United Mine Workers chief arrested at mine protest

Kimberly Hefling / AP 5sep01

OAKLAND CITY, IN --  The president of the United Mine Workers union raised his fist in the air Tuesday morning as he was arrested with 11 others before a crowd of cheering protesters at a coal mine in Southern Indiana. Cecil Roberts, who is attempting to unionize more than a dozen Black Beauty Coal Co. mines in Indiana and Illinois, said the planned arrests were part of a recruitment effort.

“We have the best membership in the entire labor movement,” Roberts said before he and the others were loaded into a police van.

Gibson County Sheriff George Ballard asked Roberts and the 11 others to move off a road on coal company property at least five times. They refused to comply, and instead sat in the street holding hands until they were arrested.

Each was charged with failure to comply with a lawful police order, Ballard said.

“I believe when you give people something to do, it invigorates them,” Roberts said during a rally at an Oakland City park prior to the protest.

Black Beauty, based in Evansville, is Indiana’s largest coal producer and the largest supplier of coal to the state’s utility companies. It employs more than 1,000 miners at 13 mines in Indiana and Southern Illinois and also operates two mines in Kentucky, the union said.

“Those who work nonunion, they need to think from where they came,” Roberts said. “I don’t mean to offend anyone today, but let’s face it, the young people working in these mines are the sons and daughters of UMWA pensions.”

For the first time in nearly two decades, coal companies are making money, and the workers and their communities should not be left out, Roberts said.

“For 18 years, coal companies have said coal prices are down, competition is fierce, we’ll close this mine if the union comes in here,” Roberts said. “Let me tell you something, coal prices are up, publicly traded coal companies’ stock prices are up. Millionaires are going to become billionaires. Great wealth is going to come from this area.”

The union president has been arrested two other times this summer.

Roberts and the others arrested spent about 30 minutes in the Gibson County jail, said UMW spokesman Pete McCall. They paid no fine Tuesday, but will return at an undetermined date for a court appearance.