{"id":923953,"date":"2022-12-17T17:17:18","date_gmt":"2022-12-17T17:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2022\/12\/uaw-umwa-leadership-election-union-rank-and-file-1970s\/"},"modified":"2022-12-17T17:17:18","modified_gmt":"2022-12-17T17:17:18","slug":"50-years-ago-rank-and-file-reformers-took-over-the-united-mine-workers-of-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/12\/17\/50-years-ago-rank-and-file-reformers-took-over-the-united-mine-workers-of-america\/","title":{"rendered":"50 Years Ago, Rank-and-File Reformers Took Over the United Mine Workers of America"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

The mine workers\u2019 union\u2019s conservative, corrupt leadership leadership was ousted by reformers 50 years ago this month. Today\u2019s union reformers can learn from both their successes and their failures.\r\n<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n Union miners work at a coal mine in August of 1993 in Walker County, Alabama. (Andrew Lichtenstein \/ Corbis via Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

In December 1972, coal miners rocked the American labor movement by electing three reformers as top officers of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), a union which at the time boasted two hundred thousand members and a culture of workplace militancy without peer.<\/p>\n

In national balloting supervised by the US Department of Labor (DOL), Arnold Miller, Mike Trbovich, and Harry Patrick ousted an old guard slate headed by W. A. (\u201cTony\u201d) Boyle, the benighted successor to John L. Lewis, who ran the UMWA in autocratic fashion for forty years. Boyle\u2019s opponents, who campaigned under the banner of Miners for Democracy (MFD), had never served on the national union staff, executive board, or any major bargaining committee. Instead, fifty years ago they were propelled into office by wildcat strike activity and grassroots organizing around job safety and health issues, including demands for better compensation for black lung disease, which afflicted many underground miners.<\/p>\n

Today, at a time when labor militants are again embracing a \u201crank-and-file strategy<\/a>\u201d to revitalize unions and change their leadership, the MFD\u2019s unprecedented victory \u2014 and its turbulent aftermath \u2014 remains relevant and instructive. In the United Auto Workers (UAW), for example, local union activists recently<\/a> elected<\/a> to national office \u2014 and fellow reformers still contesting for headquarters positions in a runoff that begins January 12 \u2014 will face similar challenges overhauling an institution weakened by corruption, cronyism, and labor-management cooperation schemes. Some UAW members may doubt the need for maintaining the opposition caucus, Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), that helped reformers get elected, but the MFD experience shows that such political breakthroughs are just the first step in changing a dysfunctional national union.<\/p>\n

Imagine what it was like for coal miners in the 1970s to challenge an even more corrupt and deeply entrenched union bureaucracy, with a history of violence and intimidation of dissidents. When Joseph (\u201cJock\u201d) Yablonski, a Boyle critic on the UMWA executive board, tried to mount a reform campaign for the UMWA presidency in 1969, the election was marked by systematic fraud later challenged at the DOL. Soon after losing, Yablonski was fatally shot by union gunmen, along with his wife and daughter, as Mark Bradley recounts in Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Just three years later, MFD candidates were able to oust Boyle and his closest allies, but without winning control of the national union executive board. As inspiring as it was at the time, this election victory ended up demonstrating the limitations of reform campaigns for union office when they\u2019re not accompanied by even more difficult efforts to build and sustain rank-and-file organization. Of all the opposition movements influenced by the MFD, in the 1970s and afterward, only Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU)<\/a> has achieved continuing success as a reform caucus, largely due to its focus on membership education, leadership development, and collective action around workplace issues.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

Contested Elections Are Rare<\/h2>\n \n

Then and now, contested elections in which local union leaders \u2014 not to mention working members \u2014 challenge national union officials are very rare. Rising through the ranks in organized labor generally means waiting your turn, and when you capture a leadership position, holding on to it for as long as you can. Aspiring labor leaders most easily make the transition from local elected positions to appointed national union staff jobs if they conform politically.<\/p>\n

Dissidents tend to be passed over for such positions or not even considered unless union patronage is being deployed by those at the top to co-opt actual or potential critics. As appointed staffers move up via the approved route, whether in the field or at union headquarters, they gain broader organizational experience by \u201cworking within the system\u201d rather than bucking it.<\/p>\n