Student Handout 5-Research Group 5

 Joseph Zahurak Explains How the Haulage Men Led the Windber Miners out on Strike (Includes a List of Grievances)  Account of 1891 Mammoth Mine Explosion

1. Joseph Zahurak quotation explaining How the Haulage Men....

JOSEPH ZAHURAK EXPLAINS

HOW THE HAULAGE MEN

LED THE WINDBER MINERS OUT ON STRIKE

They [the miners] come out on the field in 1922. That's when they first get out there. The haulage men of Berwind-White--the haulage men, I mean mine motormen and spraggers. They were in contact with all the miners in the mine because they always ordered their cars, the amount of empty cars that they wanted or the loads that they pulled out, the haulage men. So the haulage men got together in 1922 to get it organized to come out on strike, and we avoided these people that--informers. Make sure they didn't contact them so they don't know anything about it. So in 1922, when April 1st come, a union holiday, they surprised Berwind-White, shut them down completely [emphasis]. Even the captive mines, Bethlehem Steel, US Steel, and all them. They were all shut down. And Frick Coal Company in Pittsburgh. So in 1922, it was quite a battle. . . .

Joseph Zahurak, a spragger and 1922 strike activist who later served as president of UMWA Local 6186 (1938-1977), offered this description of how the Windber strike began.

Joseph Zahurak Quotation about the Coming of the Union in 1933

JOSEPH ZAHURAK EXPLAINS

HOW THE UNION CAME TO WINDBER

So, then, later on, after we come into it here, where we finally, after all these strikes from 1927 to 1933, when finally [warmly said], the dark clouds disappeared. Oh, [enthusiastically] the miners in Windber, and we got our sympathetic president that got in there. Yah, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And they got that law [the National Industrial Relations Act] passed where you could organize. You're allowed to organize if you want to organize. And I'm telling you, that law was passed, and the union came in. The United Mine Workers was short on funds and money. So they borrowed $500,000 from the American Federation of Labor to put men out in the field for expenses to go out and talk to these miners. And they brought cards for us to sign the miners up, who all wanted the union. And I'm telling you them cards went fast! Everybody was signing up. That's 1933 when they knew that they were finally safe. It could be done....We finally got our first union meeting in Slovak Brick Hall. And after a couple of meetings in there in July, in July 1933, we received our charter. And Berwind-White finally recognized the union.

Source: Joseph Zahurak, Interview by Mildred Beik, October 7, 1986, Millie Beik Collection, Stapleton Library, Special Collections, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

List of six grievances Such a condition in a free country could not last forever and the miners at non-union mines were only waiting for the opportunity to assert their rights. The occasion was the great coal strike of last year. Only a short time after the strike was declared in the union fields the miners in the non-union mines joined us. The strike of the union miners was for a continuation of the wage rates; that of the non-union miners was more - it was also a strike to end fear. Nearly 25,000 miners of the non-union fields in our district answered the strike call, and a great number of them, after 14 months are still on strike.

To be more specific they struck

1. For collective bargaining and the right to affiliate with the union.

2. For a fair wage.

3. For accurate weight of the coal they mine. (Experience teaches us that this can be assured only when the miners have a checkweighman.)

4. Adequate pay for "dead work."

5. A system by which grievances could be settled in a peaceful and conciliatory spirit by the mine committee representing the miners and a representative of the operator.

6. But above all they struck to assure their rights as free Americans against the state of fear, suspicion and espionage prevailing in non-union towns. Against a small group of operators controlling life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of large numbers of miners. To put an end to the absolute and feudal control of these coal operators.

The last mentioned point being of greatest significance not only to miners but to all American citizens. I shall take it up first. It is by reason of such absolute control that the other grievances exist in non-union fields. How does this control operate in practice? We will quote an authority not connected with. On May 28, 1923, District 2 UMWA President John Trophy presented a statement to the U.S. Coal Commission, which was studying the “sick” coal industry. In it, he explained the major grievances of Windber and other nonunion miners that had brought and kept them out on strike for union.

Source: John Trophy, Clearfield, Pa., to Hon. John Hammond, Chairman, and Members of the United States Coal Commission, Washington, D.C., May 28, 1923, in Powers Hap good Papers, Lilly Library, Manuscripts Department, Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind.

Courtesy of Stapleton Library, Special Collections, Indiana University of Pennsylvania 3. Account of 1891 Mammoth Mine Explosion

Courtesy of The Coal and Coke Heritage Center, Penn State Fayette