ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä

Most of the speakers during the gathering were Democrats hoping to get elected in November — chiefly gubernatorial candidate Steve Williams, mayor of Huntington, and U.S. Senate candidate Glenn Elliott, former mayor of Wheeling.

But despite the warm reception from some 200 attendees to their pro-union messages Monday, Elliott, Williams and other Democrats running for statewide election are considered heavy underdogs in races against Republican opponents absent from the celebration, including those long entrenched in office with anti-labor records.

The gathering doubled as a political call to action in a state with a Republican supermajority in the Legislature from a slate of speakers that consisted nearly entirely of Democratic candidates — and an animated longtime UMWA International President and Cabin Creek native Cecil Roberts.

“Friends, neighbors, brothers, sisters, if you want to turn West Virginia around, you must fight! If you want to change the Legislature, you must fight! If you want to change this state, you’ve got to fight until you win!� Roberts said to conclude a speech that fired up a crowd of largely older union and military veterans huddled under pavilion roofs and overwhelmingly sporting UMWA apparel.

UMWA rep blasts Republican control in W.Va.

Williams recalled announcing his gubernatorial candidacy at last year’s UMWA Labor Day celebration and sending out a subsequent UMWA endorsement letter he got to his cousins. Williams said his grandfathers were coal miners who died young — unlike his grandmothers, whose health care he reported had been in good hands under UMWA coverage.

“They died as elderly women in their late 80s because they had the health card from the UMWA,� Williams said. “My grandmothers were taken care of.�

Williams is running to succeed Gov. Jim Justice, a coal magnate whose family mining businesses have allowed intermittent lapses in prescription drug coverage for UMWA miners, causing them to go without or pay out of pocket for critical prescriptions.

Williams’ opponent, absent from Monday’s gathering, is state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who has received campaign finance contributions from a wide variety of coal companies and executives and has defended 2016 state right-to-work legislation denounced by many speakers at the Labor Day celebration.

In an interview at Monday’s event, UMWA International District 17 Vice President Brian Lacy urged passage of the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, a bill stalled in Congress that would let unions override state right-to-work laws, like West Virginia’s, that allow workers to opt out of a union and not pay union dues while still being covered by wage and benefit provisions of their union contract.

“Ever since the Legislature flipped to the Republican side, nothing has been done good for the working people,� Lacy said, referring to Republicans taking control of the West Virginia Legislature in 2014 after decades of Democrat rule.

Elliott hits Justice on silica

Lacy hailed the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration’s April finalization of a rule aimed at protecting miners from inhaling toxic silica dust amid a sharp increase in black lung disease among increasingly younger miners in central Appalachia.

The UMWA and other miner advocates welcomed the rule as long overdue relief for miners, given that it lowered the permissible exposure limit for respirable crystalline silica to the limit recommended in 1974 by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (50 micrograms per cubic meter of air).

What black lung clinic representatives and occupational health experts say is driving the spike in regional occurrence of the disease is miners cutting into thinning rock seams and thus suffering greater exposure to silica dust.

Central Appalachia’s share of miners with large opacities on chest X-rays has dwarfed the number of miners with the same result outside the region, defined as West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia, according to data reported by the Gazette-Mail in August 2023.

The data spanning July 2019 through June 2023 show 83.4% of miners with large opacities on chest X-rays seen at federally supported black lung clinics were in those three states, with West Virginia having a persistently high concentration of such miners.

West Virginia is leading the nation by a wide margin in use of a MSHA-touted program aimed at protecting mine workers from low-dust environments. The program operates under a section of the Title 30 Code of Federal Regulations, known as Part 90. The program gives miners with occupational lung disease the right to be transferred to a low-dust environment without having their pay reduced and with protection against termination or other discrimination.

But the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee approved, in a 31-25 vote, a fiscal year 2025 funding bill last month that would block money for the rule, setting up a vote on the appropriations package by the full House.

The measure hasn’t yet come before West Virginia’s two members of Congress in the House, Reps. Carol Miller and Alex Mooney, both R-W.Va., for a vote, but they have been silent regarding the legislation.

Justice, whose coal firms have a long track record of MSHA-issued mine safety violations and what federal prosecutors said last week owe $579,041 in unpaid mine safety fine debt, was noncommittal when the Gazette-Mail asked him for his thoughts on the silica rule. His campaign also has been silent when asked for comment on MSHA’s enforcement budget, which the House appropriations legislation would cut by $20 million (7.5%).

Elliott hit Justice, whose debt-ridden business empire’s legal liabilities have mounted in recent years, on the silica rule during his UMWA Labor Day speech.

“He’s got nothing to say, He’s been conspicuously quiet,� he said. “Now in his defense, he’s had some issues with his businesses to worry about, but the bottom line is he’s shown a complete disregard for the well-being of the average coal miner and the average West Virginian.�

Of the UMWA’s general election endorsements, five out of seven at the statewide or federal levels are Democratic. Five out of seven state Senate candidates endorsed by the union are Democrats, and 28 out of 50 House of Delegates endorsements favor those on the Democratic ticket.

“If they ... support us, obviously we’ll support them, regardless of whether they have a D or R in front of their name,� Lacy said.

Disproportionately high fatalities at nonunion mines

Monday’s celebration comes at a time of surging support for unions and an increase in West Virginia’s share of unionized workers despite the state GOP supermajority’s hostility toward unions.

Gallup, a national public opinion polling company, released polling results last week finding that labor union disapproval has hit a 57-year low at 23% nationwide despite a long-term decline in U.S. unionization.

“The day is coming when unions are going to be the most powerful institution in the United States and in West Virginia,� Roberts said. “It’s coming back, folks! It’s coming back!�

In West Virginia, the number of employed wage and salary workers represented by unions increased 1.4% from 2022 to 70,000 in 2023 — a higher increase than the state’s 0.3% uptick of total employed wage and salary workers, according to federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Nationwide, nonunion workers had median weekly earnings that were just 86% of earnings for workers who were union members ($1,090 versus $1,263).

But evidence suggests perhaps the greatest benefit for unionized mine workers historically has been a better shot at a workplace where fatalities and serious injuries are avoided.

Out of 14 fatal incidents at mines in 2024 for which the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration has published fatality reports indicating mine union status, 12 occurred at nonunion mines: 86%.

All three fatal incidents at West Virginia mine sites this year occurred at nonunion mines.

But 17.5% of mines nationwide were unionized in 2022 according to federal Energy Information Administration data, suggesting a disproportionately high share of fatal incidents at nonunion mines

Data analyzed in a SNL Energy analysis published in 2015 based on the previous two years of EIA data found that underground coal mines in Appalachia are safer and more productive. Underground union mines in the region produced more tons for every injury reported, per the analysis by the energy market data provider.

Unionization was associated with a 13-30% decline in traumatic injuries and 28-83% decrease in fatalities according to a 2011 study by Stanford Law School professor Alison Morantz.

Lacy noted UMWA miners are empowered by union contracts to voice health and safety concerns with greater protection than nonunion miners.

Recharged for the fight

Larry Matheney of Jackson County, who became a UMWA member 58 years ago this month, came to Monday’s celebration to support the union — and to recharge.

“I’m in need of … being with friends and being with those that believe deeply that the union movement does make a difference,� Matheney, 76, said, adding that the “good fortune� of working a union job nearly his entire working life was his “passport to the middle class.�

Matheney, now a card-carrying member of ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä-based Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 1353, got the boost he came to John Slack Memorial Park for Monday.

“I feel, again, recharged and ready to fight more,� Matheney said.