- On April 1, 2021, more than 1,000 union coal miners
dropped their tools, hoisted protest signs,
and went on strike at the Warrior
Met Coal Mine in Brookwood, Alabama.
Contract negotiations had failed.
Requests for higher pay and better benefits had been denied.
The United Mine Workers of America filed unfair labor
practice charges against the mine,
citing an unwillingness to negotiate in good faith.
The miners formed picket lines and organized
sit-ins and held rallies.
Some traveled to New York City to protest outside
of the private-equity firms invested in the mine.
Neither side relented.
One year later, their strike is now the longest
in Alabama history, and it's still under way.
As the Warrior Met strike marks its one-year anniversary,
my friend Ken Burns and I want to share with you
another moment in America's labor history --
a strike held 120 years ago by this very same union.
At the turn of the last century,
mine workers powered the country.
America ran on anthracite coal,
much of it mined from Pennsylvania hillsides.
Coal workers, some as young as 10,
toiled for 16 hours a day
under constant threat of cave-ins and explosions.
Mine owners hadn't raised their low wages
for more than 20 years,
and company-owned stores swallowed up what little money
the miners could scrape together.
Owners used all their power to block change.
In 1902, hoping for better pay and shorter hours,
the United Mine Workers Union called for a strike.
140,000 men laid down their pickaxes.
Management refused to meet with them.
Over the next several months,
the price of coal rose from $5 to $30 a ton.
President Theodore Roosevelt feared there
would be the most awful riots this country has ever seen.
Though he had no constitutional authority to intervene,
he felt that, for the good of the country,
he simply had to.
Watch what transpired in this moment
from Ken Burns' "The Roosevelts."
- The President summoned both sides to Washington
to discuss what he called
"a matter of vital concern to the whole nation."
- Roosevelt holds them together, and he says,
"Gentlemen, I want you to agree to arbitrate."
And the coal operators say, "No way.
We're not doing it. We don't have to."
And Roosevelt says, "Very well then.
I will nationalize the mines and use the United States Army
to run them for the good of this people."
And they all say, "You have no constitutional authority
of any sort to do that."
And he says, "I know I don't.
The President has a moral duty to the American people
that is higher than his constitutional duty,
and by Godfrey, I'm gonna do it if I have to."
- A conservative congressman confronted the President.
"What about the Constitution of the United States?"
, he asked.
"How could private property be put to public purposes
without due process of law?"
Roosevelt grasped his visitor's lapels.
"The Constitution was made for the people
and not the people for the Constitution," he said.
The mine owners retreated, but only slightly.
They agreed to follow the suggestions
of a presidential commission,
provided no member of the United Mine Workers Union sat on it.
But Roosevelt was determined that labor have a voice
and appointed the head of the Railroad Conductors Union
instead.
The owners objected until the President told them,
with a straight face,
that he was naming him as a sociologist,
not a union man.
- "I shall never forget the mixture of relief and amusement
I felt when I thoroughly grasped the fact
that while they would heroically submit to anarchy
rather than have Tweedledum, yet if I would call it
Tweedledee, they would accept it with rapture.
It gave me an illuminating glimpse
into one corner of the mighty brains
of these captains of industry."
- The mine owners continued to refuse to recognize the union,
but they did agree to a 10% pay raise and a 9-hour day.
The strike ended.
American homes would be heated, and in the midterm elections,
the Republicans would maintain majorities
in both houses of Congress.
Roosevelt was jubilant.
He was the first president to mediate a labor dispute,
the first to treat labor as a full partner,
the first to threaten to employ federal troops
to seize a strike-bound industry, and it had all worked.
- Theodore Roosevelt believed that the government
must represent the interests of the people as a whole.
In 1902, he set a precedent.
The federal government,
as a representative of the public interest,
has a role to play in labor disputes.
Samuel Gompers, the first president of the AFL,
believed the 1902 strike was, in his words,
"evidence of the effectiveness of trade unions."
In its aftermath, union enrollment boomed,
negotiation with unions would become
a part of progressive business management.
Today, America faces levels of class inequality surpassing
even that of the gilded age.
Hard work doesn't pay off for far too many Americans,
and those workers are increasingly speaking out
and organizing.
I see more momentum behind the labor movement
now than at any time in my career.
Workers have held successful strikes at John Deere,
in Kellogg factories.
Nurses, teachers, flight attendants,
journalists, Starbucks baristas are organizing
and negotiating contracts.
Amazon warehouse workers are taking on a company
whose dominance in the economy
we simply haven't seen anything like
since perhaps Roosevelt's presidency.
And at a mine in Alabama, workers continue to strike.
No one is calling for nationalizing
an entire industry today, as Roosevelt threatened,
but this moment is an essential reminder
that our government must protect workers' rights
to organize for fair pay and for safe working conditions.
On my lapel, I always wear a pin --
for 25 years --
depicting a canary in a birdcage.
Mine workers back then would have recognized it.
They took canaries down into the mines
to warn them of poisonous gas.
If a canary stopped singing,
they knew they had mere minutes to get out alive.
They didn't have a union strong enough
or a government that cared enough to protect them.
The 1902 strike changed the story.
To me, this pin represents their victory.
It represents the constant struggle
to ensure that hard work should pay off
for people who power our country.
Progress tends to come in short bursts,
and the conservators, as Ralph Waldo Emerson called them,
spend the ensuing years protecting their privilege
and trying to claw back more of their power.
It's a cycle that repeats itself throughout the 20th Century
in a struggle that remains ongoing 120 years later.