UMWA) District 5 Collection, 1896-1984

Special Collections and University Archives Manuscript Group 66 United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) District 5 Collection, 1896-1984 For Scholarly Use Only Last Modified February 5, 2016 Indiana University of Pennsylvania 302 Stapleton Library Indiana, PA 15705-1096 Voice: (724) 357-3039 Fax: (724) 357-4891 Manuscript Group 66 2 United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) District 5 Collection, 1896-1984 Special Collections and University Archives; Manuscript Group 66 159 boxes; 163 linear feet Table of Contents Historical Background, page 2 Scope and Content Note, page 8 Provenance, page 9 Restrictions, page 9 Processor, page 9 Series Descriptions, pages 9-11 Series I: President's Files (Boxes 1a-3b), pages 11-16 Series II: Secretary-Treasurer Files (Boxes 4-24 and 138-148), pages 16-33 and 73-79 Series III: Local Union Correspondence and Grievances – President's Office Files (Boxes 25-35 and 149-151), pages 33-45 and 79-81 Series IV: Local Union Records (Boxes 35-57 and 152-153), pages 45-47 and 81-82 Series V: Election, Convention and Miscellaneous Pamphlets and Publications (Boxes 58-66 and 154-156), pages 47-54 and 82-83 Series VI: Special Membership Committee Correspondence (Boxes 66-70), pages 54-55 Series VII: Welfare and Retirement Fund (Boxes 71-89 and 157), pages 55-56 and 83-84 Series VIII: Compensation Cases and Related Correspondence (Boxes 90-107), pages 56-57 Series IX: Legal Case Files (Boxes 108-124 and 158-159), pages 57-66 and 84-85 Series X: COMPAC (Boxes 124-132), pages 66-70 Series XI: UMWA Safety Division Files (Boxes 132-133), page 70-71 Series XII: Mine Safety and Health Administration (Boxes 134-135), pages 71-73 Series XIII: Region I Organizing Files (Boxes 136-137), page 73 Series XIV: Oversized Materials (Map Cases), pages 85-87 Historical Background The United Mine Workers of America International was organized in 1890 to represent coal miners for collective bargaining purposes. The supervisory structure for the day-to-day affairs of the coal miners consisted of twenty-one district unions, based on geography. The western Pennsylvania coal mines were placed under the jurisdiction of UMWA District 5, including all of Allegheny and Washington counties as well as parts of Mercer, Lawrence, Butler, Beaver, Westmoreland, Greene, Fayette, Armstrong and Indiana. District 5, much like District 2 of central Pennsylvania, quickly became one of the most powerful districts of the UMWA. This was due, in large part, to the fact that the majority of the country's bituminous coal production was concentrated within Pennsylvania's borders. The early history of District 5 was fairly independent from that of the UMWA as a whole. The miners of western PA shared the concerns of other miners: wages, an eight hour work day, company control over the lives of the miners and their families, and increasing mechanization within the Manuscript Group 66 3 mines. President Costello of UMWA District 5 actually led the movement for the adjudication of these issues. But, during the UMWA's first decade of existence when union membership elsewhere struggled, the UMWA in western PA experienced some semblance of stability. The mines' proximity to the Pittsburgh area and its flourishing steel industry, which were easily accessible via river travel, created a regional network which balanced demand with supply. In 1896, when the UMWA was suffering and virtually nonexistent in several states, Pittsburgh miners negotiated a joint wage agreement with district operators. Although the operators failed to sign at the last minute, many of them adapted the agreed upon wage rate, and the need for stable rates in the region and the necessity of the union was widely recognized. By 1897, conditions in the nation's mines had grown deplorable. Low demand and increasing costs continued to push wages to a minimum. On July 4 of that year, the UMWA called a general strike. Nearly three quarters of the country's bituminous miners, 150,000 out of 197,000, complied. Although the strike produced mixed results nationwide, in western Pennsylvania the joint wage agreement that went unsigned the previous year became a district-wide contract between the operators and the union miners. The most significant outcome of the strike was, by far, the operators' promise to meet in an interstate joint conference the following year, which did occur in January of 1898. Consequently, by the close of the nineteenth century, the UMWA had come into its own as a bargaining unit. And, District 5 had become an important part of that unit. From the very beginning, UMWA District 5 established itself as a particularly internally chaotic organization. In 1898, the district was troubled by difficult local contract negotiations and strikes which had not been sanctioned by the national. Then President Patrick Dolan complained that the national organization was not supporting the strikers, a complaint that apparently had more to do with Dolan's disdain for International President John Mitchell and his bid for the union's presidency than the situation in UMWA District 5. At the same time, Mitchell supporters in the Pittsburgh area claimed that Dolan was accepting operator funds for his election campaign, presumably in return for Dolan's cooperation in the next round of contract negotiations. Nevertheless, Mitchell was reelected without opposition, and in 1906 Dolan was removed from office by the rank and file for violating their trust after he, acting as assistant negotiator at the 1906 wage scale negotiations, outrightly rejected the UMWA's position of demanding a single national contract. In 1906, Francis Feehan was elected to replace Dolan as District President. Feehan's first task was to rebuild the trust of the miners in their organization. But, like Dolan, his term was plagued by several major strikes, broken wage agreements, pressure from the national to return to the interstate bargaining process and contract negotiations complicated by depressed wages and non-union competition. In 1911, discontentment within the District could no longer be contained. Claiming Feehan had irreparably harmed them by "showing favoritism to certain coal companies" and by "neglecting his presidential duties," a faction of the district's miners set up an office in Pittsburgh and solicited money from within the ranks of the UMWA, professing to be the true district organization. The dispute was brought before the International Executive Board (IEB), where Feehan charged some of the miners with attempting to create a rival union to the UMWA. Manuscript Group 66 4 Although the IEB recognized the complaints of Feehan's rivals, they were ordered to work within the existing organization and turn over all monies and properties they collected to the Feehan administration. The miners relented, but, disgusted, Feehan resigned from the presidency. During the contract negotiations of 1917, dissatisfaction within the District reached critical mass. The disgruntled miners, many of whom had been part of the earlier actions against the District, called a meeting at Charleroi, Pennsylvania and issued a series of demands. They attacked everything from wage differentials in the district to the UMWA's election policy. For the next six years, these militant miners waged a campaign against the existing policies and officers of the union on both the local and national level. Calling themselves the Policy Committee of Action, and later the Progressive Miners of District 5, support reached into the thousands. By September 1922, the Progressive Miners had established an official platform of reforms, which included supporting national instead of district agreements and active campaigns to organize non-union fields, and had nominated a slate of officers for the 1922 election. The union establishment responded to these demands by expelling the miners involved in the Progressive movement, accusing them of attempting to form a rival union, which essentially killed reform efforts in UMWA District 5. In general, 1920-1933 was a particularly difficult era for the UMWA as well as the entire labor movement in the United States. The UMWA had been the largest and most powerful union in the country at the close of the First World War, but it was nearly destroyed by the end of the 1920s and remained powerless until 1933. Union membership in District 5 was strong until 1925 since the UMWA had been successful in avoiding a wage decrease, but, by the middle of the decade, there simply were "too many mines, too many miners and continuous upheaval." Non-union operators were the major culprits, as post-war overproduction was the chief problem of the industry; the men in these mines worked many hours at reduced wages. District 5, as well as District 2, was concerned about the coal-rich, non-union fields very nearby in Somerset County. This area had been the repeated target of union organizing campaigns since the Connellsville strike of 1891, where the plan for an eight-hour work day was first argued over. In 1922, the UMWA again tried to get Somerset miners to join the strike. The miners were demanding union recognition from mine operators, the cessation of wage cuts to the 1917 wage level, and a six- hour day, five-day week. On April 1, 1922, the coal miners of western Pennsylvania, including the non-union members of Somerset County, walked off the job. Newspapers characterized the strike as "the sixth great strike in the history of the American mining industry." A settlement was reached between the operators and the miners of District 2 and District 5 by the end of the summer, but the newly organized area of Somerset County was denied union recognition from the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company and the Consolidated Coal Company, as well as other powerful mine operators in the area.

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