January - February - United Mine Workers of America

Government
in action
The UMWA will also be
pushing for additional
improvements to mine
safety and health laws in
Congress with the passage
of the Supplemental MINER
(S-MINER) Act, which passed
the House last year but
stalled in the Senate.
Don Stewart,
L.U. 1613
Obama’s election means we’re
going to see job creation, fair
wages, the Employee Free
Choice Act and a stimulus
package that starts from the
bottom, instead of from the
top. I think you’ll see some
people appointed to MSHA and
OSHA that are more workerfriendly—people
that are more
for the working guy than for
the corporate guy. This is long
overdue after eight years of a
complete lack of respect for
working people as far as I
am concerned.
David Kameras
Priority #2: Safe and
healthy workplaces
In the eight years of the Bush
Administration, more than 40,000
workers were killed on the job in the
United States. Hundreds of thousands
more were injured, many of
them too badly to ever return to
work again. In the coal industry,
265 miners were killed from Jan. 20,
2001 to Jan. 19, 2009.
“We’ve suffered through an eightyear
period of indifference to workers’
health and safety that will forever stain
the Bush administration as the most
anti-worker administration in modern
history,” said Secretary-Treasurer
Kane. “But we have strong reason to
believe that those days are behind us.
President Obama promised to appoint
leaders at the Department of Labor, at
the Mine Safety and Health Administration
and at the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration who will
put workers’ safety first, not production
and profits first.
“Though those appointments
are not yet all made, his choice for
Marjorie Corwin,
L.U. 2488
Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, is a
good one,” Kane said. “She has been a
long-time friend of working families
and the labor movement throughout
her public career and we think will
be someone who truly cares about
working families, because she is from
a working family. Both her parents
were union members, and she has
not forgotten where she came from.”
The UMWA will also be pushing
for additional improvements to mine
safety and health laws in Congress
with the passage of the Supplemental
MINER (S-MINER) Act, which
passed the House last year but stalled
in the Senate.
Priority #3: The Employee
Free Choice Act
In 2007 alone, over 20,000 workers
were illegally fired from their jobs
for trying to form a union. Many
thousands more were threatened,
intimidated, reassigned, relocated or
in some way disciplined just because
they had the courage to stand up for
themselves and their families and
I think Obama will do a great
job. He’s already started on
that by appointing the right
people. I’m hoping that there
will be successful efforts to
get more jobs for people, affordable
housing and health
care. Of course we need the
Employee Free Choice Act so that people have a choice to get a union
and have a voice on the job. With more workers in unions, we’ll finally
see pay come up, and people will have more job security.
David Kameras
12 January/February 2009 • United Mine Workers Journal