggins said his council’s hall is a workers’ memorial itself.

It is named for a union brother, Samuel D. Henderson, a Pipe Fitter, who died of injuries he suffered on the job.

Inside the hall, a small photo of Henderson hangs on a wall next to a big black and white metal sign that includes the Workers Memorial Day motto. The motto is based on a famous quote from union pioneer Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, a UMWA organizer in the anthracite coal fields and elsewhere:

Workers Memorial Day
April 28
Mourn the Dead
Fight for the Living

“Sammy’s picture and the sign are important reminders for us every time we meet,” said Wiggins, a United Steelworkers member who is also on the state AFL-CIO Executive Board.   

In Baer’s time, workplace safety laws were few, inadequate and mostly ignored by employers. As a result, railroads, mines and mills were slaughterhouses. Thousands of workers were killed, maimed or made seriously ill every year. One apologist for the likes of Baer?Blankenship would have loved him?said the country didn’t need worker safety and health laws because such laws only protected “those of the lowest development.” 

Few occupations are more hazardous than mining. The anthracite miners of 1902 also had faith that with UMWA recognition, the mine owners would have to make their jobs safer. (Statistics show that UMWA mines are much safer than nonunion mines like Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine where the 29 miners lost their lives in a massive explosion April 5.)

Baer hated the UMWA as much as Blankenship does, declaring:

The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for?not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of the country….

Nobody fought harder for unions in the era of “Divine Right” Baer than the UMWA’s Mother Jones, who was also a Socialist and a co-founder of the Industrial Workers of the World. ”Her picture is on the Kentucky state workers memorial stone, which sits on the lawn outside our hall,” Wiggins said.

Jones was dubbed the “Miners’ Angel.” But her words weren’t always angelic. As Wiggins explained:

She actually said, ”‘Mourn for the dead, fight like hell for the living.’ That’s what’s chiseled on our memorial.”

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on April 21, 2010 (boomark / email).