Since Wednesday, we haven’t seen Roberts around here anymore. “At the #4 Mine, the vote was 256 ‘no’ and only seven ‘yes.’ At the #7 Mine, it was 750 against and only 38 for it. “The workers want $27 or $28 as starting pay and 100 percent company-paid insurance, not $23 an hour and 80-20 copays. “People have died working in these mines,” a veteran miner told the World Socialist Web Site, referring to the death in 2013 of a 36-year-old miner who was crushed in a conveyor belt.

On top of it, he placed his left hand, which is conspicuously missing an index finger he lost in a mine accident. One worker circulated a photo of his “No” ballot. Outside the union meeting Friday miners and their children burned copies of the contract. Scheller, III has pocketed an annual salary of over $4 million even during the pandemic. It made $302 million in 2019, while CEO Walter J. Since the 2016 concessions, which the union said were necessary to bring the company out of bankruptcy, Warrior Met has gotten record coal production and profits out of the workers.

The company’s brutal disciplinary policy, which has resulted in countless unjust terminations, would have been kept in place under the deal, only with six strikes before dismissal instead of four. In doing so, they are defying the company’s strikebreaking operation, intimidation by Alabama state troopers and the sabotage of the UMWA.ĭuring informational meetings Wednesday, rank-and-file miners shouted down UMWA President Cecil Roberts and denounced him as a sellout for agreeing to a five-year deal which restored only $1.50 out of the $6-an-hour pay cut workers suffered in 2016. The miners are continuing their strike, which began on April 1, to win back concessions accepted by the UMWA five years ago. Striking coal miners in central Alabama on Friday voted 1,006 to 45 in an overwhelming repudiation of the efforts by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) to impose a pro-company contract on 1,100 workers at Warrior Met Coal.

Defying Convention by Cecil Wilde