Black Lung Revolt in West Virginia
Williams, Jim
NEARLY 40,000 West Virginia soft-coal miners returned to their jobs March 4 after conducting a political general strike in support of a state bill to make "Black Lung" a compensable ailment...
...Kerr states, black lung "is a man-made disease that can be prevented...
...Britain, for example, since the early forties, has taken measures to ventilate mines, provide protective masks, and to keep down dust levels...
...Usually it requires some catastrophe —like the Mannington explosion—or a general strike, for the miners' problems to receive attention...
...The strike was the first political strike in West Virginia labor history (and the largest since 1921, when a great number of miners had staged an armed march against Logan county officials, which was eventually broken up by troops and air force bombers commanded by General Billy Mitchell...
...Donald Rasmussen, say that black lung doesn't always show up on X-rays...
...Rasmussen, who have been holding meetings in most of the mining towns throughout the state to discuss black lung with the miners...
...The Black Lung Bill, which finally became law, contains some concessions to the miners' demands: Black Lung is now compensable under workmen's compensation (which pays about $45–$50 a week in maximum benefits), and the Bill has a presumptive clause which presumes that a miner got Black Lung if he worked in a mine for at least two out of the last ten years...
...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS The Black Lung Association is a spontaneous movement, but sparked in good part by Dr...
...It seems odd that America's miners, who produce so much wealth for the nation, should still work under degrading and dangerous conditions that all but vanished in most of the other advanced Western nations over two decades ago...
...I. E. Buff and Dr...
...The disease is caused by the breathing of coal dust—tiny particles measuring less than a ten-thousandths part of a millimeter in diameter...
...But this is not so, according to Dr...
...The movement includes black and white miners who work together...
...The contacts between the doctors and the miners were forged by antipoverty workers—primarily the Appalachian Volunteers...
...Black lung now has become almost nonexistent in Britain, and also in West and East Germany and Czechoslovakia...
...Loren E. Kerr of the UMWA Welfare and Retirement Fund, who says "pneumoconiosis [black lung] is the most important occupational dust disease occurring in the United States today...
...He is a Negro, but no one seems to care...
...BLACK LUNG" was unheard of a few years back...
...But the Black Lung Association said the final bill was deficient in seven areas, and it vowed to continue to press for its demands...
...NEARLY 40,000 West Virginia soft-coal miners returned to their jobs March 4 after conducting a political general strike in support of a state bill to make "Black Lung" a compensable ailment under the state's workmen's compensation system...
...Many people have heard of silicosis, and many think that existing safety and health measures against silicosis are adequate...
...By the end of the month, the number of striking workers had risen to include nearly all of the state's 42,000 miners who mine about 50 percent of the nation's soft coal...
...Doctors representing the Black Lung Association, Dr...
...Buff and Dr...
...The man who enters the mines knows that if he isn't killed or maimed outright by an accident, he stands little chance of living a full, healthful life in the face of national apathy about his plight, which is a continuing blot on the conscience of America...
...There is widespread discontent with the way the UMWA Welfare and Retirement Fund operates, and most towns in West Virginia's coal counties boast groups of disgruntled miners who feel they have been cheated out of hard-earned benefits...
...State political leaders are also shaken by the movement which indicates the UMWA leaders can no longer "deliver" the miners' votes...
...This became a major problem when mines began to be automated and huge machines were introduced...
...The Black Lung Association introduced a bill into the state legislature, but the UMWA teamed up with the state AFL-CIO to offer what was, in the miners' opinion, a much weaker bill...
...No one really knew much about it, about how it was caused, or what its longterm effects were...
...These new machines ripped out coal seams at a highly accelerated rate and saturated the air with superfine dust...
...Studies by both the Department of Mines and the UMWA show that one in ten workers in the mines, and one in five of the former miners in Appalachia has had X-ray evidence of black lung...
...They say that having black lung is like drowning, and that it is permanently crippling...
...The walkout began February 18, when about 2,000 miners in the Beckley area—rankandfile members of the Black Lung Association— struck in support of a bill they had introduced into the state legislature in Charleston (West Virginia...
...There is discontent with the perennial lack of democracy in the UMWA (presidents of union locals are still appointed by higher-ups, who in turn are appointed by Boyle...
...The strike of February 1969 was also a protest against the UMWA officials, whom the rank-and-file miners criticize for not fighting hard enough for adequate mine safety...
...At a mass rally in Charleston (West Virginia), on February 26, about 2,500 miners marched through the streets in white miners' helmets decorated with black skull and crossbones and the figures "78-4...
...The numbers represent the 78 miners who were killed in an explosion at a Mannington (West Virginia) mine last fall, and 4 miners died in a mine accident at Hominy Falls last year...
...The legislature, which passed a bill on March 8 that partially met the workers' demands, became a battleground between the rank-and-file miners, the United Mine Workers and AFL-CIO officialdom, and the Coal Operators' Association which termed the workers' demands "galloping socialism...
...The eruption of the black lung movement portends difficulties for the UMWA leadership, many of whom are in the $35,000-a-year category, and who may draw as much income from the UMWA-owned National Bank of Washington as from dues...
...Black lung, as the many other serious problems facing miners, receives scant national attention...
...But as the UMWA's Dr...
...The miners have been upset for some time...
...And what is especially notable here in West Virginia is that, despite the sluggishness of the union officials, the miners themselves now have finally moved into action...
...The power of the coal barons remains largely unchecked, and is even growing as the result of new mergers, which are producing coal-gas-oil "conglomerates...
...This dust causes black lung...
...The president of the Association is Charles Brooks of Kanawha City...
...There were no top UMWA officials at the miners' rally, but the mention of UMWA President "Tony" Boyle set off a chorus of jeers and catcalls and, in a speech, a miner referred to the Black Lung Association as "your local union away from your local union...
Vol. 16 • May 1969 • No. 3
