Program about the Harlan County, USA Documentary Film

Music Miner's life is like a sailor's Board a ship to cross the waves Every day is life's endangered Still he begs should be prayed What for us they're falling daily Careless mind is always failed Keep your hands upon the dollar And you're all upon the scale Union high, you stand together Keep the world forever still Keep your hands upon the dollar

And you're all upon the scale You've been ducked and ducked my voice You've been loading two to one What have you to show for work in Since this mining has begun Overalls and cans for rockers In your shiny sleep on rails Keep your hands upon the dollar And you're all upon the scale Union high, you stand together Keep the world forever still

Keep your hands upon the dollar And you're all upon the scale Union very memory Keep the past word in your mind God provides for every nation When in you, yeah they come by Stand like men and link together Victory for you prevailed Together and upon the dollar And you're all upon the scale Union high, you stand together

Keep the world forever still Keep your hands upon the dollar And you're all upon the scale I would like to say this, it's been said about our astronauts that have went to the moon how brave they are and how knowledgeable or smart They are to go to the moon to come back to the world on land Land that nobody has ever set foot on before the coal miner does this every day that he works underground He puts his feet on places that no man has ever set foot The way I look at it, they can send a man to the moon They can make the moon safe Now as it was before we voted for United mind The bosses walk up And you say we don't have to make this mind But now the mind inspector is coming

Monday, you know And they're not supposed to know that the mind inspector is even coming I'm not accusing them of taking money But they're starting wrong, you know We'd ask for longer pings They said we would have to make do with what you've got And we had a major rockfall of burrows about 27 feet wide It rained almost 60 feet in length 34 foot thick Then we started getting forward 5 and 6 foot 10 But it's too late after somebody gets killed My heart stays in my mouth He gets home He's been looking so cold But my devil's hurt my mind's worn And my brother Yeah, my other brother He worked at his place He got hurt at first You know, we hear that mining is really tough work, hard work Compared to other kinds of work But when you add on top of that Working where a roof is about to fall or where electric system has been spliced

Unsafely What goes through your head when you're working that way? Well sir, I will show you things Go through your head when you have to work under these conditions I say up when I work for a whole company It was eight hours a day, five days a week on the ground I was thankful to the Lord just to be able to get outside and even in return of my family safely Second of all I was thankful that I worked in a UMWA mine to where we would have some say so and to have people represent us in a way that we should be represented and have certain conditions that would endanger our lives and our limbs corrected before someone actually got hurt in the future In the 1930s,

Harlan County Moners fought for the ride of working people to organize into unions Today, Harlan County Moners are fighting again The miners of the Brookside Mine in Harlan County, Kentucky have been on strike for a year now demanding a United Mine Workers contract After three years under the company dominated Southern Labor Union they voted on June 26, 1973 to be represented by the United Mine Workers of America The Brookside Mine is owned by Duke Power Company of North Carolina the sixth largest public utility company in the country The contract for which the Brookside Mine is striking includes the following demands Portal to portal pay This means pay for the hour and more it takes to travel from the mine door to the coal face and back again at the end of the shift Safety The disabling injury rate for the Brookside Mine was three times the national average in 1970 and twice the national average in 1971 seniority and job security

a dependable medical plan a pension that is more than paper and finally union recognition The Harlan miners know that a strong union controlled by the rank and file is the only defense worker hands As most of you know it's been about a year now since we've begun this strike against Duke Power Company The time right now is real critical we're fast reaching our desertification date I believe I understand those rumors if there may be a petition for a new election I'd like to commend the people at Brookside and Harlan County for the way they stood up and the determination that they've shown

I think there is one thing that you should understand this is not just a labor dispute here in Harlan County these people are not just fighting the coal operators here in Harlan County they're fighting the Duke Power Company the judicial system the school system plus the state police with great big clubs the coal companies with hard killing they have hard people to guard their property that are convicted felons that's been indicted and convicted of murder some of them has killed as many as three and four patients and they're out and are being used as company guards This speech was made last month in Harlan at a rally intended to halt the eviction of eight miner families from their company owned houses for the specific obstacles the strikers face in their ongoing battle against Duke Power we asked the miners and their families they were saying that the education here is really tied up with the company too they grab the pens out the kids and throw them in a waste can

and the key is that it belongs to a UMWA family they don't get a good grade just once it's not you they just treat them off but wait on the teachers to support the UMW they're against the price they got the gas for health about the chances of a fair trial in Harlan they say they have to go through court and they have to give us a far trial getting hard in court because we never had they wouldn't give them a jewelry trial when they had her husband in jail and they had to sign releases when they got out they wouldn't go over here to mines no more and all that stuff and I know Judge he was a co-operator he sailed about the state police and the police they set up on a hill with guns ready to shoot or men if they say one word to them scabs from across the street did the police give the women any trouble who were in front of the ticket line if we move over here they'd drag them across the road and put them in the car and then care how they treated them the state police knows who the UMWA is they know us all

they told me that I wouldn't be able to live here if I keep that spot on my door it would take me a minute well they mean if I stayed on the ticket line that they were going to give me a hard time they said I'd have to leave Harlan County I said I'd like to help a lot from leaving this place I'm going here and about the convicted felons now hired by Duke Power Company to protect their premises how many people find out that a company with Harlan's ex-convexer or ex- felons? well I think we're under no it's a horrible plea and he's a brand new he got him from another he's been found to be in followed later he got him from another he's been found to be in and that's it he got them they just don't care to shoot them they got him Duke Power calls itself a friendly

neighborly company but the Holmes Duke houses its Brookside miners and would never satisfy Duke Power's Board of Directors or the trustees of the charitable Duke in Domingue, which owns one-third of the company's stock few of the houses in the Brookside coal cap have indoor plumbing or running water or central heating the drinking water Duke supplies its mining families through and out or spigot was found to be highly contaminated with fecal bacteria by the Harlan County Health Department poor housing, polluted water and unsafe mines will remain a way of life in Appalachia so long as huge outside companies like Duke Power abandoned any pretense of being friendly and neighborly when they come into communities like Harlan County Kentucky with assets over $2.5 billion Duke Power could help improve the lives of the people of Harlan County instead, Duke has become another in a long line of and feared absentee owners so now they told us that we

wouldn't have nowhere to go none of us because now we've looked for houses and we just can't find them and when you do that, that brings to how you can afford them I hear the conditions in these houses are very good and they're not what happens when you complain about them nothing they just don't pay no attention to them that water he didn't get to drink but it smells awful and one morning we got up and it was pink just like something untainted then he wrote in my house with my wash water and a wash machine and it was completely thin buddy where did you get your water there? well my water was in a half that man's wheelchair he put it in here before and on the note about it at Ray Widener and now my house was just off the packet and my authority ironically enough one of the more complete listings of the adverse conditions miners hoped to change with the UMW victory was contained in a hate letter addressed to striking miner Jimmy Osborne that's right I'm glad you got a victory from your house I'm glad you do not have a car and that is

it is hard for you to go to go house hunting I hope you cannot find another place to stay and I'm glad that you cannot afford to have a six-week post delivery check-up for your wife and baby nor pay rent and you tell he's on a new home I'm glad you are not working now I hope you are you and your family have a real rough and tough I hope you and your family have more troubles and hardship than you can stand I'm glad that you do not have running water in your house and that you don't have an indoor toilet I bet it is real rough and cold weather or when it is hot or slain or raining or you all have to go outside to the toilet or to draw water yes, real rough that is nice and I'm glad I hope that real soon life gets much, much safer than you and your family United Mine Workers

was formed in 1890 to better the conditions of miners in this country bitter wars were fought between miners and coal operators over the UMW organizing movements the union fought for living wages improved mine safety pensions and benefits for miners and their families and improvements in the living conditions these fights occurred in coal camps all over the United States one of the bitterest fights took place in Harlan County in the 1930s the police and miners were virtually at war with each other and many men were killed before the union was finally recognized but continuing police and company harassment and problems within the union in the UMW leaving Harlan County this is meant that the conditions in Harlan County today are not much different than they were in the 1930s after the United Mine Workers left Harlan County the southern labor union a company-dominated union signed contracts with the coal companies there this union promised many

of the same things that the UMW offered but miners found that no one ever actually received a pension that health cards weren't honored at hospitals and that safety condition has got increasingly worse so in an election in June 1973 the miners of the Brookside Mine again chose to be represented by the United Mine Workers Union rather than the SLU by a vote of 113 to 55 this is sparked a strike which brings the fights of the 1930s back to everyone's minds the how people have been able to last this long with the strike since last September well they just got a wheel parod

they ain't going to lose they stood out too long man to give up they weren't going to give up That's going to be better for you when you're not in mind workers coming and what do you see as improving? Well, I say we'll have a whole lot more than we had before, so the labor wouldn't work enough. You go take one of your kids to the doctor and they tell you the office, well this is no good. You're going to have to pay for this. The car wouldn't work the paper was read off. For one thing, you're not in mind workers got a better safety committee. They got poor to pay and they got a job security. Another southern labor union, you do every job they tell you, you've got no port of for to pay and you've got no good safety committee and you've got no hospital costs. Frank, so you're going to stay here till they get a union or don't get a union? I was going to have to, I was going to have to work an hour and a half. I don't want to see you going to be able to get back in here. As I recall, Mr. Belldown told us that under the southern labor union you all shipped in $2 a week, was that it? Yes, sir.

And there were 180 reviews, so that was $180 a week. Yes, sir. That's roughly a little over $500 a month. Whereas under the United Mind Workers, you get the royalty of $0.75 a ton and there's so much tonnage for the amounts to roughly almost a half a million dollars a year. Yes, sir. And that's the difference between night and day, there, I guess, and the sizes of the amounts available for medicine and hospitalization and retirement. Hospitalization, as you know, keeps going up every day and they're scared to ask the company for more royalty. And if you think if your union is afraid to say anything, what's the man got in faith then? There's nothing there. What's the big thing that caused you to suffer? That's something we didn't know. See, I got covered at last year. Then it aligned. I've not been here to see it through this man. That's true. Yeah. What happened?

Top caved in on me. Mashed my neck. Showed everything to good. Showing good. I see under seven labor. I didn't told him at the top was the bad. We couldn't shouldn't be pinned. You know, right there at that time. I didn't give it down. I told you to do that. Taken down. Back it to go home. What do you think of Brooks that before Duke Power came in? They brought it out in 1997. Before Duke Power come in, I worked there about a year before they come in. It was a good place to work. Better place to work then, it is now. What are they doing there that makes it worse? I'm not going to try to do nothing. That's what makes it worse. Duke Power, they just say get your bank and go home. Brooks, I didn't say it, but yes it is. I worked in water knee-deep. Do you have to work? Because I've got a family. Do you have to work? It's about weeks. I might give money, but money is not important. Because money is not going to do you no good, you know, you're spending it. Do they have a safety inspection? Yes. They cut me home. How about a safety inspection? Yeah, but the problem with that is that they know that the inspectors are coming. And they just go ahead and sweeten everything up for the inspectors when they get there.

Because the inspectors sit down by the hill and give them plenty of time, they don't think they're fixed up. Then they go and look at it and they go out and they go back out. They don't think they're back like with force. You have to buy another force. The United mind that this has, a mind health and safety committee in the contract. And this is what it says in that. It says that each mind, there shall be a mind health and safety committee made up of minors, employed at the mind, who are qualified by mining experience, our training, and selected by the local union. The local union shall inform the employer, the names of the committee members, the committee members, while engaged in the performance of their duties with the following acceptance. Exceptional. Shall be paid by the local union. When the mind health and safety committee is making our participating in an investigation of an explosion, an R, a disaster, including any mind fatality.

They shall be paid by the employer after regular rate of pay, including any applicable premium rate. For the hour spent making our participating in such investigation. And those special instances where the committee believes the animal danger exists and the committee recommends that the employer remove all employees from the involved area, the employer is required to follow the recommendations of the committee. That is one thing that Duke Power was very, very insistent that the safety committee not have this power. In other words, there what they're saying is that their inspectors, or their foreman, should have this right. Since the federal inspectors can't be there all the time, the only protection that the poll miners have is their own committee members. We read in the paper and the radio tells us to raise our children to be miners as well.

Tell them how safe the mines are today, and to be like daddy, bring home a big pay. Don't you believe that my boy, that story's a lie? Remember the disaster at the Mannington mines? Where 78 miners were burned alive, because of unsafe conditions your daddy died. They lure you with money, it sure is a sight. When you may never live to see the daylight. With your name on the big headlines, like that awful disaster at the Mannington mines. There's a man in a big house way up on the hill.

Far from the Shacks where the poor miners live. He's got plenty of money, Lord, everything's fine. And he has forgotten the Mannington mine. There is a grave way down in the Mannington mine. There is a grave way down in the Mannington mine. Oh, what were their last thoughts? What were their cries? As the flames overtook them in the Mannington mines. Don't you believe that my boy, that story's a lie? Remember the disaster at the Mannington mines? Where 78 good men so uselessly died. Don't follow your daddy to the Mannington mine.

How can God forgive you, you know what you've done? You've killed my husband, now you want my son. What do you all think you'll do when you get old enough to start looking for work? I don't have a job working there as in Harlem, so we're standing there in town. How do you think? What do you think you'll do when you grow up? I don't know. You don't know, huh? You want to go to work in the mines? Do kids not want to work there anymore? Come on, you're trash. Is your family always been in mines? Is your father in mines? Yeah, my father got hurt in the Mannington mine. And his daddy got hurt. His daddy and his brother got killed in the Mannington mine. I was like, it would be a hard decision to keep on doing that.

And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Energy. We've heard much today about the energy crisis. The real energy crisis is that huge fuel-owning corporations put more energy into making profits than producing energy. There is enough coal to provide our country with 500 years of energy consumption at today's rate. Who is it that is profiting from these coal mines? Is it the miner who risks his life every day? As one miner put it, all our lives weed some companies like Duke, which run mines for profits but don't care about our lives, and how many of us go home battered and broken.

All our lives we've known companies like Duke Power which buy up a coal camp community like Brookside and think they've bought the lives of the people who live there as well. Lynn Esterman of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union spoke of this at a rally in Harlan County. Those of you who have picketed Wall Street understand that the interest of an offer is to control East over mining companies. Go far beyond the mountains in this particular strife. Big owners like the Morgan's and the Rockefellers are trying to counter to place the whole burden of today's economic crisis on the majority of people who have to work their living. Those owners find easy allies and government officials like Nixon who their money helped to a last. It's going to take the united strength of the labor movement, other progressive movements and the supporters and the majority to show these wealthy queues that their problems are not going to be solved at our expense. Last week, United Mineworkers across the country observed a week long shutdown in memory of the thousands of miners who have perished underground this century.

This year alone, 74 miners have died in mine accidents. In addition, the memorial recall the 3698 miners seriously injured, thousands of black lung sufferers, and quote, full mining families who are victims of company violence designed to prevent them from winning protections of a UMW contract in the words of UMW President Arnold Miller. It is no coincidence that Miller first announced the memorial period during a press conference in Harlan County. Neither is it a secret that one of the purposes of the shutdown is to pressure Duke power company. Knowing that the memorial shutdown would paralyze virtually all coal companies for the five-day period, coal operators originally protested the memorial shutdown alleging that action constituted an illegal secondary boycott. The National Labor Relations Board, however, ruled in favor of the miners, citing a provision in the current contract providing for a maximum 10 memorial days between now and November 12th.

The other five memorial days will be used in September or October if the Brookside Strike has not unsettled by then. The contract between the by-tuminous coal operators association and the United Mine workers expires on November 12th. If a new contract is not completed by that date, a general strike is anticipated. From all of you good workers, good news to you I'll tell you how the good old Union have come in here to dwell.

Which side are you on? Which side are you on? My daddy was a miner and I'm a minus fund and I'll stick with the Union till every battle's won. Which side are you on? Which side are you on? They say in hall and county there are no neutral there. You'll either be a Union man or a sub-per-J.A. Square. Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Or workers can you stand it or tell me how you can? Will you be a lousy cabal? Will you be a man? Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Don't step for the bosses and listen to their lies. A 447's got a chance unless we organize. Which side are you on? Which side are you on?

For several months the coal miners have pressed for a start negotiations. Consistently they have been refused. The miners will make 6 demands in their bid for a new contract. Number 1. A 6 hour workday. 2. A sharp pay increase and a cost of living escalator. 3. That royalties per ton of coal mined paid into the miners' health and welfare fund be raised from 80 cents to $2.40 per ton. 4. 30 paid sick days. 5. No compulsory overtime. Double time for Saturday. Triple time for Sunday. And quadruple time for work on holidays. No overtime would be allowed if any miner in the district is on layoff. 6. A minimum of 4 weeks vacation and 4 additional paid holidays. John Corcoran, president of Consolidated Coal Company, stated early this year that the UMWA demands for an increase in royalties is, quote, unrealistic as are the demands for a 6 hour workday.

On the 6 hour day, Corcoran said, quote, the simple fact is the industry would have to add another 40,000 miners to maintain current production. 6. This is not an every man for himself battle. Throughout the history of the labor movement, every gain won by working people has been fought for truth and nail. In the 1930s, the Holland County coal miners struggled for the right to organize against gunfeds and the state apparatus of the coal monopoly, helped to lay the foundations for organizing the auto workers, steel workers in the CIO. Once again, coal miners are stepping forward as leaders in the battle against coal monopoly in their interest. 6. Brookside is only the beginning. Duke Power knows only too well that the victory at Brookside will lead to the unionization of all of Eastern Kentucky.

The rising militancy of your rank and file and your attempts to build a strong democratic union have been an inspiration to all of us to keep on fighting. We're here to tell coal horn that he's not just up against 180 striking men. He's facing thousands of people all across this country and we're all determined to break the stranglehold of the coal monopolies in these mountains. It's no secret that there's a fight going on inside the labor movement today. Some people are saying that strikes are outdated, that we've entered an age of cooperation. But I think everybody here knows that that just is not the case. The actions of the UNW in support of the coal miners of South Africa and their fight for basic democratic rights against the racist system of a party have shown us that solidarity and the will to fight. Not collaboration are what's needed to win. The Brookside women's clubs have played a vital role in the strike. So often, the companies prey on women, particularly women who don't work, sending out letters, propaganda letters, telling us that we should nag our husbands across the ticket lines that the strike has nothing to do with us and our families.

It's a dispute where our husbands work. The Brookside women's clubs are demonstrated to us that this doesn't have to be the case. You've demonstrated thousands of women, the potential strengths of women, when we're organized and active in the day-to-day struggle to change the conditions under which we live. All of you have shown us the way. No one's ever given us anything on a silver platter and they're not about to start now. The road's not an easy one and there aren't any shortcuts through better cooperation. The only way is through our united strength and to keep on fighting and we're going to be here when the morning comes. Let's make Carl encounter a UMWA country. So all of your energy forever, so all of your energy forever, so all of your energy forever, for the union makes us strong.

When the union's inspiration through the workers blood show wrong, there can be a power greater anywhere beneath the sun. Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one, but the union makes us strong. Solidarity forever, so all of your energy forever, so all of your energy forever, for the union makes us strong. It is we who plough the prairies, built the cities where they trade, dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid. Now we stand out cast and starving, mid the wonders we have made, but the union makes us strong. Solidarity forever, so all of your energy forever, so all of your energy forever, for the union makes us strong.

They have taken on told millions that they never toil to earn, but without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn. We can break their 40 power, gain our freedom when we learn that the union makes us strong. Solidarity forever, so all of your energy forever, so all of your energy forever, for the union makes us strong. In our hands is placed a power greater than their hearted goal, greater than the might of atoms magnified a thousandfold. We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old, for the union makes us strong. Solidarity forever, so all of your energy forever, so all of your energy forever, so all of your energy forever, for the union makes us strong.