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Religious Leaders Say Organizing at Peabody Is a Moral Issue |
Workers at Peabody Energy have a moral right to join unions and negotiate for better wages and benefits, a group of religious leaders told executives of the world’s largest private-sector coal company.
Members of the Religious Leaders for Coalfield Justice (RLCJ) met April 28 in St. Louis with senior Peabody officials and presented a petition signed by 500 clergy members from across the country asking the company to be neutral in workers’ efforts to form a union with the United Mine Workers of America and agree to a majority sign-up process.
Under the process, also known as card-check, an employer agrees to recognize a union when a majority of eligible employees signs cards indicating a desire for a union.
“We support the efforts of miners who work in Peabody Energy’s nonunion mines to gain dignity, respect, fairness and safety on the job by forming a union with the United Mine Workers of America,” the religious leaders said in their statement. “Coal mining is dangerous and demanding work. The workers in this industry endure peril daily to help provide for our nation’s energy needs.”
Hundreds of nonunion miners at Peabody’s facilities across the country have requested assistance from the UMWA to organize a union. In December, the union responded by launching the Justice at Peabody campaign.
Peabody is the world’s largest private coal company, providing 10 percent of the nation’s electricity and 3 percent of the world’s power.
Peabody says its employees are free to join unions through elections supervised by the National Labor Relations Board.
However, union leaders counter that the NLRB process is long and cumbersome. Employers often use the process to delay votes and erode union support. Under the NLRB election process, management also has almost unlimited and mandatory access to employees, while union supporters have almost none. This would be the equivalent, in a congressional election, of one candidate owning all the local print and broadcast media outlets and denying his or her opponent any access to them.
The AFL-CIO and affiliated unions are supporting the Employee Free Choice Act. The act, which has 257 co-sponsors in the House and Senate, would strengthen workers’ rights to choose union representation through the card-check process. It also would provide for binding arbitration of first-contract disputes and authorize stronger penalties for violations of labor law when workers seek to form a union.
“If Peabody will embrace ethical teachings, including respect for the right of workers to form unions without threats, intimidation and harassment, it will serve the long-term interests of the workers, the community and the company,” says Tena Willemsma, a member of RLCJ and executive director of the Commission on Religion in Appalachia.
Union representation at Peabody has dropped to less than 30 percent of workers (from 80 percent in the 1970s) as the company closed mines in Appalachia and
Illinois and shifted production to the West.
Today, coal prices are climbing, and coal producers are opening and expanding mines in Illinois and elsewhere.
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