The music of Coal Mining

[Iamschist]

Horrible tragedy!!  Thanks Shasta and Zorgon!  I will be checking out all the information you posted Zorgon as usual your pictures are worth thousands of words.  Thanks For the music too.

[Amaterasu]

New to Me until today - well, now yesterday - too, z.  The things They DON'T teach in school, eh?

[Shasta56]

I was born and raised into a pro-union family.  A lot of Rocky Flats workers were former coal miners.  If memory serves me correctly, UMW  was the first union at Rocky Flats.  Later on it was USW Local 8031.  Barron Bashear ( I think I have the name right) wrote Out of the Depths.  I don't think the book is in print anymore, but it detailed the events of Ludlow.

Shasta

[sky otter]

sounds a lot like the homestead strike from around here...it was the rich guys trying to push the little guys around..and it didn't work.. pgh  while very diverse  in the present is still strongly pro union


UnionThe Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (AA) was an American labor union formed in 1876. It was a craft union representing skilled iron and steel workers.

The AA's membership was concentrated in ironworks west of the Allegheny Mountains. The union negotiated national uniform wage scales on an annual basis; helped regulate working hours, workload levels and work speeds; and helped improve working conditions. It also acted as a hiring hall, helping employers find scarce puddlers and rollers.[2]

The AA organized the independently-owned Pittsburgh Bessemer Steel Works in Homestead in 1881. The AA engaged in a bitter strike at the Homestead works on January 1, 1882 in an effort to prevent management from forcing yellow-dog contracts on all workers. Violence occurred on both sides, and the plant brought in numerous strikebreakers. The strike ended on March 20 in a complete victory for the union.[3]

The AA struck the plant again on July 1, 1889, when negotiations for a new three-year collective bargaining agreement failed. The strikers seized the town and once again made common cause with various immigrant groups. Backed by 2,000 townspeople, the strikers drove off a trainload of strikebreakers on July 10. When the sheriff returned with 125 newly deputized agents two days later, the strikers rallied 5,000 townspeople to their cause. Although victorious, the union agreed to significant wage cuts that left tonnage rates less than half those at the nearby Jones and Laughlin works, where technological improvements had not been made.[4]

Carnegie officials conceded that the AA essentially ran the Homestead plant after the 1889 strike. The union contract contained 58 pages of footnotes defining work-rules at the plant and strictly limited management's ability to maximize output.[5]

For its part, the AA saw substantial gains after the 1889 strike. Membership doubled, and the local union treasury had a balance of $146,000. The Homestead union grew belligerent, and relationships between workers and managers grew tense.[6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike