Peabody Miners: Fed Up and Fired Up

[Omaha Steve]

Jul 18

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Peabody Miners: Fed Up and Fired Up

Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts often says: “When you get fed up and fired up, you got to get ready to stand up.” Coal miners are standing up in the coalfields across the country, demanding to be treated with respect and to have a voice to make sure their jobs are well paid and safe.



In recent years, the UMWA has responded to the requests of hundreds of nonunion miners at Peabody Energy’s facilities across the country for assistance in getting a voice at work. In December 2005, workers at 19 Peabody mines in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia launched the Justice at Peabody campaign.

Says John Cox, a miner at Peabody’s Farmersburg (Ind.) mine:

I pay anywhere between $300 to $500 a month in prescription drug costs because of Peabody’s sub-par health benefit package. Only with a union contract will we have better pay and benefits because it’s obvious Peabody is not going to give it to us.

Peabody, the world’s largest private coal company, provides 10 percent of the nation’s electricity and 3 percent of the world’s power and employs some 8,300 miners at 33 mines in nine states. Peabody systematically closed its union mines and replaced production with nonunion mines over the past 15 years, says Bob Gaydos, UMWA’s
assistant organizing director.


Full article: http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/07/18/peabody-miners-fed-up-and-fired-up/

[Bluzmann57]

1. If there is one industry that needs Unions

it has to be the coal mining industry. It is obviously dangerous as well as dirty work. Not to mention unhealthy. We all need to support our brothers and sisters in their efforts to Re-Unionize those mines.

[Lasher]

2. Cecil Roberts is one of the best speakers I have ever heard.

I'm looking forward to seeing him again at the UMWA Labor Day rally in Racine, West Virginia - which is only about 5 miles from my home.

[Bake]

3. Reminds me of John Prine:

Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenburg County
Down by the Green River, where Paradise lay,
I'm sorry my son but you're too late in askin'
Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away.

-- John Prine, Paradise

Bake