Peabody Workers Rally in Washington for Voice at Work

by James Parks, Oct 2, 2006

Windows Media

Last week, we reported that Peabody Energy workers are hitting the stumps to let congressional candidates know the importance of the Employee Free Choice Act and the freedom to form a union to working families.

Today, dozens of Peabody workers from West Virginia joined members of the Mine Workers (UMWA) union and other union supporters to rally in Washington, D.C., to let the CEO of Peabody know they will not stop their fight until the company honors their freedom to form a union and agrees to remain neutral when workers seek a union. The workers also want Peabody to agree to a majority recognition (card-check) process in which the company recognizes the union if a majority of workers signs union authorization cards.

Chanting, “What’s Disgusting? Union-Busting,” and carrying “Justice at Peabody” signs, the crowd of about 50 rallied in the chilly morning air at the hotel where Gregory Boyce, CEO of Peabody Energy, was speaking at a coal industry conference. Boyce recently told investors, “We have reduced the intensity of our unionization and we would continue on that path.” Peabody systematically closed its union mines and replaced them with nonunion mines over the past 15 years, according to the UMWA. Currently only 30 percent of Peabody’s U.S. mines are union. Their union contracts expire Dec. 31.

Says AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff:

This campaign is one of the most important in the union movement. Peabody is by far the dominant company in the industry. We all know we have to win it. We are going to engage the company at every level. Wherever an office of Peabody shows up to speak, we’re going to be there to demand neutrality and card-check.

Four union members went into the meeting, and distributed fliers calling for a union at Peabody until they were escorted out by conference security.

In recent years, the UMWA has responded to the requests of thousands of nonunion miners at Peabody’s facilities across the country for assistance in getting a voice at work. In December 2005, workers at 19 Peabody mines in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia launched the Justice at Peabody campaign.

The struggle to gain a voice for the miners has taken on even greater importance this year because a union contract goes a long way toward improving safety conditions.

The danger of underground coal mines recently has been underscored by the deaths of 38 miners since January, including five in Harlan County, Ky., and 12 in the Sago Mine explosion in West Virginia. More miners have died on the job this year than in any full year since 2001, when 42 were killed. Of the 38 miners killed this year, 34 worked in nonunion mines.

The company also is firing workers who are injured on the job. The UMWA recently obtained a letter from the general manager of the Dodge Hill Mining Co., a Peabody subsidiary in Sturgis, Ky., telling an injured worker, who had been out on workers’ comp for 12 weeks, that he was being terminated and all his benefits, which included family health care, were ended. When the worker applied to be rehired eight months later, the company’s general manager told him in another letter that his “previous work history and experience with Dodge Hill…would not qualify you for any position with the company.”

Many union and allied supporters around the world are working to ensure miners at Peabody gain a voice at work.

• Thirteen city and county councils in states where Peabody mines are located have passed resolutions supporting the workers’ right to form a union.
• Australian coal miners who work for Peabody are actively supporting their U.S. brothers and sisters, urging the company to let them have the freedom to form a union. Peabody mines in Australia are all unionized. Peabody only operates mines in the United States, Australia and China.
• Members of the Religious Leaders for Coalfield Justice (RLCJ) met in late April with senior Peabody officials and presented a petition signed by 700 clergy members from across the country asking the company to remain neutral in workers’ efforts to form a union.
• Peabody shareholders voted overwhelmingly in support of a resolution sponsored by the AFL-CIO calling for the annual election of the company’s board of directors. The shareholder resolution came one day after Peabody agreed to add internationally accepted workers’ rights guarantees to its corporate code of ethics, including the right to form a union without management interference.

Peabody, the world’s largest private coal company, employs some 8,300 miners at 33 mines in nine states. The company provides 10 percent of the nation’s electricity and 3 percent of the world’s power. 

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