Workers World, Vol. 20, No. 11
March 15 – As we go to press, word has come that a settlement has been reached between the union and the coal operators.
It still has to be approved by the bargaining council and of course ratified by the membership. Rough summaries in the capitalist press of the new terms of the contract indicate that there may be some concessions on the part of the operators. But without seeing the contract and especially the fine print in it, it is impossible to gauge what the attitude of the miners will be at this time.
Regardless of the outcome of the new offer by the operators, there are some very important aspects of the miners’ struggle concerning the labor movement as a whole that ought to be considered, even if the strike is settled immediately.
The miners’ strike, assuming it continues, is by the very nature of its intensity a threat to the entire pattern of so-called labor-management relations in the whole country. It threatens to disestablish the hallowed political status quo that the imperialist government imposed upon the labor movement more than 30 years ago at the very opening of the Cold War, which has survived with few modifications to this very day. Thus this strike is of necessity of the deepest concern to the giant multinational corporations of this country and to the ruling class as a whole.
There is, of course, their worry that whatever benefits the miners win will of necessity reverberate in a chain reaction throughout all of the other unions, and even get to the non-unionized workers and the mass of the oppressed people. However, an even larger aspect of the miners’ struggle feared by the ruling summits of American finance capital is the deep social effect such a momentous struggle as the miners’ strike is likely to engender.
From this it follows that the entire officialdom of the AFL-CIO hierarchy, as well as some of the large independent unions, have been watching the extraordinary struggle of the miners with the keenest interest. They have much at stake in the outcome of the miners’ struggle. However, their interest is not based on the elementary principle of trade union solidarity alone, much less working-class solidarity.
Many of these leaders are well aware that the long-delayed resurgence in the working class movement is bound to come sooner or later, and that many of them are living on borrowed time. Like the old AFL labor bureaucracy before the great working class upsurge of the 1930s, they are attempting to anticipate the nature as well as the scope of the inevitable upheaval. Some fear the loss of their seats of power as well as their bank accounts and are alarmed at the prospects. Others are planning to capture the new movement once it surfaces. And many of course are completely oblivious to it. Still others, and they are not a few, are downright hostile to a potentially explosive new development and would rather see it strangled at birth.
In many ways the lines of division in the bureaucratic trade union hierarchy today are an anticipation of things to come. Abundant and complicated maneuvers are in the making, plans abound on how to meet the eventual upsurge, and speculation is rife on who the real beneficiaries in the hierarchy will be. In any case, a real renaissance of the American working class – Black, white, Latin, Native – bound to take shape no matter what artificial restraints are taken by the government, labor bureaucracy, and the industrialists to retard it.
As always in these matters, when an event of the magnitude of the miners’ strike finally takes place, it catches the stultified and encrusted labor officialdom off guard.
The events of the last weeks, however, show a calculated effort to relate to the miners’ struggle in the spirit of trade union solidarity. The first indication of this was, of course, the surprise contribution by the UAW of $2 million – a generous but modest contribution considering the size of the union. What was even more surprising was that the USW steel bureaucracy, which at least in a formal sense stands far to the right of the UAW, shortly thereafter contributed a million dollars.
Then, of course, came the biggest surprise of all when none other than Meany himself denounced the Carter administration’s threat to cut off the miners’ food stamps and thereafter announced a massive nationwide effort to collect food for the miners and their families. Then there were rumors, some of them well-founded, that plans were afoot for far more effective and dramatic measures by other unions to help the miners.
It is impossible that the Carter administration had its eyes closed to this very extraordinary development in the labor movement. It is also highly improbable that the Carter administration anticipated any such development in the light of the fragmented and shamelessly docile character of the organized trade union movement. The capitalist press played it in low key, but it could not but be seen by those who are usually concerned with such developments in the labor movement that this show of solidarity was in effect an embryonic united front of key sections of the labor movement and threatened to deprive the Carter administration of one of its principal political props, one of the truly important supports which enabled Carter to ascend to the Presidency.
Were such an embryonic united front to actually take place and take on flesh and blood, it might conceivably transform a trade union struggle into a potentially classwide confrontation between the working class and the capitalist government, in spite of the wishes of the labor hierarchy. It could upset the much-vaunted “labor peace” which American capitalism has enjoyed for such a long time, and open the gates to working-class struggle.
It should be no means be overlooked that organizing support for the miners had taken place all around the country and for the most part without any participation of the labor bureaucracy save for a few AFL-CIO central labor bodies. In reality it was these efforts, almost entirely outside the framework of the labor bureaucracy, that began the solidarity moves by the union leaders.
There can, of course, be absolutely no question that objectively what the labor bureaucracy did in essence to aid the miners was not only most necessary and urgent but highly progressive. The point to bear in mind, however, is that it was not motivated simply by trade union solidarity, but actuated more by the prospect that the miners’ struggle, especially if it turned out victorious and installed a new militant leadership, might herald an entirely new period in American labor history.
The fear engendered in the top labor officialdom, that this period would be one full of ferment and could conceivably topple many from their positions of leadership, is one aspect of the miners’ struggle. The other aspect is that they saw the safest course as one of allying themselves with the strike in a moderate but nevertheless ambiguous way, certainly as long as the official leadership was still in charge.
Most of the labor bureaucrats have viewed their tenure as a lifetime proposition undisturbed except for minor factional squabbles. Thus the outcome of the strike is viewed with concern on all sides. Here it is useful to go over at least the very latest developments and view them in the broader perspective of an incipient working class upsurge rather than in the narrower framework of archaic trade union politics.
As is well known, the miners have defied the Taft-Hartley law before. This is the first time, however, that they have by an overwhelming democratic vote, also rejected a contract recommended by the leadership. The critical point here to take account of is that the miners not only defied the operators and the government but their own leaders as well. And as of this writing, they seem as firm as ever. Beyond a shadow of a doubt this is a truly new phenomenon in contemporary American labor history.
An important facet in this case is the sorry situation of the official leadership of the miners – Miller and his supporters. Nothing could be more pathetic than a union leader trying to renegotiate a contract that he earlier recommended and that the membership overwhelmingly rejected. This puts him and his negotiating group in a most acutely contradictory position.
On the one hand, he and his grouping must unquestionably try to show that, after all, “he was right in the first place.” But on the other hand, he is driven by the tremendous weight of the miners’ resurgence and angry rejection of the contract to try to improve the contract if not win all the substantial points demanded by the membership. In either case, he and his grouping are in a most untenable position.
The operators and the government, who work hand in glove, are only too keenly aware of the sorry state of the union negotiating committee. Win, lose, or draw, the leadership stands disavowed and repudiated – an exceptionally painful position for the union negotiators in the midst of a crucial period in the strike.
But without this union negotiating committee as a transmission belt to the miners, the Carter administration has no link to the miners at all. This is a key factor to bear in mind. It would have to fall back, of necessity, on the use of force, a very risky adventure in light of the international problems of the Carter administration. It would also spell the doom of the official miners’ leadership and raise the specter in the miners’ union of the emergence of a new leadership from the ranks, untainted by corruption and class collaboration.
More than any other development, the emergence of such a leadership would be regarded by not only the Carter administration but by the major union leaders as a tremendous destabilizing factor to the prevailing pattern of collaboration between the unholy trinity of management, union officialdom, and the government. There are therefore strong reasons all around for the miners to perceive that a victory is not only possible, but probable, and the Carter administration aides by this time may be fully aware of this.
The pattern of labor relations that was established at the beginning of the Cold War was strikingly dramatized when then-Secretary of State George C. Marshall, following up on Truman’s proclamation of the Truman Doctrine and Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri, came to the AFL-CIO convention to carry the Pentagon’s outreach efforts right into the heart of the labor movement.
In the last several years, much has been revealed about overt and covert operations by the U.S. government, about domestic spying, illegal break-ins, wiretapping, and clandestine and illegal operations of all sorts which affected many sections of society and particularly progressive political organizations and civil rights groups.
But very little indeed has come out about how the U.S. government, American finance capital, and the military-industrial complex and the Pentagon, as well as the domestic and foreign intelligence services in the U.S., have coordinated their efforts in controlling the key sector of American society – the organized working class and the trade unions.
It is sufficient to state, however, that the official pattern of relations between government and the unions was not merely of cooperation but of virtual integration into the state capitalist apparatus. “Free labor bargaining with free management” – that was the pet cliché of Walter Reuther by which he characterized the dominant relations between the American trade unions and the giant corporations, or rather between the trade union bureaucracy and monopoly capital.
But it never really was like that. Subsequent revelations will make it abundantly clear that consciously or unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly, union leaders en masse were manipulated and coopted into the capitalist state machine and in this regard played and are continuing to play a decisive and disruptive role in the labor movement.
When the Miners for Democracy slate won the election in 1972, it appeared to many as a break, not merely from corrupt officialdom, but also from government control. On the contrary, Miller and his grouping were coopted by the liberals of the Americans for Democratic Action who in turn were coopted by the government.
The revolt of the miners shows the possibility for the first time in a long time of a genuine breakaway by a key union from government control of the labor movement. This is what is really at stake. It is central to the cause of a working class revival. This is what has stunned the Carter administration. This fact towers above all others, even if it goes unrecognized.
Unless aborted, the situation has all the makings of the beginning of a real breakaway from the past, the beginning of a genuine working class renaissance.
Consider this: When the miners rejected the contract, the Miller group was in a panic. Its first thought, like the thoughts of all bureaucrats in similar serious crises, was to find that elusive broker, the middleman, that unobtrusive politician who has an in or a “hot line” to the Oval Office.
Always in such great crises in the labor movement, the first thought in the bureaucratic hierarchy is how to find somebody to reach the ear of “the Man” in the Oval Office. Endless meetings, endless searching, and almost always the invariable deluge of all sorts of people from charlatans to priests who pose as the one who can do the trick and reach the ears of the President so that he will not invoke the Taft-Hartley injunction and make a difficult situation for the union leaders altogether untenable.
But the man in the Oval Office was deaf to the pleas of the union leaders and their middleman running dogs. Instead, Carter was getting ready to unleash what he and his horde of advisors deemed to be the super-weapon in labor relations – the deadly injunction. However, in the intervening period there developed the extraordinary phenomenon of an embryonic united front of key trade unions and of swelling support for the miners in dozens of cities throughout the country.
Finally the injunction was served on virtually all the union leaders – but nobody returned to work except a pitiful few stragglers – so few they had to be sent back from the mines because they couldn’t get anything started anyway, and of course the miners held firm as a rock. The Carter super-weapon strategy backfired. It proved bankrupt.
Nothing so much illustrated this as a complete shift in the strategy of the Carter administration. Whereas before the injunction was issued the union bureaucracy was running amok trying to find a way to the Oval Office, now it is the man in the Oval Office who has to send hordes of his paid agents to try to find a way to reach the miners.
The union negotiating committee is in no position of real usefulness to the Carter administration in getting the miners back to work, unless new substantial terms are offered by the operators. To all intents and purposes, their usefulness can be completely destroyed by the Carter administration unless he finds a way to save their face and with substantial concessions.
As matters stand, Carter risks a complete break with his labor lieutenant allies nationally and also runs a far greater risk – a veritable groundswell of working class resurgence – if he is bent on a forcible strike-breaking solution.
In the light of the multitude of international problems which the Carter administration is facing, it can scarcely afford the prospect of a working-class struggle at home. It would be a humiliating spectacle for the U.S., the principal bulwark of world imperialism and the keystone in the arch of capitalist stability in labor relations, to use naked force at a time when the Carter administration is most anxious to picture itself as the proponent of “human rights” and capitalist stability.
Indeed, the trump card of American imperialism in the world struggle against the national liberation movements and the socialist countries has been the relative passivity of the American working class. A new major upheaval, engendered by the use of force in the miners’ strike, could engulf other major sections of the American working class, including of course the vast numbers of oppressed nationalities, which would constitute a major blow to the international position of U.S. imperialism at a time when it is deeply involved in the Horn of Africa, trying to manipulate the French elections, dictating the terms of the new Italian government, and now once again is on the threshold of war in the Middle East.
It is in the light of these circumstances that one must consider whether the Carter administration will accede to the demands of the miners or whether it will risk a truly classic confrontation between a resurgent working class and the capitalist state.
Last updated: 11 May 2026