:: rawblogXport ::

:: Tuesday, August 03, 2004 ::

Union setbacks mark stark change in southern Illinois By SUSAN SKILES LUKE, AP
The UMWA, which once represented an army of nearly 100,000 miners in the state, now counts 1,400 on its rolls, 40 percent of the 3,500 still working in Illinois.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the bloody battles in southern Illinois' coal fields helped shape national labor law, historians say, and were key in launching the UMWA, the granddaddy of industrial unions.

It was the UMWA, under Illinois resident and President John L. Lewis, that pushed through the eight-hour workday, company-paid workers' pensions, and cradle-to-grave health insurance for miners nationwide.

It came at a cost.

More than a dozen men died in Macoupin County in 1897 fighting off strikebreakers brought in by the Chicago-Virden Coal Co. The pact the company ultimately upheld was the first significant one miners across the Midwest had signed collectively, historians say.

'That is the moment the UMWA becomes a great union,' said Elliott Gorn, a Brown University professor and biographer of legendary union stumper Mary Harris 'Mother' Jones, who is buried near the miners.

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