United Mine Workers of America
Movement | Active
1890 CE to 2215 CE
The United Mine Workers of America (UMW or UMWA) is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners.
Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the United States and Canada.
Although its main focus has always been on workers and their rights, the UMW of today also advocates for better roads, schools, and universal health care.
By 2014, coal mining has largely shifted to open pit mines in Wyoming, and there are only 60,000 active coal miners.
The UMW is left with 35,000 members, of whom 20,000 are coal miners, chiefly in underground mines in Kentucky and West Virginia.
However it is responsible for pensions and medical benefits for 40,000 retired miners, and for 50,000 spouses and dependents.
The UMW is founded in Columbus, Ohio, on January 25, 1890, with the merger of two old labor groups, the Knights of Labor Trade Assembly No. 135 and the National Progressive Miners Union.
Adopting the model of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the union is initially established as a three-pronged labor tool: to develop mine safety; to improve mine workers' independence from the mine owners and the company store; and to provide miners with collective bargaining power.
After passage of the National Recovery Act in 1933 during the Great Depression, organizers spread throughout the United States to organize all coal miners into labor unions. Under the powerful leadership of John L. Lewis, the UMW breaks with the American Federation of Labor and set up its own federation, the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations).
Its organizers fan out to organize major industries, including automobiles, steel, electrical equipment, rubber, paint and chemical, and fights a series of battles with the AFL.
The UMW grows to 800,000 members and is an element in the New Deal Coalition supporting Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Lewis breaks with Roosevelt in 1940 and leaves the CIO, leaving the UMW increasingly isolated in the labor movement.
During the Second World War the UMW is involved in a series of major strikes and threatens walkouts that anger public opinion and energize pro-business opponents.
After the war, the UMW concentrates on gaining large increases in wages, medical services and retirement benefits for its shrinking membership, which is contending with changes in technology and declining mines in the East.
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Modeled after the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the Union's emergence in the 1890s is the culmination of decades of effort to organize mine workers and people in adjacent occupations into a single, effective negotiating unit.
At this time coal was one of the most highly sought natural resources, as it is widely used to heat homes and to power machines in industries.
The coal mines are a competitive and dangerous place to work.
With the owners imposing reduced wages on a regular basis, in response to fluctuations in pricing, miners have sought a group to stand up for their rights.
It had grown from 10,000 to 115,000 members.
A number of small strikes will take place in the anthracite district from 1899 to 1901, by which the labor union will gain experience and unionize more workers.
The 1899 strike in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, had demonstrated that the unions could win a strike directed against a subsidiary of one of the large railroads.
The owners refuse to meet or to arbitrate with the union; the union strikes on September 17, 1900, with results that surprise even the union, as miners of all different nationalities and ethnicities walk out in support of the union.
He works through the National Civic Federation, which brings labor and capital representatives together.
Relying on J. P. Morgan to convey his message to the industry that a strike will hurt the reelection of Republican William McKinley, Hanna convinces the owners to concede a wage increase and grievance procedure to the strikers.
The industry refuses, on the other hand, to formally recognize the UMWA as the representative of the workers.
The union declares victory and drops its demand for union recognition.
The industry, still smarting from its concessions in 1900, opposes any federal role.
The 150,000 miners want heir weekly pay envelope.
Tens of millions of city dwellers need coal to heat their homes.
In the alternative, Mitchell proposes that a committee of eminent clergymen report on conditions in the coalfields
George Baer, President of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, one of the leading employers in the industry, brushes aside both proposals dismissively.
The union has the support of roughly eighty percent of the workers in this area, or more than 100,000 strikers.
Some 30,000 leave the region, many headed for Midwestern bituminous mines; 10,000 men return to Europe.
Roosevelt chooses not to release the report, for fear of appearing to side with the union.
President Roosevelt wants to intervene, but he is told by his Attorney General, Philander Knox, that he has no authority to do so.
Mark Hanna and many others in the Republican Party are likewise concerned about the political implications if the strike drags on into winter, when the need for anthracite is greatest.
The union considers the mere holding of a meeting to be tantamount to union recognition and takes a conciliatory tone.
The owners tell Roosevelt that strikers have killed over twenty men and that he should use the power of government "to protect the man who wants to work, and his wife and children when at work."
With proper protection, the owners say that they will produce enough coal to end the fuel shortage; they refuse to enter into any negotiations with the union.
The governor now sends in the National Guard, who protect the mines and the minority of men still working.
Roosevelt attempts to persuade the union to end the strike with a promise that he will create a commission to study the causes of the strike and propose a solution, which Roosevelt promises to support with all of the authority of his office.
Mitchell refuses and his membership endorses his decision by a nearly unanimous vote.
He is deeply involved in this strike as well: his interests include the Reading Railroad, one of the largest employers of miners.
He had installed George Baer, who speaks for the industry throughout the strike, as the head of the railroad.
At the urging of Secretary of War Elihu Root, Morgan comes up with another compromise proposal that provides for arbitration, while giving the industry the right to deny that it is bargaining with the union by directing that each employer and its employees communicate directly with the commission.
The employers agree on the condition that the five members be a military engineer, a mining engineer, a judge, an expert in the coal business, and an "eminent sociologist".
The employers are willing to accept a union leader as the "eminent sociologist," so Roosevelt names E. E. Clark, head of the railway conductors' union, as the "eminent sociologist."
After Catholic leaders exerted pressure, he adds a sixth member, Catholic bishop John Lancaster Spalding, and Commissioner Wright as the seventh member.
Baer makes the closing arguments for the coal operators, while lawyer Clarence Darrow closes for the workers.
Although the commissioners hear some evidence of terrible conditions, they conclude that the "moving spectacle of horrors" represents only a small number of cases.
By and large, social conditions in mine communities are found to be good, and miners are judged as only partly justified in their claim that annual earnings ware not sufficient "to maintain an American standard of living."
The rhetoric of both sides makes little difference to the Commission, which splits the difference between mineworkers and mine owners.
The miners ask for 20% wage increases, and most are given a 10% increase.
The miners have asked for an eight-hour day and are awarded a nine-hour day instead of the standard ten hours prevailing at this time.
While the operators refuse to recognize the United Mine Workers, they are required to agree to a six-man arbitration board, made up of equal numbers of labor and management representatives, with the power to settle labor disputes.
Mitchell considers that de facto recognition and calls it a victory.