March 4, 2023 - At an event celebrating Labor Day in 2021, President Joe Biden said, “I intend to be the most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history.” 

Tell that to the nearly eleven hundred union workers in Brookwood, Alabama, who are returning to work for Warrior Met Coal after an almost two-year-long strike. These workers faced down a company backed by powerful private equity firms, a state GOP hostile to labor, and overzealous police in a state where Donald Trump beat Biden by twenty-five points. And throughout their heroic struggle, the most pro-union president of the most pro-union administration in American history was nowhere to be seen. If Biden wanted to reverse the losses of working-class voters, this would’ve been a perfect opportunity to show up — but the administration sat this fight out.

The difficult reality is that workers fighting for decency and democracy on the job don’t just have to stand up to companies. They also have to contend with hostile governments and a legal system that comes down hard against labor. When it supports them, the system rarely does so with enough force to deter the anti-worker behavior of corporations. And when those in power refuse to stand behind workers in struggle, the latter are often doomed to lose.

The Strike at Warrior Met Coal

The Warrior Met strike was an inspiring example of solidarity and tenacity. In addition to picketing the mine itself, United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) miners on multiple occasions trekked up to New York City to protest outside of BlackRock, then the largest shareholder of Warrior Met Coal. Financial institutions and those who operate them are often cloistered away from the human consequences of their decisions, reducing the lives and livelihoods of workers to abstract “problems” to solve. These miners made a point of facing these decision-makers and laying bare what their choices meant for them and their families. As the strike rolled on, the union, miners and their families, and the local community came together to organize food pantries and toy drives for the miners — a beautiful example of Southern solidarity. 

Under the former owners, Walter Energy, the mine was struggling. To keep the mine open in 2016, the mineworkers agreed to accept cuts to wages, benefits, and health care. The sacrifice these workers made was immense, with the UMWA claiming in 2021 that the wage concessions, benefit slashes, and reduced safety had cost the miners $1.1 billion. As a result of workers’ sacrifices and their daily labor, the mine became profitable again. But Walter Energy nevertheless went bankrupt, and Warrior Met Coal, which is backed by major private equity firms like BlackRock, took over the mine. When workers returned to the negotiating table hoping their sacrifice would be recognized, Warrior Met stonewalled them.

Like the railroad workers whose strike was averted earlier this year, miners face difficult scheduling practices that badly disrupt their ability to attend to their families and personal lives. Miners often work twelve-hour shifts, six days a week. The 2016 contract implemented a draconian four-strike policy: if a worker missed a day without giving twenty-four-hour notice, they’d be given a strike, and if a worker got four strikes they would be fired. If they showed up minutes late to work, they’d be forced to work the full shift and were still issued a strike. One of the miners, Braxton Wright, described what this system meant for him and his family in written testimony to a Senate hearing organized by Bernie Sanders: