Alabama coal miners keep strike alive

May 14, 2022

By May Day 2022 coal miners at Warrior Met in Brookwood, Ala., had been on strike for a year and a month since they walked out April 1, 2021, to demand restoration of their wages, benefits and work rules. Strikers rejected a tentative contract as an insult. The company offered to restore just $1 more in wages.

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In Memoriam: Andy Phillips (1924-2018)

May 1, 2018

We mourn the loss of a founding member of News and Letters Committees, who participated in the first national strike against automation in the coal mines and later co-wrote its history in “The Coal Miners’ General Strike of 1949-50 and the Birth of Marxist-Humanism in the U.S.”

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Coal and Its People

March 7, 2015

In acquainting readers with News & Letters over its first 60 years, we spotlight here the regular feature “Coal and its People” which featured the voices of coal miners, many from West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

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Put miners in charge

August 29, 2014

From the September-October 2014 issue of News & Letters

Detroit—A mid-May fire killed 301 miners by carbon monoxide poisoning due to mine owners’ negligence in the worst coal mine disaster in Turkey’s history (see “Turkish miners killed,” July-August N&L). First reports indicated that the fire started when a transformer blew up. A subsequent investigation revealed that [=>]

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Justice still overdue for 29 murdered coal miners

April 10, 2012

Detroit—A new break in late February signaled a giant step forward in the prosecution of officials at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia, where a methane gas and coal dust explosion two years ago killed 29 miners in the worst mine disaster in 40 years. The break came when federal prosecutors filed [=>]

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