The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-12-14
with L0s and Fshp Harrington MsleQdGY and Gay Bosses Allies
Miners Strike for Chance to
Live; Can't Stand Conditions
Six Hr. Day and Five Day Week Vital to Them;
D Save Unemployed and Prevent Accidents
Oppose Discrimination Against Negroes Ask
for Rest Periods, Bigger Crews, Safety Devices

is now, these men do have to speed
up or be fired. There are plenty
hungry outside to take their places.
Why? Because the three men on a
machine can do the work of six on
the old plan. And where the con-
veyor or the Jay Loader is working
well, mines that used to employ four
hundred get out as much coal now
with one hundred. The mining ma
chine has put $4,000 workers out of
a job, according to government fig
ures, in Illinois alone, and over 200,-
900 in the country as a whole. Use
of machines in Illinois increased so
per cent from 1926 to 1928. Illinois
leads the world in machine mining.
Other workers got the gate be-
cause of the speed-up and the ma
chimes and those at work do not
work full time. Fishwick himself
admits, and his figures are from the
u. S. labor department, that in this
magnificent month of October, the
average number of days an en-
What Miners Strike For-Gal. 2
ployed miner worked was IS. The
month before it was Is. That means
about three dollars a day for a
miner at the present wage scale,
providing he isn't locked, fined, and
penalized because some boss claims
he has a little dirt in the coal, or a
lot of it doesn't fall off the cars
that run at break-neck speed; for
if coal does fall off, the miner
doesn't get paid for it, but the COM
pany has it scooped up later and
sells it.
So the miners when they strike
for more men on the machine crews,
and for rest periods, are thinking
not only of their own jobs, but of
saving the lives of some of these
crowded out of the industry, and for
whom Fishwick and International
President Lewis of the U. M. W. A.
never lift hand. When they de-
mand $35 a week minimum wage in
this strike, they are fighting for a
real wage increase. When one reads
in the paper that the miners used
to get $3.50 day, and even with
the Fishwick wage cut put through
last year, are supposed to get about
Sc (most work is piece work, and
the rates are figured on basic day
wage they are supposed to equal,
but with no union to compel correct
figures, never do equal) he is likely
to think of them as artistocracy of
labor. But that continuous partial
unemployment has to be considered,
also the cheating in the wages by
the company.
Robbed by Check-off.
And there's another way the
miners wages are cut. Not only
does the Fishwick company union
betray them, but it makes them pay
for being betrayed.
The miners wouldn't object in
paying dues to their own union, but
the Fishwick and Lewis gangs know
that no miner would actually pay
them for their dirty work. They
don't ask them for dues. They just
make an agreement with the boss
to take the dues out of the miners
wages, by what is known as the
check-off. According to Fishwick's
contract with the mine owners last
year, the boss is to hire only
U.M.W.A. members, and is to
check-off of their wages the
amount of the U.M.W.A. dues. The
miners are striking to end this
check-off swindle. They will pay
their own dues to their own union,
the National Miners Union. They
don't need the boss to collect dues.
Only the U.M.W.A. does that.
No Discrimination.
Young miners have always been
abused by the boss and by the
U.M.W.A. They get jobs as dam
gerous and dirty as any,. and much
lower pay. Equal pay for young
and older miners is demanded in this
strike.
Negro miners have fought side by
side with the white miners in every
strike. But in the U.M.W.A. they
were deprived the chance to partici-
pate in union work, and the boss
tried always to use them as means
to cut wages. He gave them the
worst working places, kept them
from making any money, and then
in strikes offered them good jobs.
The Illinois strikers demand no
discrimination against Negro work
ers, equal treatment for them UNI
foreground, equal pay, and gives
them every right in the union that
any white miner has-and the min
ers run this union. The national
vice president (now acting national
president) of the N.M.U., William
Boyce, is a Negro miner, elected in
the convention last year in Pitts
burgh where the union was formed,
and elected without regard for or