Part of the Yellow Dog: U.S. Coal Miners' Opposition to the Company Doctor System, 1936–1946

1989 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 709-720 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Derickson
Keyword(s):  
Health Services ◽  
Health Benefit ◽  
Extensive Investigation ◽  
Health Benefit Plans ◽  
Coal Miners ◽  
Retirement Fund ◽  
United Mine Workers ◽  
Company Doctor ◽  
Medical Examinations ◽  
United Mine

By the mid-1930s, U.S. coal miners could no longer tolerate company doctors. They objected to the misuse of preemployment and periodic medical examinations and to many other facets of employer-controlled health benefit plans. The rank-and-file movement for reform received critical assistance from the Bureau of Cooperative Medicine, which conducted an extensive investigation of health services in 157 Appalachian communities. This study not only substantiated the workers' indictment of prevailing conditions but illuminated new deficiencies in the quality and availability of hospital and medical care as well. The miners' union curtailed the undemocratic, exploitative system of company doctors and proprietary hospitals by establishing the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund in 1946.

Every New Grave Brought a Thousand Members

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael K. Rosenow
Keyword(s):  
Causes Of Death ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
Emotional Impact ◽  
Coal Miners ◽  
Mining Communities ◽  
Burial Practices ◽  
United Mine Workers ◽  
Cultural Responses ◽  
Mass Fatality ◽  
United Mine

This chapter examines the politics of death in Illinois coal mining communities during the period 1883–1910, with particular emphasis on how miners and their families experienced death in one of the country's most dangerous occupations. It explores three causes of death in coal mines and how they shaped miners' experiences with death: mass-fatality mine disasters, the deadly hazards in everyday mining, and the violent confrontations between miners and employers. It also discusses the coal miners' political and cultural responses to the deaths of their coworkers, focusing on the emergence of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), which combined previous burial practices established by churches, fraternal societies, and other unions to lay the foundations for a coherent set of ritual practices for union coal miners. Finally, it describes the coal miners' creation of a repertoire of rituals of death that melded religious, fraternal, and immigrant traditions. The Illinois coal miners' experiences with death and dying highlights the human and emotional impact of industrialization.

Unsettled

2020 ◽  
pp. 119-138
Keyword(s):  
Return To Work ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
Grassroots Activism ◽  
Coal Miners ◽  
Rural Workers ◽  
Union Leaders ◽  
United Mine Workers ◽  
United Mine ◽  
Mine Workers

This chapter examines the differences between union leaders and workers regarding union goals. As the 1893 depression set in, rural workers in multiple occupations mobilized to change the economic structures of Gilded Age society. The American Railway Union went on strike, and marchers across the country joined Jacob Coxey and other leaders in a populist push for social and economic change. Their efforts coincided with the centralization efforts of organizations like the United Mine Workers, which sought to capitalize on the grassroots activism by organizing nationwide strikes. Nonunion coal miners heartily joined strike efforts like the 1894 United Mine Workers coal strike, but they soon discovered that the union assumed more authority than the rank and file was willing to accept. As the officers reached a settlement and called off the strike without seeking approval from the rank and file, strikers refused to obey the order to return to work. Their refusal indicated that while workers were willing to use unions to achieve goals like earning higher pay, they rejected union leaders making decisions on their behalf.

Ivana Krajcinovic, From Company Doctors to Managed Care: The United Mine Workers' Noble Experiment. Ithaca: ILR Press, 1997. ix + 212 pp. $37.50 cloth.

2000 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 173-175
Author(s):  
Michael Nash
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
The United States ◽  
Quality Health Care ◽  
Quality Health ◽  
United Mine Workers ◽  
Retirement Funds ◽  
The Many ◽  
Company Doctor ◽  
United Mine ◽  
Mine Workers

For much of the first half of the century the United Mine Workers (UMW) was the largest, most important, most powerful, and most progressive union in the United States. Among its many accomplishments was that it was one of the first to bargain for and win employer-financed health benefits. Health care was critically important to miners, many of whom were seriously injured on the job and by middle age were often disabled by black lung disease. In the isolated, rural mine patches, quality health care was rarely available. In the days before the organization of the UMW's Welfare and Retirement Funds, many miners found that the only health care that was available came from the company doctor. This medical practice was usually substandard and was one of the many ways the operators exercised power over the life of the miners, discouraging union and political organizing.

West Virginia Mine Wars

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lou Martin
Keyword(s):  
West Virginia ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
State Government ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Coal Miners ◽  
Martial Law ◽  
United Mine Workers ◽  
United Mine

In the early 20th century, West Virginia coal miners and mine operators fought a series of bloody battles that raged for two decades and prompted national debates over workers’ rights. Miners in the southern part of the state lived in towns wholly owned by coal companies and attempted to join the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) to negotiate better working conditions but most importantly to restore their civil liberties. Mine operators saw unionization as a threat to their businesses and rights and hired armed guards to patrol towns and prevent workers from organizing. The operators’ allies in local and state government used their authority to help break strikes by sending troops to strike districts, declaring martial law, and jailing union organizers in the name of law and order. Observers around the country were shocked at the levels of violence as well as the conditions that fueled the battles. The Mine Wars include the Paint Creek–Cabin Creek Strike of 1912–1913, the so-called 1920 Matewan Massacre, the 1920 Three Days Battle, and the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain. In this struggle over unionism, the coal operators prevailed, and West Virginia miners continued to work in nonunion mines and live in company towns through the 1920s.

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