page_title: Pittston Coal strike
section_title: Civil disobedience
hierarchical_section_title: Pittston Coal strike / Strike tactics / Civil disobedience
caption_attribution_description: Adapted from Wikipedia's VA county maps by Seth Ilys.
context_page_description: The Pittston Coal strike was a United States strike action led by the United Mine Workers Union against the Pittston Coal Company, nationally headquartered in Pittston, Pennsylvania. The strike, which lasted from April 5, 1989 to February 20, 1990, resulted from Pittston's termination of health care benefits for approximately 1,500 retirees, widows, and disabled miners. The strikers also cited the refusal of the company to contribute to the benefit trust established in 1950 for miners who retired before 1974 and the refusal of the company to bargain in good faith as grounds for their action. The company cited declining coal prices, decreasing demand, and recession as its reason for limiting health care benefits.
  The strike affected production in mines mostly in Virginia, but a few in West Virginia and Kentucky as well. Mine workers and their families engaged in acts of civil disobedience, work stoppage, protests, and rallies. At its peak in June 1989, the strike involved approximately 2,000 miners daily staying at Camp Solidarity with thousands more sending donations and holding wildcat walkouts that involved around 40,000 people.
context_section_description: The UMWA tried to focus the strikers on civil disobedience and often stepped in to stop the wildcat strikers. The union members used many different nonviolent strike tactics. These acts included standing and blocking the roads that the coal trucks would travel, mass sit down strikes, and large groups of people picketing outside of the Pittston coal mines. This method of protesting helped the UMWA gain support from other people around the country.
  Another method of peaceful protesting was demonstrated in the formation of Camp Solidarity which was located in the center of the protesting, in southern Virginia. Supporters came from all over the country to show their outrage against the actions of Pittston but there was no place that they could stay. Although many people in the local towns would offer shelter, they could not provide enough beds and food for all the people who came. Union member supporters found a solution to the problem.  A local recreational park near Castlewood, Virginia was turned into a campground where these supporters could stay. A small shelter equipped with bunk beds was built and an already existing snack bar was opened to provide food for the people staying at Camp Solidarity. Because the location was a recreational park, there was plenty of space for others to bring campers and tents into the area.
  As a result of the protests, more than $30 million in fines were levied against UMWA by Russell County Circuit Court Judge Donald A. McGlothlin Jr. In what many saw as an act of retaliation, miner and union official Jackie Stump was recruited to mount a write-in campaign for the state legislature against McGlothlin's father, Delegate Don McGlothlin. Stump, who was cellmates with UMWA vice president Cecil Roberts during the strike, went on to win the November election by more than two-to-one margin.
caption: Castlewood, Virginia, marked by this map, was the location of Camp Solidarity. The main mines involved were located close to this area.
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