Remembering The Strike for Union in 1922-23
 in Windber and Somerset County, Pa

 

 

 

Grievances

During the ongoing strike, Windber and Somerset County's nonunion coal miners made six general demands that the U.M.W.A.'s District 2 President, John Brophy, outlined in a brief presented in 1923 to the U.S. Coal Commission. The comprehensive nature of the miners' grievances indicated that unionization could never be a narrow issue related merely to wage rates. The right to organize was fundamental, linked to the wage issue and to other issues at the workplace and in the community. Basically, at stake was whether or not the autocratic nature of coal life in company towns would continue to prevail or be supplanted by democracy and American civil liberties.

  
   
 

Grievances of Windber and Somerset County's Nonunion Coal Miners


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

2. For a fair wage.

3. For acccurate weight of the coal they mine. (Experience teaches us that this can be secured 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 secure their rights as free Americans against the state of fear, suspicion and espionage prevailing in nonunion 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.

John Brophy, [Statement on Civil Liberties], to Hon. John Hays Hammond, Chairman and Members of the United States Coal Commission, Washington, D.C., 28 May 1923, in Powers Hapgood Papers, Manuscript Department, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind.