America's longest ongoing strike, by UMWA coal miners in central Alabama, has lasted more than 18 months

United Mine Workers during a protest outside BlackRock
offices in New York. (Angus Mordant/Bloomberg)

Coal miners in central Alabama, carrying on America's largest and longest current strike, continue to resist calls to settle, reports Ericka Willis for Labor Notes. The strike, the result of a dispute between the workers and Warrior Met Coal, involves about 900 miners and began 18 months ago in April 2021, writes Willis, who is a professor in the University of Wisconsin's School for Workers. 

The roots of the strike go back to 2016 when Walter Energy, the previous owners of the Brookwood, Ala., mine, filed for bankruptcy. At the time, the miners' union agreed to a 20% wage and benefits cut until profitability could be achieved by the new owning entity Warrior Met — which is funded by a group of private equity firms, Willis writes. The mine posted record profits and large returns for shareholders in recent years but did not reverse the wage cuts, prompting the strike by the United Mine Workers of America. Not long into the strike, the union voted down a tentative proposal for a new contract from Warrior Met. A year into the strike, the firm BlackRock — the largest shareholder throughout the strike — released a public statement "calling for a labor agreement and questioning Warrior Met executives’ choices in protracting the strike," Willis reports.

The strike is believed to be the longest in Alabama history, William Thornton reported for AL.com in a September story that asked American labor historians how it might end. Gabriel Winant, a history professor at the University of Chicago, said the length of the strike was "certainly not the norm. It   typically tells you the employer has really dug in their heels for one reason or another." The length of the strike is also likely due to the size of the company and the number of workers on strike, both not large enough to likely involve government intervention, Thornton writes citing Winant. 

Warrior Met told AL.com that it had proposed eight contracts to the union, offering a 10-12% raise. The union said the eight proposed contracts were "virtually indistinguishable" from the tentative proposal they voted down at the beginning of the strike, Thornton writes.