January - February - United Mine Workers of America

around
our Union
C.W. Mining
Liquidated
federal bankruptcy court in
A Utah ordered C.W. Mining
Inc., a strongly anti-union operator
in Huntington Canyon in Emery
County, Ut., into Chapter 7
bankruptcy after the company
didn’t pay a customer $24 million
for coal it failed to supply.
The company, which operated
as Co-Op Mining Co., had used
defamation lawsuits aimed at
the mostly immigrant miners, the
UMWA and others in an effort to
intimidate workers and forestall an
organizing effort there.
Robena Disaster
More than 200 union members and friends
gathered under a tent near Carmichaels,
Greene County, Pa., on a freezing Dec. 6 to honor
the 37 miners killed 46 years ago at U.S. Steel’s
Robena No. 3 Mine.
“I believe that outside the bonds of
family, there is nothing stronger than the
bond between fellow workers,” said Secretary-Treasurer
Kane. “We need to remember
that they were more than cogs in an industrial machine.”
Two gas and coal dust explosions took place that fateful day in 1962,
caused by the ignition of bodies of methane gas by friction sparks or an electric
arc. The methane had accumulated in a portion of the face development that
was not ventilated for a short period of time and was moved over operating
equipment when completion of a permanent stopping in the section resulted
in a reversal of face ventilation.
David Kameras
16 January/February 2009 • United Mine Workers Journal