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Mine Worker Punished for Trying to Form a Union
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As the battle for the Employee Free Choice Act gets fought out in the press and the political arena, it’s worth remembering why we’re fighting for this bill in the first place: because far too many workers can’t exercise their freedom to form a union. Heath Coleman, a heavy-equipment operator from West Virginia, tried to form a union and found his safety endangered by management pressure. His story shows why we need the Employee Free Choice Act.
Says Coleman:
I’ve had to put my family’s well-being at stake just to exercise my rights as an American. People shouldn’t have to live the way we’ve had to live for the last year.
Coleman works at the Fola Coal Co. in Indore, W.Va. When another company, Consol, bought Fola, it slashed health benefits and wouldn’t provide information about the pension plan to workers. So along with other workers, Coleman sought to form a union with the Mine Workers (UMWA) to get a say in the workplace. Consol then began to intimidate and pressure workers individually and in group meetings.
Management didn’t stop there, says Coleman.
The company told us that if it went union, they’d shut down because they couldn’t afford to work union.
And when employees started signing cards saying they wanted union representation,
management would direct employees to get those cards back from the union.
Management threatened to fire pro-union workers and even put Coleman himself in danger, he says:
One of the things they did was that they came out and took my company radio from me. That could have put me in some danger. I’m a reclamation worker, so I’m out by myself a lot and away from the equipment where there’s a CB radio. They issued radios to us as a safety precaution. I asked the foreman why he was taking away my radio, and he said, “They don’t feel you represent the company anymore; you represent the union.”
The workers who say they were abused and coerced filed an unfair labor complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—but the only penalty the NLRB could impose was asking management to post signs saying it would no longer commit those unfair practices. Despite the NLRB’s ruling, Consol continues to put pressure on employees to keep them from choosing a union—it’s a sign of a deeply broken system that doesn’t protect workers.
All of us believe the reward of having a union would be worth the risk we’re taking, but this situation is crazy. It’s like a disease. If we don’t find the cure, it’s going to get worse.
Coleman says the only solution is to put the power to choose a union, free of management coercion, back in workers’ hands and strengthen the law to protect the freedom to form unions and bargain.
I think we’ve got to have the Employee Free Choice Act. Our forefathers fought and bled and died to give us the rights we’re supposed to have today, but the companies are stomping all over these rights. The Employee Free Choice Act would help put a stop to this.
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7 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
It is a sad fact, but many Americans do not care about the workers. They falsely identify with the management, whom they believe are the winners. They believe that those workers punished for pro-labor activities are akin to “road kill”. We all know that a few critters bite the dust for traffic must move.
Maybe that is too cynical, but anyone punished for lawfully trying to promote worker rights knows the feeling, that road-kill feeling.
While I have seen the UAW bureaucracy perform as poorly at times as the corporate bureaucracy (croyism, favoritism, nepotism), I believe unions, properly managed, are an absolute necessity in every workplace in today’s corporatist oligarchy. I also believe energy, health care and other facets of the commons should be nationalized.
Labor must clean up its act and then promote its value from a position of ethical strength and solidarity with the middle class.
I have watched the unions put companys out of buisness time and time again. The price of a car is so expensive because of union wages. Companys do not swallow extra costs they pass them on to you and i. If they get to high like the auto industry then they no longer sell their product and they go out of buisness.
All workers in america have the free choice now to form a union. This free choice farce is just about not having a private vote so people live in fear from flying beer bottles and there family being threatened by goons with in the union. I know what i am speaking because it happened to me. This guy i am sure was using the radio on company time to spout union propaganda.
Don’t post on this site.
You are a liar,
you are doing this because you don’t think workers deserve to be respected for the work they do.
You’ve never had any experiences like the ones you’re talking about because they don’t happen.
Go away
It is my opinion that you are a company man and not a fellow coworker to the other employees at this job site. I have been through similar situations that the men at Fola are facing. I worked at Vandalia (straight across the hollow from Fola) and I know what a company will do to keep their employees in the palm of their hand. I have faced the threats a company makes about shutting the job down. We were Gathered on a bus, at work, at three in the morning by the president of our company and threatened with termination of our jobs which was followed the very next day with a lay off of 20 to 30 men as a scare tactic.. I am pretty sure that this will happen at Fola if it hasn’t already happened. I am a member of the union now and glad of it. Everybody at my job has the union to back them when they have been wronged. I doubt that there are very many workers that can honestly say that they have not felt abused or used by their employer at one time or another. The goons that need to be watched for are the goons that run the company, not members of the union!
Exhausted Sparks,
Could you give us a break. First let me address the issue of the cost of vehicles. Why should the members of the UAW take a pay cut, when the CEO is walking away with $10-17.5 million in bonuses. I do not know where you work, but bonuses are not paid to people who run the company in the ground.
If you experienced a bad relationship with your union experience, sorry I can not comment, BECAUSE I WAS NOT THERE, so you should not comment on the individuals trying to form a union at his work place.
Also, do you have health care and make a livable wage? That is the question. I am curious? What do you do and what do you make at your job?
When will the President of AFL-CIO demand past action within the U. S. Dept. of Labor about REPETITIVE STRAIN (STRESS) INJURIES.
SINCE THE TOPIC OF ECONOMY IS GREEN, LET REVEAL THE ENERGY MAN PAST MISTAKE ABOUT TECHNOLOGY VERSUS SOLAR PANEL.