Labor // Current TV

Join Sen. Boxer, Gillibrand, and Klobuchar SUPPORT EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK

STOP PAY DISCRIMINATION making WOMEN SECOND-CLASS CITIZENS Women only earn an... more

LOrion
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10 months ago
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Student Guestworkers At Hershey Plant Allege Exploitative Conditions

Dave Jamieson dave.jamieson@huffingtonpost.com Posted: 8/17/11 10:14 PM ET... more

Buckeye_Bill
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10 months ago
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Deportation is Inhumane

The National Day Labor Organizing Network tries "TO IMPROVE THE LIVES OF DAY... more

Progresshiv
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10 months ago
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50 comments

45,000 VERIZON workers on STRIKE! ... This is big deal Verizon on ALEC board!

As of Midnight last evening, 45,000 Verizon Telephone workers are on strike. This... more

LOrion
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In the early 20th Century---coal mine operators had become so blatantly abusive and exploitive that they were even doing things like hiring private armies of mercenary thugs to intimidate labor organizers. In several cases they even murdered people indiscriminately in areas where labor organizing activities were taking place. This is when the word "thug" came into common use, after a group in India that murdered people by strangulation----paid assassins.

-------" Throughout the early 20th century, West Virginia coal miners attempted to overthrow this brutal system and engaged in a series of strikes, such as the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike of 1912, and which coal operators attempted to stop through violent means. Mining families lived under the terror of Baldwin-Felts detective agents who were professional strikebreakers under the hire of coal operators. During that dispute agents drove a heavily armored train through a tent colony at night, opening fire on women, men and children with a machine gun.[8] They would repeat this type of tactic during the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado the next year, with even more disastrous results.[9]"--------

Blair Mountain is the site of the largest armed conflict in the United States outside of the Civil War. As many as 130 people were killed in battle with Logan County sheriff's deputies and paid strike breakers from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency.

Now, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, in moves that only highlights its well known and well paid position of bought and paid for by wealthy industrial interests-----not only wants to destroy the environment which they are supposed to be protecting, they also want to destroy our history as well by allowing the mountain top removal mining of Blair Mountain. Destroy the environment, destroy the people who have to work in the mines(WVDEP allowed violations that led to the deaths of 29 miners last year at a Massey Energy mine----and countless others)-----and now, they want to destroy our history as well. By erasing the memory of miners who gave their lives trying to make better working conditions.

Tom Clark---the director of WVDEP called the efforts to end the mountain top mining destruction of Blair Mountain---and preserve the site of one of the most significant pieces of the history of the the United States---"frivolous".

I suspect he calls anything that doesn't show a profit and put money in his pocket frivolous.

Please lend your support to stopping the destruction of Blair Mountain---and lets do what we can to preserve this site of an important piece of US history as a national park. Send letters to your congressmen and let it be known that you don't want our environment, our history and a piece of who we are destroyed to the profit of a few industrialists.In the early 20th Century---coal mine operators had become so blatantly abusive and... more

Wetdog
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10 months ago
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Illinois Woman Finishes Bar Exam While in Labor

CHICAGO— A pregnant suburban Chicago woman went into labor while taking the bar... more

EdJoyProductions
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10 months ago
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What did you think of 'This (Illegal) American Life'?

On the most recent episode of "Vanguard," correspondent Mariana van Zeller... more

VANGUARD
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10 months ago
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Free Basil Mahan Gahé

Call for international solidarity with imprisoned Ivory Coast labour leader Basil... more

mollymew
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11 months ago
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The Wobblies Documentary

Documentary on the Industrial Workers of the World (The Wobblies)

mollymew
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11 months ago
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YouTube - CUPW / Canada Post labour dispute context - Philip Jennings, UNI Global Union

Context of the labour dispute at Canada Post.

mollymew
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12 months ago
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The TRUTH About the Economy in 2 minutes

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said he could explain the problems with the... more

LOrion
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12 months ago
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Struggle to save an Appalachian mountain is a battle for us all

The story of the Battle of Blair Mountain starts in the southern coal camps of West Virginia, a time when King Coal reigned supreme, openly and without apology.

Mining companies owned workers' homes; they owned the schools, the air and water; they owned the police and even private armies. They owned miners' lives.

Which is why murder seemed permissible. When a notorious strikebreaker shot down labor hero Sheriff Sid Hatfield, who refused to be bought by the coal companies, more than 10,000 enraged miners and pro-union forces rose up in Mingo and Logan Counties and converged on Blair Mountain. A private army of management mercenaries shot guns and dropped leftover bombs from WWI—it was the nation's largest armed conflict since the Civil War and the largest labor confrontation ever.

Don't know about the Battle of Blair Mountain? There's a reason for that. West Virginia—a state still dominated by the coal industry and its political interests— has resisted highlighting the battle in history books and has denied commemoration attempts. When the federal National Register of Historic places chose the historic site for protection, the state—working with coal company lawyers—contested the decision. The site was de-listed last year, when West Virginia state officials submitted a "revised" list of 57 landowners supposedly objecting to the historic preservation decision. The list even included 2 dead people.

This Battle of Blair Mountain continues today. Coal companies stand literally to erase this history by obliterating the mountain.

Massey Energy and Arch Coal hold several permits in various stages to mine this land in the very worse form of strip mining on this planet: Mountaintop removal mining (MTR). One active mountaintop removal site is already blasting away the mountain and is moving within a few hundred yards of the historic battle site. Massey Energy, of course, is the company responsible for killing 29 of its workers last April in the Upper Big Branch mine explosion. Since then, it has come under extreme fire for its tens of thousands of violations of safety law and its corporate culture of profits before people. Not to mention, by Massey's own records, they've had 67,000 violations of just one of the environmental statute. It's influence among West Virginia politicians, of course, is far-reaching.

All across Appalachia today, mountaintop removal mining is destroying mountain communities by ripping apart its landscape, environment, health, heritage and economic prospects. Mining companies come in, break the law, reap profits, and leave a wasteland. In MTR regions in W. Va, companies are exploding dynamite the power of a Hiroshima-sized bomb—every single week. This form of mining isn't good for jobs either. Ripping up the mountain rather than carefully extracting coal is "efficient" -- i.e. it replaces people with machines to enhance company profits. As is noted in the wonderful documentary The Last Mountain, which is being released this week, while Appalachian coal company profits and production have skyrocketed in recent decades, at the same time some 40,000 mining jobs have been lost.

This is a new "Battle of Blair Mountain" taking place today --- and raising national awareness about this amazing story could help pressure an agency that hardly ever received much attention to reconsider its decision. This victory would be a huge symbolic win for the Appalachian communities, and for the organized labor movement around the country, which is again under siege today.

contThe story of the Battle of Blair Mountain starts in the southern coal camps of West... more