Disabled Miners 1970s Strikes Strategies
I wrote a summary of the Disabled Miners strikes here, which I’ll quote below:
In West Virginia 1968, seventy-eight miners died in a mine explosion, which shocked the country and put a spotlight on mining dangers. Regional doctors began to fight back against the mining companies’ long medical coverup and denial of black lung disease, and brought that to the union halls. About this time, “Tony” Boyle gained control of United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), and began cutting the pensions of Disabled mine workers.
In 1969, Joseph Yablonski ran against a corrupt “Tony” Boyle to end corruption within the UMWA. However, they were assassinated by Boyle, per the courts investigations into Yablonski and his wife’s death.
Angered, miners founded Miners for Democracy and together with Disabled Miners and Widows and the Black Lung Association, they led the fight to reform the UMWA.
Robert Payne and other Disabled miners in the 1970s started a five-week strike, where they compelled non-disabled miners to join them until over twenty-five thousand workers adhered to the picket lines. These disabled miners led the charge in reforming the UMWA union, which included strikes and lawsuits to push for regulations to make mining safer and for disabled miners to received their promised pensions. The abled-bodied miners understood they risked becoming disabled themselves via injury or daily intake of coal dust.
One crucial point is that there was no one leader for the wildcat strikes that started in 1970 and concluded in 1978. The movement stayed decentralized as the rank and file conducted their strikes from West Virginia to Illinois. This culminated in 1977/78 with one of the longest running strikes in labor history.
The 1970s miner strikes brought together union and non-union miners in a series of wildcat strikes. Several strategies were utilized to great success. Adam Turl writes in International Socialist Review:
In 1977 alone—prior to the start of the national strike—strikes cost the industry 2.3 million days of work lost—ten times the rate of work stoppages in other industries.”
Stranger Picketing And Cross-Movement Solidarity
One strategy lay in the “stranger picketing.” Tradition held that no miner should cross the picket line regardless of whether they knew who started it. Strikers relied on that tradition when they sent some strikers to nearby mines and set up a strike line there. This allowed them to spread the strikes, where eventually the strikes ranged from North Carolina all the way to Illinois.
Since the strike was organized on the grassroots level, it incorporated decentralized strategies to keep the wildcat strikes going. Although some touted that the lack of centralized leadership was a weakness, the strength of the decentralized organizing meant the strikes increased in scale faster and held the line firmer than if UMWA organized the strike. The rank and file formed community connections and solidarity with other workers in other industries which the leadership of the UMWA and the Corporation representatives failed to break.
The miners were a diverse group of people, and workers in other industries came out in support of the miners. Other groups such as socialists and mutual aid organizations also supported the miners. For example, the Black miners often had the support of groups like the Black Panthers, who assisted with some mutual aid and armaments. This cross-movement solidarity provided a crucial pillar that kept the strikes going as long as they did.
Factors Contributing to the Strikes
Their demands regarding mine safety, pensions, disability, injury compensation, and wages culminated in a bitter fight that lasted all through the 1970s.
Factors also included the corporation’s push to speed up production despite its impact to mine safety, and the generation turnover. Younger miners were often Vietnam veterans, some disabled from the war, and had a healthy suspicion of authority with little loyalty to the corporations for which they worked. Also, many of the union offices were fairly small, with perhaps a hundred miners to them, which meant more leadership from the members rather than union staff.
Miners for Democracy (MFD) and Disabled Miners and Widows instituted major changes within the union by incorporating democratic processes and strategies into the structure of the union. One of the crucial changes was the ability for miner rank and file to vote on contracts, which would prove crucial to the strikes overall. Arnold Miller, once he took office as the President of the national chapter, dissolved MFD, but the impact it had on the rank and file had already proliferated to many of the smaller chapters.
Arnold Miller proved a weak leader as his negotiations often fell prey to harmful compromises that the rank and file members found unacceptable. Many of the contract deals he negotiated with BCOA — the main corporation that led the group of corporations that owned the mines — were rejected by the rank and file during the voting sessions. The wildcat strikes continued since much of the demands were not incorporated into those contracts.
Wildcat Strikes and Safety Laws
The wildcat strikes in 1969 started in Westmoreland Coal’s East Gulf Mine in West Virginia, their demands included safety laws due to the increasing rates of Black Lung Disease. This spread swiftly to other mines. By the next week, forty thousand coal miners shut down all the mines in West Virginia.
Marches on the capitol were included in the strikes, where thousands of miners and their families marched to demand a law to protect the safety of miners. This resulted in the Governor of West Virginia signing a law on March 12th that set strong safety standards on limits of coal dust and other safety considerations.
This victory galvanized the strikers, and it also played a hefty role in the national 1969 Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act. Many miners found the implementation of the law failed to reach their workplaces, so the strikes continued in force in the 1970s. Strikes in 1972 pushed Congress to institute an expansion of the 1969 act called Black Lung Benefits Act.
Although success of the 1969 strikes met one demand, the miners’ other demands required more intense pressure. Black Lung Disease was one of the many dangers they faced, but others included higher production loads and faster mining which often resulted in injuries. Poor maintenance of the mines by the corporations, which meant the structures holding up the mine sometimes collapsed. Other dangers included mine explosions, like the 1968 one in West Virginia that enraged miners, and started off the 1969 and 1970 through 1972 wildcat strikes.
Strikes after 1972 expanded the list of demands beyond safety and health pensions. With the growing militancy of the rank and file, the strikes grew to encompass massive swathes of the mining industry by 1977.
Since miners’ lives hung in the balance, along with poor leadership in their union, wildcat strikes and strangers picketing were seen as crucial tools in the miners’ arsenal. Another factor in the strikes came from discontent at the length of time grievances took to process. Terry Abbot, 25-year-old coal miner and president of of UMWA Local 1866 said during the strikes:
The grievance procedure takes so long. If you get a grievance to an arbitrator and back in eight to ten months you’re lucky. The companies don’t mind paying the arbiters. They’ve got the .money… And with about 90 percent of the grievances, there’s no penalty on the company not to do it anymore. It doesn’t hurt them any.”
1977/1978 Strikes
In 1977, fifty percent of coal in America came from union mines, but the strikes succeeded in shutting down almost 63 to 75% of production.
As Kim Woody and Jim Woodward argued in their analysis of the miners’ strikes:
Had the BCOA looked past Arnold Miller they would have understood that they were still in for a fight. The strike was solid. Not only had miners shut down all of the coal mines by the UMWA, but they had shut down a good deal of non-union coal mines as well. Car caravans, sometimes numbering by the hundreds, roamed the eastern coal fields shutting down non-union mines. Some non-union companies, like Mapco in West Virginia, hired gun-thugs to keep the strikers away. It didn’t work. Shots were exchanged and the mine stayed closed.”
To sustain the months long strikes, relief committees were set up by the miners, their families, and their allies. These committees focused on protecting strikers from mortgage foreclosure, preventing bankruptcies from medical emergencies, and some distribution of food and supplies.
Other unions would send money to assist, but the leadership of the UMWA sat on millions in aid in hopes of breaking the strikes and forcing agreement on the contracts Miller negotiated with BCOA. However, Miller’s strategy failed to break the rank and file’s picket lines.
Most relief came from rank and file workers in other industries. Socialists within other unions also pushed for aid directly to the miners. To augment the support needed, miners often had to file for food stamps during this period. Through this building of solidarity across other industries, the aid provided fueled the strikes through the 1970s. This mutual aid work formed despite the harsh retaliation of the union leaders and state’s court and police systems.
Strategies to stop non-union or scab workers included forming caravans to stop work at non-union mines. These caravans often faced armed violence from corporate guards at the non-union mines, which killed some miners in the caravans. This didn’t stop them from shutting down the mine as workers within the non-union mine would often join in the strike.
Other tactics would include dumping coal onto the ground from wagons, train cars, and other containers. Piling these onto transportation infrastructures would then create blockage to aid in shutting down the coal economy in the USA.
Many non-union mines were located on the edges of UMWA territory such as in Illinois. Fourteen thousand strikers worked within mines and terminals in Illinois. One terminal in particular, Metropolis, Illinois, received coal by train, which it then transferred to barges for travel up the Ohio River. It received twenty thousand pounds of coal per day, and proved a crucial strike point. Although terminal managers said they’d shut it down for the 1970s strikes, it remained open.
In response, three hundred miners met in West Frankfurt Illinois to discuss strategy. They formed a caravan and descended on the terminal, overwhelming the police and guards, and shut it down.
Actions like these continued across the breadth of the mining industry throughout the 1977/78 strikes.
Retaliation
Courts and arbitration judges often tried to break the strike line. For example, after the shutdown of the Metropolis terminal, judges in Illinois and Kentucky issued injunctions against the miners. When the Massoc County Sheriff handed out copies, miners responded by throwing them on the ground and stomping them into the dirt.
In addition to court rulings against the picketers, state troopers often attacked to break the strike lines. However, they faced armed miners, many who carried axes, knives, or guns. Often, the state troopers would be outnumbered by huge margins.
Troopers would resort to tear gas to break up strike lines and arrest hundreds of strikers. However, other strikes often took their place to keep the mines and terminals shut down.
To combat the harsh crackdown of troopers in one state, miners developed a strategy in stopping transportation of coal during the transfer. They would follow coal trucks in order to stop them from reaching their destinations. If state troopers in one state proved troublesome — as in not letting miners speak to the drivers — then they’d follow across the state border and confront the drivers there.
This required use of scouting by rank and file members who kept watch and relayed the sightings and news to other members down the line. This scouting also kept an eye on trooper forces and movements, which strategies were adapted in quick meetings by strikers on defensive measures.
The militancy of the miners helped provide some security against the retaliation of the state.
End of a Militant Era
The end of the 1977/1978 strikes wasn’t a win for the strikers nor the corporations. Supplies and food had run low for the strikers, and the aid networks struggled to hold up as the months marched onward.
In April 1978, the Social Worker published an editorial documenting the end of the 1970s mining strikes:
The coal miners… fought the government, and Jimmy Carter, who was even prepared to cut off food stamps from the families of strikers. They made a joke of Taft-Hartley, the “slave labor law,” which has been used for a generation to subdue and chain American workers.
In the end, only hunger forced them back. “The men voted with their stomachs, not their heads,” Ken Wagnild of UMWA Local 1810, Powhatan Point, Ohio, told Socialist Worker.
Perhaps if the leadership of the UMWA hadn’t withhold the millions in aid other unions had offered, hunger would not have impacted the end negotiations of the strike.
Even though relief committees and mutual aid had been used throughout the strike, the longevity of it faced increasingly hostile barriers by the state, the rise of neoliberalism and corporate union-busting, and the weakness within the UMWA leadership.
Creativity and adaptability proved crucial for the striking miners, and their wins resulted in better safety regulations and laws. Their fierce fight also heralded the transition period from combative labor movements of prior decades to a passive labor movement of 1980s forward.
Learning the lessons from this crucial fight can aid in future strikes. To learn more about the details of these strikes, especially the political situation of the time, I recommend exploring my sources in-depth. Thanks for reading.
Sources:
- Turl, Adam. “The Miners’ strike of 1977-78.” International Socialist Review. March 2011. URL: https://isreview.org/issue/74/miners-strike-1977-78/index.html
- Kelly, Kim. Excerpt from Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor. URL: https://lithub.com/we-dont-want-charity-we-want-jobs-at-the-intersection-of-the-labor-and-disability-rights-movements/
- Nielsen, Kim. A Disabled History of the United States. Beacon Press. October 2013. URL: https://www.beacon.org/A-Disability-History-of-the-United-States-P1018.aspx
- Hope, Jeanelle and Mullen, Bill. The Black Antifascist Tradition: Fighting Back from Anti-Lynching to Abolition. Haymarket Books. April 2024. URL: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2223-the-black-antifascist-tradition
