by Mike Hall, Feb 14, 2007

When the company says you’ve got to work seven days a week, 12 hours a day, that’s what you got to work.

That’s especially true if you don’t have a union, says John Cox. He and some 3,400 coal miners at Peabody Energy Co. don’t have a union, yet. But they are fighting to overcome Peabody’s aggressive and strident campaign to keep the miners from joining the Mine Workers (UMWA) so they can bargain for better wages, better and safer working conditions and a better life.

Click on the video to hear Cox and other Peabody miners talk about their struggle.

Peabody coal miners at 19 mines in Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia launched the Justice at Peabody campaign in December 2005. They are seeking the improved safety protection, health and pension benefits, wages and working conditions a union contract provides. But Peabody is conducting “a war on its employees,” concludes a summer 2006 report by Religious Leaders for Coalfield Justice and the Interfaith Worker Justice.

According to the report, Peabody Energy: Rights Denied and Promises Broken, Peabody has used:

..intimidation tactics…held captive audience meetings and one-on-one meetings at several mines where supervisors speak against he union and hint the mine might close if workers organize. Because of these employer pressure tactics, the UMWA is calling on Peabody Energy to remain neutral while workers are organizing and to recognize the workers union when a majority has signed cards.

Under the Employee Free Choice Act, recently introduced in Congress, Peabody miners could make their own decisions about whether to form a union free from management interference and intimidation. The Employee Free Choice Act would:

• Establish stronger penalties for violations of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first-contract negotiations,
• Provide mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes, and
• Allow employees to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation.

At one time, Peabody—the world’s largest private coal company—was nearly 100 percent unionized, but shut down many of its union mine only to reopen them nonunion says Bob Kendrick, UMWA’s Midwest organizing coordinator.

Peabody pulled out of this area and now they’ve come back and hooked up with non-union operations.

The religious leaders’ report says:

Peabody Energy is systematically deunionizing its mines, reducing miner health protections, and eliminating job security and retirement benefits, all conditions painstakingly achieved through decades of struggle and collective bargaining. Miners are being denied their hard-won voice in life and death workplace decisions.

After Peabody’s systematic de-unionization campaign, only about 30 percent of its operations are unionized. Says non-union Peabody miner Donna Green:

This job is hard on your body. We’ve got 26 year-olds that are hurting bad. What are they going to be like in another 30 years…They’re going to kick you out and say you can’t earn a paycheck, you’re gone.. They can afford they can afford to give us a pension. They can afford to give us health care. Their union mines have that. There’s no reason we can’t have what the other coal miners have.

Last fall at an Evansville, Ind., rally, Green said the safety protection that comes with a union contract is one of the key reasons miners want a union. At the Peabody mine where she works, Green says she believes:

It seems like safety is an issue only when it doesn’t interfere with production.

The deadly toll in the nation’s coal mines last year reinforced the extensive danger coal miners face. Forty-seven miners were killed on the job in 2006, the most since 1995 and a 210 percent increase over 2005. Already this year, three coal miners have been killed. UMWA contracts spell out the safety rights of miners and establish union mine safety committees in every mine.

Meanwhile, Peabody closes union mines and thwarts miners struggling fighting for justice and the right to bargain for a better life. As Cox puts it:

It’s just not right what Peabody has done.