A fellow contributor to West Virginia Blue wrote this great piece this week on the Coal CEO who has declared War on Labor Day. I am reprinting it here with his permission.
by One Citizen
No doubt you've heard the annual claims of a "war on Christmas" touted by the right wing punditocracy as a means to use hyperbolic rants to smear the left. But now there's a real war against not just another holiday, but the entire movement for which it stands.
Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship's hosting of a Labor Day rally to preserve American jobs in West Virginia's southern coal fields isn't just a sick joke. It is his full out declaration of war not just against the UMWA but all families who live in, or near, his precious coal.
Not too long ago Massey Energy was publicly taken to task by United Mine Worker's president Cecil Roberts for trying to get English language standards relaxed so that Mexican immigrants could pass mine certification. He was doing it to specifically keep his company's wage expenses low. And apparently, it wasn't the first time they'd tried it.
In 2001, a labor broker came to the mining board with a request to import 1,000 Mexican and Chilean workers for two unnamed coal companies. source
All of Massey's mines are nonunion It's no small secret thatMassey has been obviously been trying to kill off the UMWA for as long as anyone can remember.
CEO Blankenship could very well be the most anti-labor person on the face of the planet. If being anti-Labor weren't in his DNA, then why else would a man who reportedly rakes in just under $20 million per year have hired a team of corporate lawyers (Charles Woody, Eric Kinder and Jeffrey Foster, of Spilman Thomas and Battle in Charleston) to beat his ex-maid out of her well-deserved unemployment benefits?
Long ago, America's most popular poet predicted where most all of us might be if it weren't for the American Labor movement.
Company Towns
You live in a company house
You go to a company school
You work for this company,
according to the company rules.
You all drink company water
and all use company lights,
The company preacher teaches us
What the company thinks is right.
Carl Sandburg
The U.S. Labor movement is so important that the first Monday of every September
is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country. source
West Virginia has played a very important role in helping to establish the very roots of organized U.S. labor. Most significantly, our state's impact in the development of the UMWA and the AFL-CIO is due to our coal, steel and the railroad. As America's labor force has grown strong, so grew her middle class, as well as West Virginia's economy. Individuals such as John L. Lewis, Mother Jones, and Joe Hill each came here to take part in a struggle which resulted in better pay and working conditions for most all American workers.
Despite the threat of physical harm and economic ruin, miners have constantly struggled against great odds to achieve their goals: the eight-hour day in 1898, collective bargaining rights in 1933, health and retirement benefits in 1946, and health and safety protections in 1969. source
Native West Virginian Bill Blizzard was indicted along with 52 other men for "treason against the State", even though the mobilization of his "Red Neck Army" from Marmet, WV to the historic Battle of Blair Mountain wasn't against the state at all, but the coal companies. In contrast, neither coal operator Quin Morton nor paid mercenary Bonner Hill was ever arrested for the murder of Cesco Estep by their bloody Bullmoose Special at Holly Grove, WV. And not one of Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin's mercenaries, who had been hired by the Logan County Coal Operators Association, were ever charged for killing and maiming miners on Blair Mountain.
To this day, coal company apologists claim that had miners not blocked access to their mines, companies would never have had to retaliate. But just how badly could coal operators have been treating minersfor them to have openly rebelled en masse?
During the war (WWI) some mine operators were making up to 600% profit from coal sales and all the while the federal government required a no-strike agreement for the duration of the war. The sudden change in economic conditions had to have been a shock to mine operators.
Coal operators laid off miners and attempted to reduce wages to pre-war levels. In response to the 1912-13 strike, coal operators’ associations in southern West Virginia had strengthened their system for combating labor. By 1919, the largest non-unionized coal region in the eastern United States consisted of Logan and Mingo Counties. source
President Eisenhower, the last decent elected Republican president recognized:
"Labor is the United States. The men and women, who with their minds, their hearts and hands, create the wealth that is shared in this country--they are America."
According to a prominent Appalachian Regional Commission report, employment in the mining industry is one of the best predictors of poverty and other elements of "economic distress" in Central Appalachia. Here’s an excerpt from that study:
"Of all the regions in this analysis, Central Appalachia has been one of the poorest performers in relation to the ARC’s economic distress measure over time. Furthermore, and unlike all other regions in the U.S., current and persistent economic distress within the Central Appalachian Region has been associated with employment in the mining industry, particularly coal mining."
The study perhaps most notably stated,
"The counties that have emerged from distress in the region have consistently had fewer jobs in mining and a greater number of jobs in manufacturing when compared to the counties that have remained persistently distressed." source
According the the State Journal, the Friends of America Rally is scheduled for Labor Day on a reclaimed mining site in Mingo County, even though it has been touted on the rally planner's website as being held near Holden, in Logan county WV. So just why would Donald Blankenship want to obscure that it's in Donald Blankenship's birthplace county? Could it be because Blankenship doesn't want any light shed on the fact that Mingo's citizens have been petitioning for long-needed raises on behalf of their teachers in vain? It is certainly curious that Mingo county's largest publication, the Williamson Daily News, recently eliminated that same article from its website (evidenced by the byline on the Gilbert article). And what about the fact that the Mingo County school board has been seized not once, but twice, "as a result of budget deficits"?
Someone should ask Don Blankenship why Mingo's schools have been constantly under funded for years when the local coal prep plant is processing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of coal mined yearly from that region.
Mingo County is one of the poorest counties in the United States.
"The median income for a household in the county was $21,347, and the median income for a family was $26,581. Males had a median income of $31,660 versus $18,038 for females. The per capita income for the county was $12,445. About 25.90% of families and 29.70% of the population were below the poverty line, including 38.90% of those under age 18 and 18.60% of those age 65 or over." source
The U.S. average is $41,994.
Yet the trains run on time sending out massive amounts of coal to power plants in the southeast.
One area resident says that Mingo County is the only place where the snow coming down is black. The coal dust and truck traffic have made her ashamed of where she has lived her entire life. Recently, a sister she had not seen for 38 years planned a visit. The reunion never happened: the road was too dangerous and the community too dirty. source
One might think that the connection between coal mining and poverty couldn't be any clearer than that to our political leaders. Yet when confronted with the facts,, our most prominent politicians used some of the most eloquent weasel words ever uttered to defend the coal industry's poor labor record, specifically related to surface mining.
What you'll likely never see mentioned in the local media is that by luring outsiders to his free music festival, Don Blankenship will have effectively given state lawmakers the political cover to continue falsely claiming that the coal industry is responsible for most, if not all, of West Virginia's jobs so they can continue to both under-tax and under-regulate that industry.
And why isn't it considered anti-jobs for coal operators towangle out from under state unemployment compensation through political manuevering only to leave small and medium sized businesses to pick up the tab through yearly business "fees"?
Although Massey spokesman Jeff Gillenwater said that his Friends of Coal er (cough) "America" sponsors aren’t trying to compete with the 71st annual UMWA Labor Day rally slated just miles away in Boone county, he also claimed that there could be as many as 100,000 show up for Massey's doo-dah, and that Massey has hosted an earlier event at which 50,000 attended. None of Gillenwater's claims can be substantiated because none have ever been challenged by reporters, at least as far as I could tell.
For the record, Gillenwater's "sponsors" have spent an average of $45 million per year to push the blatantly false claim that coal is clean, so I wouldn't automatically trust anything that coal-hearted weasel has to say. Much of those millions are spent with the media, which could be why Jeff Gillnwater knows he can get by with his outrageous claims. Couldn't the money they're paying Ted "CrustyPants" Nugent to lie about "treehuggers" be better spent subsidizing a better way to make coal "clean" or at least taking responsibility for poisoning the wells of rural families?
Besides declaring a war on the Labor Movement, Blankenship's rally is also an elaborate propaganda scheme to stop the "Cap and Trade" legislation by painting it as a job-killer.
Fact is, Congress passed one type of cap and trade legislation regulating the coal industry before, which effectively dealt with acid rain (sulfur dioxide) pollution. Although the same arguments were used by the same industry back then, not only were no jobs lost,a whole slew of "green" jobs and an entirely new coal combustion products (CCP) industry sprang up in states where politicians hadn't completely sold out to Big Coal.
So instead of turning the resulting coal slurry into a resource, West Virginia politicians have let the coal industry create vast permanent toxic waste dumps called "slurry impoundments" similar to, and in some cases far larger than the ones spilled by the Tennessee Valley Authority and Massey Energy in Kentucky.
But the specter of an impoundment dam killing rural citizens isn't nearly as threatening as the silent terror of slowly poisoning entire communities.
During the middle ages marauders would regularly poison the wells of those they conquered to terrorize anyone that they couldn't immediately slaughter. It is a travesty that the coal industry has been permitted to inject toxic slurry into community aquifers in an apparent effort to destroy any hopes for later industry, instead of being required by lawmakers and regulators to pursue "green" ways of creating even more industry by converting the slurry into something similar to coal combustion products (CCPs).
Most native West Virginians realize that the coal industry in general and Don Blankenship in particular have had a long term plan in place to run families off their precious coal. Poisoning the aquifer also keeps coal property taxes lower while driving more Appalachian Americans off their precious coal.
Fewer people here naturally means that coal industry lobbying dollars will have less competition and therefore buy more influence in the statehouse. Fewer families means fewer students in our school system, which results in fewer teachers to pay. Fewer families to deal with also means fewer whistle blowers, and that less business taxe revenues will be spent on state infrastructure. This naturally means that a more revenues can be spent to subsidize the coal industry..
All this means is that the southern West Virginia coalfields are now on the verge of becoming completely uninhabitable, thanks to the coal industry's multiple pronged assault. Aided and abetted, of course, by our extremely regressive anti-labor lawmakers.
According to the WV Department of Commerce, we export more coal and coal powered electricity than any other state. Yet four out of five school districts which have been forcibly taken over by the State due to lack of funds have been in coal producing counties. When Lincoln county parents sued the state for not giving their kids a shot at a decent education due to lack of funds, the state Supreme Court was forced to wrest funding oversight from coal-fired legislators who couldn't bring themselves to raising property taxes on coal.
Lest you begin to think that's all "past history" or an isolated incident, Massey Energy's full-time "public relations expert" Troy Andes (R-Putnam) has been able to somehow get himself appointed as House minority whip, even though he's one of the youngest lawmakers and has been there for a relatively short time. Andes also "just happens" to be on the WV House Education Committee and Joint Standing Committee on Education, but I'd wager that it ain't "for the sake of the kids". It's far more probable that he's been specifically positioned for his coal boss to make certain that none of his fellow lawmakers dares to suggest they increase coal property or severance taxes specifically to keep from properly pay teachers.
It is a matter of record that the coal industry has been spending record amounts on WV political campaigns for years, in addition to the $45 million per year to nationally push their "clean coal" myth. So its not as if the coal industry can't afford to pay higher taxes to properly fund WV schools. Coal industry leaders apparently strategize that families will automatically migrate away from where they know the schools are regularly underfunded. Its similar to their strategy of keeping small businesses from starting up where there's no potable water and no families to serve.
BTW Verizon Wireless is apparently the only other transnational corporate sponsor of this Labor Day travesty (besides Massey Energy), because unfortunately Verizon's record regarding the Labor movement isn't all that great, either.