MONTCOAL, WV, April 8 — There is probably no greater exposé of the failure of reforms than the murder of 29 miners in the Massey Energy-owned Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine here. The statements coming from Obama and his Secy. of Labor, from this state’s Senator John D. Rockefeller IV and this district’s Democratic Party Congressman, from the various Mine “Safety” officials and from the company’s CEO, Donald Blankenship, reek with hypocrisy. Their “cries” for these dead miners ring as hollow as anything the politician-servants of U.S. capitalism have ever come up with.

Since 1900, 104,000 miners have been killed in this country’s mines. (NY Times, 4/6) Laws have been passed, regulations have been instituted, “safety” bodies have been established, fines have been levied, and still the killing rages on. The death toll in the UBB mine was the deadliest in 40 years.

The ruling-class mouthpieces decry these “tragic accidents.” But they are NOT “accidents. If workers’ safety trumped mine-owner’s profits — an impossibility under capitalism — there would be no “accidents.”

Federal Mine Safety administrator Kevin Strickland admitted that, “All explosions are preventable. It’s just making sure you have things in place to keep one from happening.” (NYT, 4/7)

But according to an internal memo sent by boss Blankenship to his underground mine superintendents, those “things” occupy last place. His instructions were “to place coal production first. ‘This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills.’” (NYT, 4/6) Furthermore, “If any of you have been asked…to do anything other than run coal…ignore them and run coal.” (NYT, 4/7)

Under that dictate, the miners slaving away for Massey Energy — a company with $3.8 BILLION in assets — produced $200 million in net profits in the 18 months from July 2008 to December 2009. The fact that the bosses’ government cited Massey Energy with 1,342 safety violations since 2005, 458 of them just last year, 122 since this past January, 53 of them in March and two more on the very day of this explosion (!), doesn’t faze Blankenship one iota. “Violations are…a normal part of the mining process,” he boasts. “There are violations in every coal mine in America.” (NYT, 4/7)

It was one of those “normal violations” that killed two miners at a Massey subsidiary, the Aracoma Coal Co., in 2006. They were unable to escape a fire and suffocated to death because the company failed to replace some ventilation controls it had removed inside the mine. Massey later pleaded guilty to ten criminal charges, but still the killing goes on. Even a $2.5 million fine means little to a company with nearly $4 billion in assets.

The miners’ families recognize Massey’s priorities. When boss Blankenship, protected by a dozen state cops, was trying to address a crowd about the deaths, “people yelled at him for caring more about profits than miners’ lives….And…that he was to blame [for the death toll].” (NYT, 4/7)

The UBB mine was evacuated three times in the previous two months because of “dangerously high methane gas levels,” which — along with a build-up of deadly coal dust — appears to have caused this violent explosion that murdered these 29 miners. Three months ago Massey was cited for having fresh-air systems flowing the wrong way near two escape routes. (Associated Press, 4/6)

While the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration keeps citing Massey and the other mine-owners with thousands of violations, the bosses end up paying token fines (averaging $3,700 per worker death) as the “cost of doing business” and pass on the expense to consumers. And although Congress “overhauled” federal mining regulations in 2006, “Federal mining data indicates that only one in 10 underground mines nationwide have met the law’s requirements.” (NYT, 4/8)

Obama can send “condolences” for what he claims is a “tragic accident”; this district’s Democratic Congressman Rahall can whine that “something needs to be done”; Obama’s Secy. of Labor can even admit that these miners “died unnecessarily” and say that the “best way to honor them is to do our job.” But that “job” seems to be playing footsie year in and year out with outfits like Massey.

None of these bosses’ politicians, nor their “safety” agencies, nor their laws and regulations seems to stop CEO’s like Blankenship from steaming ahead accumulating hundreds of millions in profits, ignoring the regulations and paying token fines. (It also didn’t stop him from donating $1 million to the racist Tea Party’s 2009 Labor Day celebration.)

In the early days of the Russian Revolution, one of the first changeovers from capitalism instituted by the Soviets was to award miners a six-hour day, five-day week, with access to any needed hospital care, along with 5-6 weeks vacation in Crimean resorts. (UBB miners are ordered to work 12-hour days.)

The “reforms” governing the mining industry simply allow the mine-owners to literally get away with murder. Every day, three miners die of black lung from years in the hazardous mines. The only way this carnage can end is for the miners themselves to run the mines, placing safety as the top priority. And that can only happen when a communist-led workers’ revolution overthrows these bloodsuckers. That’s what PLP is fighting for. 

MONTCOAL, WV, April 58 — When 40 workers died last month in a flooded Chinese coal mine, U.S. media strongly suggested the racist idea that human life is cheap to Asians. They followed a familiar script, trying to demonize an economic rival and potential military enemy.  “China’s coal mining industry is the world’s deadliest, with thousands of miners perishing every year in the pursuit of fuel for the country’s rapidly expanding economy.” (Wall Street Journal, 4/7)

But when an explosion killed 29 West Virginia coal miners a week later, U.S. rulers’ mainstream mouthpieces, like the NY Times, did something startling. They hammered at the profit motive behind the atrocity, editorializing (4/6): “[A]nger is building against the mine’s owner, the Massey Energy Company, which has long been accused by its critics of putting profits before the welfare of its workers.”

But the Times is hardly calling for the abolition of capitalism. It has never had a shred of sympathy for our class. To the dominant, imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists that the Times speaks for, Massey’s crime lies not in killing miners but in trading with the enemy, China, seeking short-term profits while ignoring the ruling class’s long-term strategic needs.

“Massey Energy Co. is preparing its first metallurgical coal shipment to China as part of its efforts to capitalize on growing demand from Asian steelmakers.” (Associated Press, 3/10) Metallurgical (coking) coal (“dirty” coal) and iron ore make steel. Boosting China-bound coal-for-steel production at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine increased methane gas levels there, leading to the deadly blast. (Washington Post, 4/11)

It was Massey’s China trade, not workers’ deaths, which prompted arch-imperialist West Virginia Senator John D. Rockefeller IV to call the firm a “rogue” and a “repeat offender” on safety. (CBS 4/9) Rockefeller worries that Massey coal, in addition to bolstering China’s economic growth, might help it build its expanding military.

Massey Mine Was Serving China, Against Main U.S. Rulers’
War Agenda

The rulers’ harsh response to Massey’s disaster starkly contrasts with their kid-glove handling of the 2006 Sago mine blast that killed 12. Then Rockefeller and fellow senator Barack Obama utterly absolved, and even praised, Sago’s owner, writing, “We know that miners, retirees, and their families throughout the country are well aware of the risks inherent in working in even the safest mines.”

Sago belongs to the International Coal Group, an outfit run by imperialist New York-based investor Wilbur Ross. In the last decade or so, Ross has bought up and consolidated firms in sectors that are now struggling but will be indispensible to U.S. rulers during a global war. Along with coal, Ross has created conglomerates in textiles and steel.

Ross buys up bankrupt companies, tears up labor contracts and re-opens non-union hellholes just as unsafe as Massey’s. The crucial difference between the two camps lies in strategic focus. In contrast to Massey’s China deals, International Coal boasts on its website of serving dominant U.S. capitalists: “We market our coal to a diverse customer base of largely investment grade electric utilities, as well as domestic [our emphasis, Ed.] industrial and steel customers.”

Ross & Co. are bent on ensuring the survival of essential future war producers on U.S. soil. On the other hand, Massey’s biggest shareholder, BlackRock Capital, is in turn controlled by Bank of America, which also seeks immediate short-term profits and does not share the main rulers’ war agenda.

Miners’ History Of Armed Struggle Points The Way To Revolution

The rulers’ absolute need to control coal supplies drives them to exploit miners ruthlessly. Mass killings like Upper Big Branch and Sago follow brutal anti-union campaigns. Tighter mine regulations, as Sen. Rockefeller and the Times propose, won’t change this deadly pattern (see page 1) but only strengthen the bigger, imperialist bosses’ grip on the industry.

Miners, however, have a history of militant fight-back that has often risen to the level of armed conflict — at times which has involved our Party (see box above). Someday such militancy, spread throughout the working class by PLP, will organize a communist revolution that destroys capitalism and its profit-driven disasters. 

PLP has long been active supporting and participating in miners’ struggles, both in the U.S. and abroad.

‘Communism Comes To The
Mountains!’

One of our first actions — six months after having launched the Progressive Labor Movement (PLM) — was to support a 1963 strike of 500 wildcatting rank-and-file miners in Hazard, Kentucky. The armed miners went from mine to mine, routing scabs and dynamiting scab mines. PLM members organized a Trade Union Solidarity Committee and shipped truck- and trailer-loads of food and clothing to the militant miners while collecting money from workers outside factory gates in NYC, Buffalo and San Francisco. Our effort transformed the strike into a national issue.

We brought the miners’ leader, Berman Gibson, to NYC to address 800 workers and students at the Community Church in zero degree weather. When we shipped hundreds of PL Magazines to the miners, the local Hazard rag ran an 8-column headline across its front page charging, “Communism Comes to the Mountains!” The miners scoffed at their attempted red-baiting and warmly received us as brother and sister workers.

Support West Virginia Strikers

In 1987, PLP was very active in the Pittston coal strike when several thousand miners struck against the coal bosses’ attempt to force major concessions. The coal bosses were killing miners the “slow” way, ignoring safety rules and falsifying air samples. Hundreds of miners died lingering deaths from black lung disease, denied benefits because the air in the mines was supposedly “clean.” CHALLENGE was distributed to many miners as well as a newsletter sent to hundreds of strikers, pointing out the need to destroy capitalism and build communism.

A group of PL’ers came from Detroit to the Logan, West Virginia union hall with a trunk full of food purchased with money collected from auto and hospital workers and in front of supermarkets. An angry flood of miners were streaming into the hall, having just walked out on their union leaders who were trying to sell them out — including UMW President Richard Trumka (now AFL-CIO President). One miner told us, “You go back to Detroit and tell everyone that Richard Trumka is trying to destroy this union!” We couldn’t have asked for a warmer welcome.

PLP organized strike support in many cities and sent groups of workers and youth to deliver food and spend time with the strikers, some living with the miners and participating in strike activity while distributing CHALLENGE and discussing world politics. Ties were built with some amazing people that lasted well after the strike ended.

One day a very militant, angry group of strikers’ wives had had their anti-communism stirred up. One was ready to defend the PLP when another said, “You’re a communist and you didn’t tell us! We can’t have communists down here.”

One PL’er replied that our “communism is a world without bosses, money or profits, where workers get what they need just because they need it, not because they can afford it.”

One woman declared, ”Hell! I’d be a lot better off than I am now,” and we all laughed. “And all of you that feed the strikers, you’re the most communist group down here! You collect and prepare the food collectively, and then you join the picket lines and feed the strikers. You don’t ask them who they voted for in the last election or how much money they have. You feed them because we’re in a war and they need to be fed.!”

Now the women were much friendlier except the one right-winger who originally got them stirred up. She said, “Maybe so. But I STILL ain’t no damn communist!” Everybody roared with laughter.

Back Striking British Miners

In 1984-85, when British coal miners struck for 15 months to save their jobs, PLP actively collected money, Christmas gifts for the miners’ children and letters of support from our own unions. Miners and their spouses came to the U.S. and marched with us on May Day, helped organize California farmworkers and spoke to large and small groups in the U.S. about their struggle against capital.

The strike, over the closing of the coal mines destroying 40,000 jobs, almost toppled the Thatcher government. There were pitched battles between the miners and the police. Mining communities throughout Britain pooled their food and opened communal kitchens for miners and their families.

In the late 1980s, when many U.S. coal mines were being closed or turned into open-pit strip mines (requiring less labor and destroying the land), PLP won British miners to send letters of support to striking U.S. miners in Southern West Virginia. 

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 1 — A bloc of Metro transit workers challenged the Metro board during public hearings tonight as the bosses continued to give workers and riders the choice between losing an arm and losing a leg, i.e., either support cuts in service and layoffs or an increase in fares.

The Metro workers joined dozens of riders in condemning the public hearings as a charade to pretend that the politicians, bureaucrats, and managers who run Metro care about riders and workers. On the contrary, they turn a blind eye to the on-the-job deaths of workers from unsafe conditions and somberly intone that some sacrifices (by workers!) will be needed. Their strategy (supporting the big capitalists) demonstrates that to create a safe workplace and decent standard of living, our class must smash their state and create a communist, worker-run society that serves only working class needs and dismantles all forms of capitalism.

Sharpening Fascism — The Shape
Of Things To Come

Jackie Jeter, the president of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 689 showed up at these hearings but remained mute, consistent with her refusal to seriously take on the biggest issue facing Metro workers in generations — the fascist gang-up by the courts, politicians, and Metro management on the new contract. If the attack is unanswered it will hasten the end of Metro as a flagship job for U.S. transit workers.

An arbitration panel set the terms of the final contract after negotiations deadlocked — strikes are illegal. In the past, arbitration decisions ended Metro labor disputes. Workers have never liked arbitration since it is biased in favor of the bosses, but given the historic non-struggle character of our union’s leadership, we have usually had to accept it. And this arbitration award was a net loss for us — a tiny pay increase offset entirely by substantial give-backs in healthcare and retiree benefits.

But this time, the Metro bosses took the unusual action of challenging the arbitration panel in court to demand even further concessions from the workers! They kicked us while we were down, and they won! (See box for the details of how the capitalist “legal” system made this happen.)

This attack is a part of a national trend of bosses attacking the working class without regard to past precedents and agreements. Capitalism is in crisis. The ruling class needs money for endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to bail out the banks and other financial institutions and to invest in its businesses. Given these bosses’ priorities, there is no money available to maintain the living wages and benefits of working people. And so the bosses take off the gloves of past concessions to workers’ struggle and use whatever weapons they can find to drive down our wages, be it the courts, legislation, racism or terror. In this case, the attack on the mainly black workforce of Metro shows the racist nature of capitalism — the most super-exploited workers are the first to suffer in a capitalist crisis.

Union Leadership — Vacillating,
Fearful, And Complicit!

Jeter previously had told workers to simply “hold fast,” and at a special meeting of Metro workers at the union hall she continued to put forward a “wait-and-see” attitude.  When challenged by several angry workers, she tried to intimidate them by saying how dangerous it would be to have a strike, how they wouldn’t get paid and might lose their homes.

One worker declared that many Metro workers had already lost their homes, and if we did not fight back, many more would! She then backtracked, claiming that she would support a strike if the International did. But she knew full well that the International would never support a strike at Metro because it would be illegal and the International would be found in contempt of court and fined.

In short, Jeter is maintaining her reliance on the very courts and politicians that are screwing us, and refusing to mobilize the only force that can have any effect at all, mobilized anti-racist militant workers’ power!

Build PLP Leadership At Metro To
Hasten Revolution!

The bottom line of recent developments at Metro is that the bosses have upped the ante in their racist treatment and attacks on Metro’s predominantly black workforce. They believe the growing racial divisions in our society can be used to their advantage. To resist this attack we must overcome the divisions between riders and Metro workers, between us and other unions, and the divisions between documented and undocumented workers.

As we unify our class to resist the latest attacks, we can build stronger class struggle against the bosses and lay the foundation for revolutionary struggle against the entire system of capitalism. To do this, militant workers must create a new communist leadership at Metro to guide the process of building revolutionary struggle against capitalism and all of its racist, imperialist, and sexist attacks on the world’s workers, including those of us at Metro itself.

This is a fight of our class against theirs. We are the ones who must defend ourselves and fight collectively for our class interests. As we do this, we will be able to build the PLP to make communist revolution and abolish the capitalist system that enslaves us. J

Bosses Manipulate Own Rules to Screw Workers

On March 15, 2010, the Federal District court in Maryland ordered that parts of an arbitration award that settled a contract dispute between the union and management be sent back to the Arbitration Panel to bring it in compliance with the National Capital Arbitration Standards Act (NCASA).

The judge ruled that those parts of the original arbitration award that favored Metro management would be immediately implemented. So much for the neutrality of the courts! These included higher health insurance costs, the elimination of retiree health insurance for anyone who is hired after January 1, 2010, a one year wage freeze at the start of the contract and a 2% bonus instead of a wage increase the first year.

Those parts of the award (the 3% increases in the last three years of the contract and the preservation of the current pension system), which were minor concessions to the workers, were sent back for review and will most likely be negated. Not even crumbs for workers!

The judge gave very specific instructions to the arbitrators. He said it was illegal to base a wage increase on the other major transit properties in the United States, even though this had been the practice for at least the last 60 years. He ruled that the arbitrators had to use the provisions of the NCASA, which requires that the panel consider the ability of the local jurisdictions to pay the increases and the pay scales of similar jobs in the region only.

He also instructed the panel to examine the pension proposals Metro had made on cutting the high-four-final earnings formula, reducing the post-retirement escalator clause for pensions, and requiring employee contributions to the plan in light of the NCASA. Again, more significant losses for the workers!

The NCASA was passed in 1995 by Congress and signed by President Clinton explicitly for the purpose of cutting labor costs at Metro. Although the law has been on the books for 15 years, Metro has not forced a contract to arbitration because they feared the workers might rebel if they tried to change an arbitration award. Apparently they no longer have that fear. The times are changing, fascism is growing, and so it’s clearly time for us to restore and increase their fear through sharper struggle and go on to smash their system!