PRESS RELEASE from United Mine Workers of America
May 21, 2008

UMWA endorses Barack Obama for President

    The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) today endorsed Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for President of the United States. The endorsement came after a unanimous vote of the union’s National Council of the Coal Miners’ Political Action Committee (COMPAC) in favor of the endorsement.

    “We are extremely proud to make this endorsement today,” UMWA International President Cecil E. Roberts said. “Sen. Obama shares the values of UMWA members and our families. He understands and will fight for the needs our members have today and the hopes our members have for a secure future for themselves and their families.

    “Most of all, Sen. Obama will implement the clear change in direction UMWA members–indeed, all American working people–must have if they are to once again move forward and have a true opportunity to realize the American dream,” Roberts said. “After eight years of being pushed aside by an administration which neither respects nor values the contributions American working families make to our society, we are looking forward with great anticipation to a new era in our nation starting with the inauguration of President Barack Obama on January 20, 2009.

    “We looked at the positions of both Sen. Obama and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) when considering this endorsement,” Roberts said. “On issue after issue, it is clear that Sen. Obama will be on our side while Sen. McCain will not.

    “For example, Sen. McCain would impose a tax on the health care benefits our members and retirees receive that we have negotiated in our contracts,” Roberts said. “UMWA members are at risk of receiving serious injuries or contracting occupational diseases every day. Many of our retirees suffer from debilitating injuries or black lung. They have paid for those health care benefits with their blood. To impose a tax on them because they receive those benefits is not only unjust, it’s immoral.  

    “We also have many thousands of retirees and widows of retirees who depend on Social Security,” Roberts said. “Sen. McCain wants to privatize Social Security and put those retirees’ benefits at risk in the stock market. We cannot stand by and allow that to happen.”

    “Sen. Obama will fight to preserve American jobs, not ship them overseas in greater and greater numbers,” Roberts said. “Sen. Obama will make sure that the nation’s mine safety and health enforcement agency actually enforces the law, instead of coddling mine operators who repeatedly and willfully violate the law.

    “And Sen. Obama will work to ensure the future of American coal and the jobs that go with it by moving aggressively to develop and implement carbon capture and sequestration technology,” Roberts said. “Sen. McCain has advanced proposal after proposal that would cut jobs in the coal industry, especially in the eastern part of the country.

    “Sen. Obama is from a coal state,” Roberts said. “He understands that coal will remain a primary source for electricity generation in this country for many decades to come and he will join with the UMWA as we work to ensure that it will be used for that purpose in an environmentally responsible way.

    “We will be making these points with our members over the coming months as we move forward to the election in November,” Roberts said. ”It doesn’t matter whether it’s our members’ jobs, their safety, their health care, their pensions, their children’s education, their union, their standard of living, or their very rights as American citizens–John McCain will do harm to all of them by continuing the failed Bush administration policies.”

    “Americans are crying out for real change in Washington, and Sen. Obama will bring that,” UMWA International Secretary-Treasurer Dan Kane said. “We will be working as hard as we can, using every resource at our disposal in every community where our members live and work across this nation to do our part to help him.”

    The UMWA is headquartered in Fairfax, Va., and represents 105,000 active and retired coal miners, mine construction workers, public service employees, health care workers and manufacturing workers in the United States and Canada. The UMWA represents more coal miners than any other union in the world.