Union leader speaks about workers rights, civil rights

By: Jack Willems

Posted: 2/5/07

Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, challenged UA students to work for a better America in the tradition of union and civil rights leaders.

"We've got a society that tells us that only millionaires and billionaires are patriots," Roberts said. "Well I didn't see any millionaires in Vietnam."

Roberts spoke at the Leflar Law Center Wednesday as part of the Hartman Hotz Lecture series. The main topics of his speech were the history of organized labor in the United States, its connections with the civil rights movement and where society is today.

The UMWA began in 1890 when coal miners were required to live in towns created by the coal company, Roberts said. No one could leave the town without permission, and workers were paid with company money. After paying for rent and food, the average miner had nothing left over, he said.

"Let me ask you a question. When someone is paid nothing for his work, what is he? A slave," Roberts said. "It was legal to enslave someone between 1890 and 1935."

When the union was formed, the union constitution specifically forbade racial discrimination because the company used racism to fracture the workers ethnically, Roberts said. The UMWA had a black member on its executive board in 1890, he said. Roberts told the audience about the early, often violent struggles that unions went through.

"There are such things as unfair laws that need to change," Roberts said.

When the Wagner Law was passed in 1935, millions of people joined labor unions, Roberts said. At this time, John L. Lewis formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) when he had a disagreement with the American Federation of Labor, Roberts said. Soon, A. Philip Randolph became the first black head of a national labor union, Roberts said.

"When the CIO went into a steel mill or an automobile plant, everybody got a raise," he said.

Unions instituted seniority rules in plants, established the first pensions and vacation days and supported the creation of Social Security, Roberts said.

"The company does not give you anything, the company has to offer competitive wages because of unions," Roberts said. "If unions disappear, you will watch wages drop and pensions disappear."

The civil rights movement faced hardship similar to labor unions, Roberts said. Randolph introduced Martin Luther King when King gave his "I have a dream" speech, Roberts said. Randolph had proposed a march on Washington, D.C. in the 1930s, Roberts said. Also, when the UMWA went on strike against Pittston Co. in 1989, civil rights leaders came to support them.

Today, 36 million people in America live in poverty and 47 million are without health insurance, Roberts said.

"We can't figure out how to get water to people on a bridge in New Orleans," he said. "People in New Orleans are being told to get behind people in Iraq."

Union membership is dropping because many industrial jobs are being outsourced and technology has reduced the need for manpower, Roberts said. Furthermore, 20,000 people a year are fired for trying to join a union, he said. When a strike occurs, companies hire replacements to break the strike, he said.

One of the country's priorities should be creating national healthcare so that American companies can be competitive with other countries overseas, Roberts said. The government already pays for its officials' healthcare, so government funded healthcare should work, Roberts said.

"We need more common folks contributing and not so many geniuses," he said.

In order to help Wal-Mart workers organize, people need to stop shopping there, Roberts said. Wal-Mart not only pays its workers very little, they also harm small businesses, he said.

"They dictate to everybody," he said. "They dictate to sellers and they dictate to employees."

While all speakers are given a donation by the school, Roberts refused his, said Cyndi Nance, Dean of the Law School. Nance met Roberts at the AFL-CIO Congress when she went as a delegate in 2005. She was so impressed with him that she decided to invite him to speak at the UA.

"His speech at the AFL-CIO Congress was the most passionate and progressive speech I'd ever heard," she said.

Stephan Nazarian, a student who witnessed the speech, thought it was a bold choice for a speaker because Arkansas lacks a history of organized labor, he said. Bernitha Jones, another student, found the way Roberts spoke about Wal-Mart fascinating because she worked as a buying agent for Wal-Mart, she said.

Roberts is a sixth-generation coal miner who has been elected as the president of the UMWA three consecutive times. He first became president in 1995. He received the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition's Martin Luther King, Jr. award and awards from Citizen Action and Midwest Academy for his role in the negotiations between UMWA and Pittston Co. in 1989. Roberts is a Vietnam veteran.

The Hartman Hotz lecture series was established by Dr. and Mrs. Palmer Hotz to honor the memory of his brother, Hartman Hotz. The purpose of the lectures is to "provide an impetus to original thought." Chief Justice Warren Burger, G. Edward White, Shirley Abbott, Daisy Bates, Thomas Grisso, George Fletcher and George McGovern are among the past speakers.