Picketing Alabama Miners Stopped by Rare Non-Federal Court Order

As an Alabama coal miners strike neared the eight-month mark, a Tuscaloosa County judge took an unusual step: he banned union workers from picketing their employer’s property.

The order was a rare interference by a local court in a private sector strike – an activity protected by federal labor law for nearly a century. The United Mine Workers of America, which represents the workers at Warrior Met Coal Inc., called the move unconstitutional and said it violated their federal rights in addition to the first amendment.

Judge James Roberts Jr. of Tuscaloosa County District Court was not convinced by the union’s arguments. On November 15, he doubled a restraining order issued weeks earlier to bar picket lines outside mines or Warrior Met offices and extended it through December 2.

The restraining order was the latest focus of one of the longest miners’ strikes in US history. It was a marked departure from the normal labor dispute settlement process whereby parties file federal complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, and it represents a seldom used method by the employer to bypass the Democrat-controlled NLRB in favor of a friendlier court, lawyers said and law professors.

“This is an exceptionally rare occurrence of using a state court to stop picket lines during a strike,” said Cathy Creighton, a union attorney who heads the Cornell University School of Labor and Industrial Relations field office in Buffalo, NY, said Creighton that she has only seen it successfully three times in her 30-year career.

In the south, where anti-union sentiment is deeply ingrained, ending the NLRB can be a particularly effective way. Union membership in Alabama is lower than most other states, and 70% of voters approved a 2016 constitutional amendment to the “right to work” that ended required union membership in regulated establishments.

Picket Violence

The judge’s first order, dated October 27, followed the violence at the picket line, where around 1,000 workers have been on strike since April.

Warrior Met Coal posted a video in October showing pickets blocking cars that transport replacement workers to company facilities.

In one case, the video shows workers breaking a window of an SUV and attacking a man as he gets out of the vehicle. In another, a man identified by the company as a local union official hit the window of a parked truck with a hammer.

“While the UMWA has portrayed its actions as ‘peaceful protests’, workers on strike have escalated the extent and severity of criminal behavior in recent weeks,” the company said in an October 25 statement Vehicles, property and uninvolved community members carried out near the company premises. “

The company’s video was enough to convince the judge who prohibited workers from assembling within 300 meters of about a dozen Warrior Met facilities.

United Mine Workers rejects the allegations of violence. In an interview, union spokesman Phil Smith said union members never started a confrontation but sometimes reacted when Warrior Met officials used force to break through their picket lines.

“Every Time Out member is involved in something on the picket line, it’s retaliation,” said Smith.

The union filed a complaint with the NLRB alleging Warrior Met refused to negotiate in good faith – a violation of federal labor law – but received no response, Smith said. The company filed a separate NLRB indictment against the union on October 21, records show. The agency has not made the charges public.

A Warrior Met spokesperson referred Bloomberg Law to the company’s chief legal officer, who did not respond to calls and emails asking for comment.

Union officials said the company’s prosecution of the local court order was little more than a legal act.

“It’s a tactic. They are seeking an injunction from a court to curb any kind of protest, ”AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler told Bloomberg Law during a protest in Washington on November 18. “[It’s] try to prevent freedom of assembly here in the United States of America. “

Nomad attacker

The unrest dates back to 2015 when Walter Energy, which owned a number of mines in central Alabama, filed for bankruptcy. According to local news, the company’s assets were acquired by a group of creditors under the banner of the Warrior Met. As part of the reorganization plan, workers were forced to accept drastic cuts in health care and pension benefits, even for workers who were already retired, United Mine Workers’ treasurer Brian Sanson said in an interview.

The union was hoping to restore some of the cuts in the next contract, Sanson said. But the negotiations were unsuccessful and workers went on strike when the current contract expired on April 1st. Since then they have been unemployed.

“When the contract expired, they just said no,” he said.

With their picket lines broken, the union has held its demonstrations elsewhere. This month camouflaged pickets picketed the offices of financial firms in New York and Washington investing in the mine. UMWA President Cecil Roberts was arrested along with several others during a demonstration in New York on November 4th.

The strike forced Warrior Met to close one mine and significantly reduce operations in another, executives said on a profit conference call on Nov. 2.

Still, the third quarter of 2021 was still the most profitable for the company since the pandemic began. It grossed $ 38.4 million in that time, compared to a loss of $ 14.4 million in the same period last year, despite a loss of at least $ 7 million from the strike.

While workers nationwide enjoy increased leverage in the face of national labor shortages and congestion in ports, this is a more complicated picture in the coal industry, which struggled at the start of the pandemic but has apparently recovered. The positive financial report could deepen the stalemate and exacerbate union demands for a higher profit share while relieving pressure on the company to comply.

“Although we are disappointed that the union is continuing the strike, we continue to negotiate in good faith to find a solution,” said Walter Scheller, chief executive officer of the mining company, at the conference call.

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