Corporate Greed by Miner “Ed”
Corporate Greed by Miner “Ed”
(Interview by Mike Yarrow; arranged by Ruth Yarrow)
Before we came out on strike, the owner asked us,
“If you all go non-union, and you work for this one company,
we can make you millionaires in 20 years.”
We asked, “What happens if this one company shuts down?”
“Your retirement starts over.”
We asked, “How about our grandpas and our daddies
that are on retirement?”
“We don’t care about them. None of them work for us.”
We told him flat “No.”
He wanted the whole mines to have a decertification vote.
But our grandparents and our daddies made this union,
And without them you wouldn’t have the Social Security
they helped push through,
you wouldn’t have your black lung insurance,
and your unemployment wouldn’t be as high as it is.
During the strike, I really got my eyes opened.
The Company can file for an injunction
and they’d get it in like two days.
You see a superintendent on the witness stand,
And you can count 22 lies he tells under oath,
And the judge doesn’t have the nerve to ask why he is lying.
But a union man get up there
and the company lawyer will tear him up –
up one side and down the other.
In my opinion, we tried everything peaceful.
We tried to set down in the road.
We tried setting on the railroad tracks.
We tried running in front of the trains.
We tried serpentines – parking cars in the road far enough apart
to where an ambulance or fire truck could get by
But not a coal truck.
And all that is peaceful.
When that first serpentine got run over by coal trucks,
If the courts would have said,
“That’s enough. Pickets go home, negotiate,”
You wouldn’t have had the three men
That got run over by a coal truck.
You wouldn’t have had $450 million damage
against the company.
You wouldn’t have had that picket shot over on that picket line.
You wouldn’t have had these houses shot at where we slept on
the floor under the windows
and blankets over the windows.
All your court had to say was, “that’s enough!”
I think the National Labor Board goes by Reaganomics.
The Labor Board in my opinion ought to be dissolved.
And no judge should have a lifetime job.
You don’t have any way of keeping the guy honest.
Reagan fired all the air traffic controllers.
He showed what he stands for there.
What Reagan wants is to eliminate the middle class of people.
He wants to have two classes: the filthy rich, which is his class,
and the poor.
We ran the election campaign because the big company
controlled the county.
We started campaigning before the strike was over,
And the election was just after.
We got two union men to run for the House of Delegates.
And our wives went door-to-door and did a telephone poll.
I hadn’t done anything like that before.
I liked getting out and meeting the public.
I got so many friends, I don’t know who they are.
We had a 66% turnout.
When I collected food for the strikers,
I was on the road all day every day.
I put three sets of tires on my truck just during that one summer.
I never had a bit of problem collecting food.
Some of the little stores were just as good as the big ones.
The power company helped.
The local bank, mainly made up of union miners,
bent till it almost broke.
My wife was great. I couldn’t have made it without her.
She is vice president of our women’s group,
dedicated UMWA women.
Them women took part in the marches,
collected their own money to pay people’s bills.
Several times my wife cooked the whole dinner for 300 people.
Here, right beside the road, you hear the trucks go by all day
and all night,
and you know it’s scab coal.
And you know the state police are escorting them.
They use you.
We ran their coal, did their work, and we took the benefits
they gave out, of course.
We made them oodles and oodles of money.
But just as soon as they get big enough where they think
they can bust you,
instead of showing their appreciation for the years
that you ran coal for them,
for your buddies that you seen get killed on the section,
they want to bust your union so they can make more money.
It all came down to one thing: corporate greed.
And that will be the downfall of this nation,
if we don’t get it under control.
from Voices from the Appalachian Coalfields
Mike and Ruth Yarrow, photos Douglas Yarrow
Bottom Dog Press, 2015 http://smithdocs.net