Arnold Miller
Arnold Ray Miller was a miner and labor activist who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America, AFL–CIO, from 1972 to 1979. Winning as a reform candidate, he gained positive changes for the miners, including compensation for black lung disease. He had difficulty dealing with growing internal union opposition. His last two years as president were particularly tumultuous and he suffered two heart attacks, finally resigning in November 1979 with the title of "president emeritus for life".
Early life and mining career
Miller was born in 1923 in Leewood, West Virginia, a small town in the Cabin Creek area east of Charleston. His mother was the former Lula Burgess Hoy. Miller's father, George, had gone to work in the coal mines at the age of 9 in Bell County, Kentucky. At the age of 14, George Miller was already an activist in the union and was forced to leave Kentucky by thugs employed by the mine owners.When the mine owners broke the UMWA locals in the Cabin Creek area in 1921, Miller's father and maternal grandfather were blacklisted and unable to find work. Although Miller's mother was pregnant, his father George took a job in Fayette County working for the Gauley Mountain Coal Company. The strain of distance proved too much on the marriage and Miller's parents divorced.
Arnold Miller was subsequently raised by his mother and maternal grandparents. His grandfather, Joseph Hoy, had been president of one of the early local miners' unions in the Cabin Creek area. But rather than follow in his grandfather's and father's footsteps, Miller wanted to attend college and become a forester. Limited income and economic opportunities led Miller to quit school after completing the ninth grade. At the age of 14 in 1939, he got a job loading coal in a local coal mine.
The Cabin Creek area had been the site of the Paint Creek–Cabin Creek strike of 1912. Miller became a Mine Workers member. It was a dangerous time to be a unionist in West Virginia: Private security forces from the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency outnumbered miners three to one, and had standing orders to break up any group of three or more miners wherever they were—often beating or shooting miners as well.
In 1944 during World War II, Miller volunteered for the United States Army. He was trained as a machine-gunner, and severely wounded in the Normandy invasion of Europe in World War II. He spent nearly two years in the hospital and underwent surgery 20 times.
Miller returned to the Cabin Creek area in 1948 after the war. He served a three-year apprenticeship in an automobile garage and returned to the mines as a mechanic. He married Virginia Brown on November 26, 1948, and had three children with her, a boy and two girls. The couple divorced in 1979.
Miller joined the United Mine Workers and became active in Local 2903. This local had led the 1912-13 strike and was known for its activism. Miller was first elected to the union's safety committee and later became local president. Although he briefly considered moving to Florida, Miller instead decided to become active in national union politics. He believed the union needed to be more responsive to miners' needs.
Black lung activism
After 24 years as a coal miner, Miller was diagnosed with pneumoconiosis, or "black-lung disease."Miller sought assistance from the national mine workers' union in obtaining workers' compensation from his employer. But UMWA president W. A. Boyle refused to help. "They were not just not with us, they were against us," Miller later said.
Stymied by his union, late in 1968 Miller organized other ill miners into the West Virginia Black Lung Association. They won introduction of a black-lung bill in the West Virginia state legislature. When Miller led other miners, their families and supporters on a march on the state capitol, Boyle sent legislators a telegram advising them "not to worry about those so-and-so miners." Boyle's behind-the-scenes lobbying had a significant effect at first. When Miller met with the president of the state senate, the legislator "told us raggedy miners to go back to the mines where we belonged. I got hot and told him, 'Mr. Jackson, we are going to stay here until the snow flies and we are going to turn you out to pasture.' "
Despite Boyle's efforts, the political pressure exerted by the black-lung miners was effective in the long run. Media images of hacking, dying miners—most of them young men in their 30s and 40s—caused a public outcry. Throughout the lobbying effort for the bill, Miller accused UMWA of ignoring rank-and-file miners' needs. This undercut Boyle's power, which rested on his claim that he alone represented the legitimate concerns of mine workers. On February 18, 1969, Miller and thousands of other West Virginia miners launched a 23-day wildcat strike to demand enactment of the black-lung bill. The strike resulted in the legislature passing the bill, which was the first of its kind in the U.S.
In August 1970, Miller stopped working as a miner and briefly went to work for Design for Rural Action, a community service organization. That year he was elected president of the West Virginia Black Lung Association.
Race for presidency of UMWA
Yablonski murder
The United Mine Workers was in turmoil by this time. President W. A. Boyle was autocratic and bullying, and not well liked. From the beginning of his administration, Boyle faced significant opposition from rank-and-file miners and UMWA leaders. Miners' attitudes about their union had also changed. Miners wanted greater democracy and more local autonomy for their local unions. There was a widespread belief that Boyle was more concerned with protecting mine owners' interests than those of his members. Grievances filed by the union often took months — sometimes years — to resolve, lending credence to the critics' claim. Wildcat strikes occurred as local unions, despairing of UMWA assistance, sought to resolve local disputes with walkouts.In 1969, Joseph "Jock" Yablonski challenged Boyle for the presidency of UMWA. In an election widely seen as corrupt, Boyle beat Yablonski in the election held on December 9 by a margin of nearly two-to-one. Yablonski conceded the election, but on December 18, 1969, asked the United States Department of Labor to investigate the election for fraud. He also filed five civil suits against the union on charges related to the election.
On December 31, 1969, three hitmen shot Yablonski, his wife, Margaret, and his 25-year-old daughter, Charlotte, as they slept in the family home in Clarksville, Pennsylvania. The bodies were discovered on January 5, 1970. The killings had been ordered by Boyle, and the hitmen had been paid $20,000 in embezzled union funds for the job.
A few hours after the funeral, two of Yablonski's sons and several of the miners who had supported Yablonski met in the basement of the church where the service was held. They met with attorney Joseph Rauh and drew up plans for a reform caucus within the United Mine Workers.
The day after news of the Yablonski killings was published, 20,000 miners in West Virginia walked off the job in a one-day strike — they believed that Boyle was responsible for the murders.
On January 8, 1970, Yablonski's attorney waived the right to further internal review by the union and requested that DOL initiate an immediate investigation of the election. The US Attorney General ordered the FBI also to assist in the investigation. By 1972 DOL had concluded that the election was fraudulent. On January 17, 1972, the United States Supreme Court granted Mike Trbovich, a 51-year-old coal leader from District 5, permission to intervene in the DOL suit as a complainant — keeping the suit alive.
The Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 regulates the internal affairs of labor unions, requiring regular secret-ballot elections for local union offices and providing for federal investigation of election fraud or impropriety. DOL is authorized under the act to sue in federal court to have the election overturned. By 1970, however, only three international union elections had been overturned by the courts.
Miners for Democracy
formed in April 1970 while the DOL investigation was underway. Its members included most of the miners who belonged to the West Virginia Black Lung Association and many of Yablonski's supporters and campaign staff. MFD's support was strongest in southwestern Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, and panhandle and northern West Virginia, but MFD supporters existed in nearly all affiliates. The chief organizers of Miners for Democracy included Yablonski's sons, Ken and Joseph Yablonski, both labor attorneys, and Trbovich and others. Initially, the group's sole purpose was to keep the DOL investigation of the Mine Workers alive.DOL filed suit in federal court in 1971 to overturn the 1969 UMWA election. As the case progressed, MFD turned its focus toward building a union-wide political organization capable of contesting any new election. A number of union members were seen as potential MFD candidates, including Miller, Trbovich and miner Elijah Wood.
On May 1, 1972, Judge William Bryant threw out the results of the 1969 UMWA international union elections. Bryant scheduled a new election to be held over the first eight days of December 1972. Additionally, Bryant agreed that DOL should oversee the election, to ensure fairness.
Over the weekend of May 26 to May 28, 1972, 800 MFD delegates from 16 UMWA districts gathered in Wheeling, West Virginia. Miller and Trbovich both sought the group's endorsement for president, with Trbovich the leading candidate going into the convention. But by Sunday, Miller had been elected MFD's presidential candidate, receiving 70.9 votes out of to Trbovich's 57.1 votes. As a consolation, Trbovich was elected the group's vice presidential nominee, receiving 84.1 votes. Harold Patrick, national co-chairman of MFD, received 76.4 votes to win the secretary-treasurer nod.
Miller's victory over Trbovich was something of a surprise. Many believed the delegates had been swayed UMWA District 17 president Jack Perry. Perry had been a founding member of the Logan County Black Lung Association. According to Cecil Roberts, then an MFD supporter and now president of UMWA, "...Arnold Miller's election as UMWA president in 1972 was largely attributable to Jack's impassioned lobbying of MFD convention delegates to support Miller." Many delegates felt Miller was more likely to win any election than Trbovich. Many miners held discriminatory views toward people of Eastern European descent like Trbovich, while others felt he was too militant. Miller, meanwhile, already had a strong base in the black-lung movement. Trbovich, who had been campaign manager for Yablonski's campaign, was bitterly disappointed.
On December 22, 1972, the Labor Department certified Miller as UMWA's next president. The vote was 70,373 for Miller and 56,334 for Boyle.
Arnold Miller was the first candidate to defeat an incumbent president in UMWA history, and the first native West Virginian to lead the union.