Earlier tonight United Steelworkers Pres. Leo Gerard was on "The Ed Show." Ed Shultz interviewed him re: the (ongoing) tragedy of at least 25 miners killed at the Montcoal, WV, Performance Coal Company, a Massey Energy company. No doubt Massey's the bad guy here. Massey's the murder by spreadsheet perp.
With that said and acknowledged, how infuriating hearing Gerard go on, and on, and on, and on pitching for unionization while utterly neglecting to say anything akin to:
Look, Ed, you know I have my opinion about the need to unionize and about the strength that collective bargaining brings with it to negotiate and effectuate safer working conditions. But let's put that aside right now. These are my brothers, they are working Americans. They are coal miners. I don't care right now if their mine was unionized or not. I care only that more than two dozen have been killed, that their families are grieving and that we don't yet know about the fate of several others.
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Goddammit, Gerard, can you lay off the fucking politics for 48 hours???
I happen to agree that a unionized mine would be a safer mine. I happen to agree that there is strength in numbers. I happen to agree that Massey Energy is a murderous corporate pariah.
What I don't agree on is your virtual, "Well, if they had just made the effort to organize they'd been alive now," attitude. Did you actually say those words? No. But you practically did. Good God, man. Have some modicum of decency.
Why am I so "fired-up" about this? Because...
My Grandfather was a West Virginia Coal Miner.
. . . in nearby Greenbrier County. My mother grew up a coal miner's daughter. She graduated high school, Valedictorian, in 1944 and along with a friend took a bus to Washington, D.C. to work in a typing pool at the FBI. She later became a Supervisor and it was at the FBI that she met my father, back from the war and going to night school to get his law degree.
My mother's 3 brothers escaped the mines: Uncle Rudy became a chemical engineer, Uncle Bob a civil engineer, and Uncle Lewis a high school history teacher in Arlington, Virginia. They all escaped the mines.
My earliest childhood memories, are when I was about 4 years old, walking with grandpa out to the coal shed in Princeton, West Virginia, to bring in coal for the pot bellied stove that heated the house. They had no running water, just a pump. The had an outhouse. But by then, living in Princeton, their house was large and warm and loving and I loved visiting there. When I walked to the coal shed I held on to Grandpa's left thumb. He had no fingers for his left hand, just a half a hand with, and his thumb. The result of a mining accident when he was in his late teens. But he worked in the mines for decades after that.
Grandpa lived to age 99 and Grandma made it to her late 80s. They're buried in Lewisburg, West Virginia, about an hour and forty-five minute drive from Montcoal.
I so look forward to the day when our country is no longer coal dependent. Nobody reading this will live to see that day, of course. But someday. Until then, God bless the coal miners and their families.
My comment from last night.
So, Gerard, make your pitch -- your good, and legitimate, and righteous pitch -- to unionized all the mines in These United States. But wait for the bodies of what should be your brothers, union or not, to be recovered. O.K.?
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