Massey CEO Set to Open More Coal Mines
 |
Don Blankenship was head of Massey Energy when 29 coal miners lost their lives in a massive explosion. Forced to resign, he has been largely invisible since.
Now he’s filed papers to start another coal mine venture. According to BusinessWeek:
Public records show that Blankenship has incorporated a new venture in Kentucky. Paperwork for McCoy Coal Group Inc. of Belfry, Ky., has been on file since January, though, and it has yet to seek a single mining permit, says Kentucky Energy and Environment spokesman Dick Brown.
Following the April 2010 the explosian at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch (W.Va.) mine, a Mine Workers (UMWA) report on the disaster summed up the tragedy in its title: Industrial Homicide. An independent report on the disaster commissioned by former Gov. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) concluded the responsibility for the explosion “lies with the management of Massey Energy…[B]y frequently and knowingly violating the law and blatantly disregarding known safety practices….Massey exhibited a corporate mentality that placed the drive to produce coal above worker safety.” And an investigation by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) found the company kept two sets of books to hide safety problems. Read the rest of this entry »
The Triangle Fire: Still Burning Before Our Nation
 |
||||
|
||||
We hope you will share this special AFL-CIO Now feature on the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire with your friends, family and co-workers as a way to recognize America’s workers, past and present, who have sacrificed and continue to sacrifice so much to improve the lives of all workers.
When word got out two weeks ago that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had ordered the windows of the state Capitol building bolted shut during the ongoing protests against his attacks on public employees, it was a chilling reminder of a similar action by the employers of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory.
Nearly 100 years ago to the day of Walker’s order—which he rescinded after public outrage—146 workers, mostly young immigrant girls, jumped to their deaths from the 10-story building, unable to escape a fire because factory foremen had locked all the doors. The owners, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, worried the workers would steal from the company.
W.Va. Senate Candidate Raese Gets His Victorian Conservatory
Proving once again that he is a man of the West Virginia people, Senate Republican candidate John Raese just got approval by the Palm Beach Architecture Commission to build a 100-square-foot conservatory. That’s Palm Beach, FLORIDA, the site of Raese’s mansion, replete with its pink marble driveway. Raese is running against West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, who unlike Raese, lives full-time in West Virgina.
But surely, working women and men in West Virginia—whom Raese has typecast as “hicky blue-collar types,” can sympathize. The Victorian conservatory replaces a giant dollhouse, which even the tens of thousands of the state’s voters who are struggling to find a job or save their home from foreclosure know would look so gauche alongside the pink marble driveway and two limos.
And as Raese’s architect explained, a new eugenia hedge and eight palm trees would screen the new building from a distressed neighbor to his south.
How thoughtful.
W.Va. AFL-CIO Demands Apology from Raese for Hick Ad
|
||||
West Virginia working families have long been fed up with the stereotyped, out-of-state image that they are backwoods hicks or hillbillies.
The recent revelations that Republican National Senatorial Committee sent out a casting call for “hicky” looking blue-collar types for a TV campaign ad for Republican U.S. Senate candidate John Raese has set off a new round of anger in the Mountain State and a call for an apology from Raese.
Raese said he wasn’t upset by the effort to portray West Virginians as hicks but then his connections the state are aren’t real strong. He owns a mansion with a pink marble driveway and two limousines in Palm Beach, Fla., where he spends most of his time and where his children attend school. He also owns a home in Colorado along with multiple homes in West Virginia.
More Jobs but Workers Spend More Time Jobless
Here are a few items worth noting today.
* Kudos to union members in West Virginia who successfully pushed the state’s legislature to adopt a resolution creating Labor History week following Labor Day. Just last month, Wisconsin union activists succeeded in their years-long effort to get the state legislature to make labor history part of the state’s public education standards.
* From the Campaign for America’s Future: Huffington Post’s Art Delaney highlights expiring stimulus program that could cost 100,00 jobs: “…more than 100,000 people…will lose their jobs by September unless Congress extends a stimulus bill provision that gives states funding to create jobs programs for low-income parents and young adults….”
* A laid-off worker now spends nearly five months unemployed, longer than any other time on record, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
* In the “here’s how hard up we are for good news about jobs” category: The ratio of job seekers per job opening dropped from six to one in December to 5.4 in January. How sad is it that this is good news?
Trumka to UMWA: Keep Fighting
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka traveled to West Virginia yesterday to celebrate a new term for Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts and Secretary-Treasurer Daniel Kane and to recognize the contributions of the union where he got his start.
Trumka talked about the crippling effects of the economic crisis and the need for a strong, energetic union movement to turn it around not just for individual workers and their families, but for the whole country.
Reaching back through the long history of the UMWA and the union movement, Trumka said the power of workers, uniting together, helped pull the country out of the 1930s Depression. With unemployment at a 26-year high and housing and health care increasingly hard for families to afford, we need that spirit now, Trumka said:
There’s only one way working people have ever won in the past; and only one way we ever will win in the future. And, sisters and brothers, it’s not by begging for it. It’s not by pleading for it. And it’s not even by praying for it. It’s by standing up and fighting for it.
Mine Worker Punished for Trying to Form a Union
 |
||||
|
||||
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.
Pilots Soar with New Spirit Air Settlement, and More Bargaining News
Spirit Airlines agreed to stop shortchanging the number of days off pilots receive—and more updates here from the “Bargaining Digest Weekly.” The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 900 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.
NEGOTIATIONS
ALPA, Spirit Airlines: Spirit pilots, represented by the Air Line Pilots (ALPA), celebrated a much anticipated System Board of Adjustment decision, which orders Spirit management to cease shortchanging the number of days off that pilots receive after a scheduled sequence of trips. Under the collective bargaining agreement, pilots are entitled to receive up to five days off after the conclusion of a sequence of trips with no intervening days off.
