Labor activists and the results

I opened the windows again this morning. One door also, but it was covered on the outside surface with condensation from the damp outside. Fog is the predicted way weather people talk about it. I figure we're just inside a low lying cloud.

Loved hearing a long skein of geese fly over, the Canadian kind of course. They not only honk, but their wings creak as  they move them. I didn't try to see them because I'm sitting in the treetops here. About 3-4 huge old maples are above my views out the living room and bedroom windows.

It's actually still Labor Day as I write this.

A preview clip about an interesting sounding movie.  About (and narrated by) Mother Jones. A labor advocate and activist.

The YouTube description says this:

FIGHT LIKE HELL: The Testimony of Mother Jones Directed by Ian Cheney http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/...

We were never supposed to know her name. She was a poor Irish immigrant who survived famine and war, fire and plague. Unable to save her husband or their four small children, she dedicated her life to saving working families everywhere. The robber barons called her “the most dangerous woman in America,” but workers called her “Mother Jones.”

Upton Sinclair said of her, “she had force, she had wit, she had the fire of indignation; she was the walking wrath of god.” Mother Jones said of herself “I’m not a humanitarian, I’m a hellraiser.” Most famously, she told her followers to, “pray for the Dead and fight like hell for the living.” She educated, agitated, and organized the dispossessed and showed America what it could be.

With the gap between the rich and poor growing wider by the day, the just and democratic society Mother Jones fought for is under attack. Her hour has come again. It is time that her story and the fierce struggles of working families are brought back to life.

Drawn from her autobiography, letters, speeches, and interviews, FIGHT LIKE HELL is as bold and forceful as Mother Jones herself. Adapted from Obie Award-winning Actress Kaiulani Lee’s one-woman play “Can’t Scare Me,” FIGHT LIKE HELL was written and performed by Lee and directed by Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Ian Cheney.

I just saw a reference to the Battle of Blair Mountain. So I wanted to make sure someone talked about it today. 

For five days from late August to early September 1921, some 10,000 armed coal miners confronted 3,000 lawmen and strikebreakers (called the Logan Defenders) who were backed by coal mine operators during the miners' attempt to unionize the southwestern West Virginia coalfields when tensions rose between workers and mine management.

Since the founding of the United Mine Workers union in 1890, coal mines in Mingo County, West Virginia and its surrounds hired only non-union workers, and strictly enforced employment contracts that included union membership as grounds for immediate termination.^[11] As miners in the area lived almost exclusively in company towns, termination also meant eviction. In 1920, the UMW's new president John L. Lewis sought to finally end the three-decade resistance to unionization in the area. He was under increased pressure to do so from both miners elsewhere participating in the United Mine Workers coal strike of 1919, and from affected mine operators who were now being undercut by nonunion mines in West Virginia.

 This unionization push included efforts from Mother Jones, who gave fiery speeches at the age of 83, and Frank Keeney, president of the local union district. Over 3,000 Mingo County miners joined the union—and were summarily fired. The coal companies then hired agents of the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency to evict the families of their former employees.

Wikipedia gives details leading up to this battle, including how Detective Agents shot a union-sympathetic sheriff and how many skirmishes happened between miners and the mine owners' forces. The US army was finally brought in after several days of fighting on Blair Mountain.  

The miners, many of whom were veterans themselves, were unwilling to fire on U.S. troops.

After the battle, 985 miners were indicted for murder, conspiracy to commit murder, accessory to murder, and treason against the State of West Virginia. Though the majority were acquitted by sympathetic juries, others were imprisoned for up to four years, with the last being paroled in 1925. 

In the short term the battle was an overwhelming victory for coal industry owners and management. United Mine Workers of America (UMWA or UMW) membership plummeted from more than 50,000 miners to approximately 10,000 over the next several years, and it was not until 1935—following the Great Depression and the beginning of the New Deal under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt—that the UMW fully organized in southern West Virginia. 

In the long term, the battle raised awareness of the appalling conditions miners faced in the dangerous West Virginia coalfields. It also led to a change in union tactics in political battles to get the law on labor's side, by confronting recalcitrant and abusive management.

Today a historic marker on West Virginia 17, about 8 miles (13 km) east of Logan, between Ethel and Blair states:

BATTLE OF BLAIR MT. In August of 1921, 7000 striking miners led by Bill Blizzard met at Marmet for a march on Logan to organize the southern coalfields for the UMWA. Reaching Blair Mt. on August 31, they were repelled by deputies and mine guards, under Sheriff Don Chafin, waiting in fortified positions. The five day battle ended with the arrival of U.S. Army and Air Corps. UMWA organizing efforts in southern WV were halted until 1933.

There was much controversy about any marker memorializing this battle. By 2009 it had gained a Historic site recognition, but within the next year several coal companies gave out plans to strip mine it based on clerical errors in the historic registration process. In court (after many lawyers made a lot of money,) the decision of a federal judge sent the decision back to... 

"...the Keeper of the National Register. On June 27, 2018, the Keeper's Office decided that the 2009 decision to remove the site from its listings was "erroneous" and issued a statement confirming that as of that date the site was again on the National Register.

--------------------

And these historic issues aren't even quite so difficult to digest as that of all the miners who have lost jobs due to the coal industry having finally been outpaced by...wait for it...the environmentally friendly wind and solar power industries. Several sources have recently shown that wind and solar power will outpace energy production of coal for the year 2024. It already had by July.

-------------

And the hospital which is closest and has provided my care at times, does have a nurses' union (the only one in the state) and they have voted to strike for the issues they've presented to the hospital management. Here's the full article detailing this, but it is interesting to see how a medium size city like Asheville can have things like this happening. Many of my friends just go to nearby Hendersonville's hospital to avoid issues. I've never experienced lack of care when I needed it.  But I do know the ER is often crowded.

Mission nurses have voted to strike for one day after HCA Healthcare and the Asheville hospital refused to meet their contract demands, two union nurses who tallied the ballots told Asheville Watchdog, which also obtained a union email Monday announcing the outcome of the vote. 

Mission Health spokesperson Nancy Lindell said the outcome was not surprising and a strike is unnecessary.

“If the union decides to move forward with a strike, Mission Hospital is fully prepared to remain open and provide care for our patients. We have plans in place allowing us to be confident that it will be safe for our patients and for any nurse who makes the  personal decision to cross the picket line.”

 The nurses also would not say when a potential strike might occur. The strike against Mission would be a first in North Carolina history as Mission Nurses United is the state’s first and only nurses union at a private hospital. 

Despite the vote, a strike is still not a certainty. The union and hospital management could reach a deal between now and the strike’s date. If a strike were to become imminent, the union would notify the hospital at least 10 days before the walkout, a spokesperson for National Nurses United (NNU) previously told The Watchdog.

Nurses will return to the bargaining table Sept. 9, according to the email obtained by The Watchdog.

The union represents more than 1,600 registered nurses at the hospital, with just more than half of those due-paying members. 

The union’s previous contract expired July 3 amid bargaining between the nurses and the hospital. Nurses and management have negotiated since spring, with the union demanding changes in staffing, work conditions and pay. HCA has held out on most of these demands.

Nashville-based HCA is the largest hospital company in the U.S., with more than 180 hospitals and hundreds of other care facilities. It operates six hospitals in western North Carolina, but Mission in Asheville is the only one to have unionized nurses and only Mission nurses would stop working. 

The union formed almost immediately after HCA purchased the Mission Health system. Between 2022 and 2023, at least 660 registered nurses left Mission, a Watchdog investigation found.

North Carolina is the second-least-unionized state in the U.S., behind South Carolina, with only 2.7 percent of workers belonging to a labor union. Because Mission’s is the first nurses’ union in the state, a strike action would be historic. 

Source: Asheville Watchdog

---------------------------