News Showcase

It doesn't take long to find a member of the United Mine Workers of America in Eastern Kentucky. But in a part of the state where coal has long powered the economy and generations have toiled in the mines, you can't find a UMWA member mining coal.

Though Appalachia is central to the historical strength of the union, there are no unionized mines in Eastern Kentucky. But, with many retired miners, the union culture remains, and there is a new face to the union — janitors and cooks at public schools are represented by the UMWA, as are healthcare workers and school board and county employees throughout Eastern Kentucky.

In 2005, 4.8 percent of miners were unionized in Kentucky, out of a total of 16,726, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. This year the number is a little less than 3 percent, said Bill Caylor of the Kentucky Coal Association.

Still, the union ties in the region are strong, and binding. That's one reason the UMWA has been successful in organizing other workers in Eastern Kentucky, according to the union's communications director, Phil Smith.

The union's political action committee remains active, endorsing candidates and supporting or opposing legislation. In the past year and a half, the union put its lobbying weight behind new mine health and safety laws and regulations.

"By no means are we out of the picture in Kentucky," said Smith. "We still play a large role in the political life" of the state.

UMWA members say the union disappeared at Eastern Kentucky mines because of the rise of less labor-intensive strip mining, increased mechanization at underground mines, scaled-back mining operations that employ fewer workers, smaller companies that are strongly anti-union, and labor laws that make it tough to organize new mines as unionized workplaces.

And, they say, there is another, less tangible but very important reason for the lack of unionized mines in the region today — a changing view among younger workers about the need for a union.

The purpose, effectiveness and need for a union has changed with changing times and that accounts for the decline, said Caylor, of the Kentucky Coal Association. "The original function of unions was focused on health and safety," he said. "That role has been delegated to state and federal agencies."

The decline in Eastern Kentucky began in the 1990s, Smith said, during one of the industry's cyclical downturns and Clean Air Act amendments that gave advantages to lower-sulfur coal from the western United States.

As more coal-fired power plants installed "scrubbers" to remove sulfur dioxide from their smokestack emissions, shuttered mines re-opened as the '90s drew to a close, but many mines that were once unionized reopened as nonunion, he said.

The UMWA still believes that it is important to organize those mines, he said. "It's a tough challenge but we're not giving up on it."

Smith said coal operators are powerful, and "In today's political climate they can get away with violating labor laws," intimidating workers and threatening to close the mines if they were unionized — "all illegal," Smith said.

But contesting a company's conduct during a union drive can drag out for years, he said. By the time the complaint gets a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board, the mine could be worked out, or the company could have dissolved only to resurface under another name. That means the organizers have to start all over again.

And Smith, like most of the union members interviewed for this story, doesn't put much faith in what he calls "the topsy-turvy world of labor law."

"The laws and so forth are totally unsupportive of the working man as far as organizing a union," said Leonard Fleming, 65, of Kona, in Letcher County, Ky.,

What is lost

Union members can't talk about the decline of the UMWA in Eastern Kentucky without stressing why it matters.

They speak with palpable pride in the union, but also a deep sense of loss.

Without a union, health and safety suffer, they said, and benefits are stripped away.

Fleming worked in the mines for 32 years and was a UMWA safety representative. Mining, and the union, are in his blood. He has three uncles listed on the fatality stones at the Letcher County Coal Miners' Monument in Hemphill.

He was lucky, he said — he never got hurt bad in the mines, just getting some rock on him a few times, back when he was "young and tough."

The mines were good to him — he was able to provide for his family and to stay in the mountains. But coal mining has always been dangerous work — something Fleming knows firsthand, from responding to mining disasters throughout the country as a safety representative.

He said he thinks a union makes a difference when it comes to health and safety.

The health and safety pluses of unionization stick out for retired miner Sam Gilbert, too.

Gilbert, 60, of Eolia, Ky., has worked at both union and nonunion mines. With the union, workers had protection if they complained about safety lapses, he said. Today, "if you complain you end up in unemployment."

"Employees who work in a nonunion mine are afraid to speak out at all about health and safety," said Bobby Ray Hicks, 58, of Knott County, Ky., a retired miner who also works as a union organizer. "I think safety is a lot better in a union operation."

But Caylor, of the Coal Association disputes the assertion that health and safety suffer in a nonunion mine. "Federal and state agencies do an excellent job," he said.

Hicks said he thinks a union "is one of the best things you can possibly get.

At least you can sit down and negotiate."

Organizing is hard today for a lot of reasons, Hicks said.

Anti-union companies "handpick" their employees, and pay well, which makes the need for organization seem less urgent, he said. "People see what their checks are every week. They're not thinking ahead," he said. "They have all the toys" and are not willing "to give up something," such as union dues, in order to get more in the future.

He said younger workers will "realize at the end that they want health insurance and a pension" from the UMWA, but by then it will be too late.

"People who forget their history are going to repeat it," said Fleming. "It used to be the coal company owned everything. They could evict you out of town. The UMWA came in and changed all that."

Hicks said he has worked as an organizer in Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Wyoming, and "the climate is the same all over," mostly because workers today don't see the need for unions.

"I feel sorry for the younger generation," he said. "They're just living from pay day to pay day."

This story was completed during an internship with the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky.