UMWA Labor Day gathering finds union fighting federal cuts, revering retiring Roberts

Roberts, 78, who announced in March he would retire as UMWA International president in October after a 30-year run, then pressed forward with a history lesson that went beyond the virtue of sacrifice to acknowledge the value of power — political power. The lesson took him and the crowd back to when he was a 30-year-old Cabin Creek native and vice president of UMWA International District 17, which has long included southern West Virginia.

“What happened when everybody got a union? Workers had a voice!� Roberts shouted, further raising his own. “In the United States Congress! In the state legislatures all across this land! I want to get back to those days when people came into my office when I was here as a 30-year-old and said, ‘Mr. Roberts, what do we have to do to get the United Mine Workers’ endorsement? Because that’s the best endorsement that you can have running for office in West Virginia.’�

Union membership has dwindled over the course of Roberts’ three decades at the UMWA’s helm — and long before it.

The U.S. share of unionized workers in 2024 was 9.9% — a 23.6-percentage-point decline from its post-World War II peak of 33.5% in 1954, according to National Bureau of Economic Research-published data.

Union density climbed steadily from 12.8% in 1935 to a peak of 34.2% in 1945 after the 1935 passage of the National Labor Relations Act, the main labor relations law for private-sector employees.

But union density has fallen off sharply since its 1980 clip of 22.2%, a decline labor advocates have attributed to Congress failing to raise the minimum wage consistent with inflation starting in the late 1960s, and a narrowing of workers’ rights throughout the Reagan administration epitomized by its 1981 firing of more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers who refused to return to work.

West Virginia’s 10% share of workers who are represented by unions in 2024 was 24th-highest out of 50 states and lower than all bordering states but Virginia. West Virginia's 36.5% union density was 12th-highest nationally in 1964, meaning the Mountain State has become significantly less unionized, even compared with other states.

Racine’s Slack Park showed signs pointing to efforts to reverse West Virginia’s mine worker unionization decline — signs that bear Roberts’ name and, like he did Monday, lean on history.

A UMWA table to Roberts’ right as he looked out at the largely UMWA apparel-clad crowd promoted The Cecil E. Roberts Collection, an exhibit planned to open in June 2026 at UMWAâ€�s District 17 office at 1300 Kanawha Blvd. E. in ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä that will feature personal artifacts, historical photos and moments from his six decades in the labor movement. The union was soliciting contributions to a collection fund, with proceeds to go to the collection and other efforts to preserve labor history.

“I think a lot of people in ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä don’t realize the importance of a union and the importance of honoring labor,â€� UMWA Communications Director Erin Bates told the Gazette-Mail during a break in Monday’s slate of pro-union speakers emceed by District 17 Vice President Brian Lacy. “So this is our way to keep [Roberts’] legacy alive.â€�

Further back from the stage was a West Virginia Mine Wars Museum table that featured copies of its program commemorating 2021’s 100th anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain. The battle pitted 7,000 to 10,000 coal miners with rifles and red bandanas around their necks trying to unionize against 3,000 state policemen, private security forces and other strikebreakers in Logan County.

The conflict eventually created awareness of the poor living and working conditions of miners, and it inspired a more robust organized labor movement that spurred rapid wage growth in the decades that followed World War II.

Inside the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum’s 2021 program is a UMWA-authored writeup noting that Roberts and a dozen others marched 11 miles from Marmet to Racine two years earlier to retrace part of the 50-mile march UMWA miners made in August 2021 from Marmet to Blair Mountain. In 1921, Roberts led a centennial commemorative march designed to encompass the full route.

“He’s very much connected to us,� Mackenzie New-Walker, the museum’s executive director, told the Gazette-Mail, recalling that Roberts spoke at the 2015 grand opening of the museum located in Matewan inside the Cecil E. Roberts Building. The building was previously owned and operated by UMWA Local 1440 before the museum itself took ownership.

But building on UMWA’s history of fighting for West Virginia miners and their families now means grappling with sweeping cuts to federal mine safety and health oversight by the Trump administration, union leaders said to attendees who were at Slack Park on Monday because UMWA had been there for them.

Retired mine worker Arnold Seagraves, 77, of the Boone County community of Ashford, came to see his fellow Cabin Creek native Roberts.

Seagraves is 14 years removed from a 47-year career spent mostly as a mining electrician. Seagraves’ wife Brenda died in June 2024. Having experienced that loss, he told the Gazette-Mail he has “the best health care in the world� via UMWA-secured health insurance coverage.

“They paid over a half-million dollars on her hospital bills,� Seagraves said. “I never paid a dime.�

Seagraves is concerned by the Trump administration cutting Mine Safety and Health Administration resources and agreeing to delay enforcement of a landmark MSHA rule finalized last year that would significantly reduce the permissible limit of exposure to toxic silica dust driving up black lung incidence among increasingly younger central Appalachian miners.

“[President Donald] Trump and the Republicans are trying to tear down everything the unions built over the last 80 years,� Seagraves said.

'It's not going to be good for workers'

Labor allies say the decline of unions has been a key culprit behind the nation’s long-term wage stagnation.

Ninety percent of children born in the 1940s earned more than their parents did at age 30, while only half of children born in the mid-1980s did the same, according to a 2023 analysis published by the Biden-era Department of the Treasury that held that unions could raise middle-class wages, improve work environments and promote demographic equality.

Federal data suggest West Virginia has an especially great need for improved work environments.

A severe work-related injury report was filed every 3.6 days in West Virginia in 2023 — significantly higher than neighboring states, according to Occupational Safety and Health Administration data.

The Trump administration has been resolutely anti-labor.

Trump has left the National Labor Relations Board without a quorum since his first days in office, keeping it from issuing decisions in union representation and unfair labor practice cases. Trump removed board member Gwynne Wilcox in the middle of her term in January, prompting a legal challenge holding he exceeded his authority.

Carey Clarkson, national vice president with the National Council of Field Labor Locals union that represents MSHA employees, told the Gazette-Mail in March a Trump administration-ordered hiring freeze cut off the hiring process for 90 people who had been offered MSHA positions. Roughly 120 more employees were lost after they took a voluntary resignation offer amid the Trump administration’s mass downsizing of the federal workforce.

Clarkson said MSHA barely had enough staff before Trump retook office to perform required inspections, let alone “spend quality time� on mines that need greater enforcement.

Miner advocates have protested hundreds of Trump administration layoffs being implemented in and beyond West Virginia to employees within the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a research agency that studies worker health and has contributed decades of critical findings to better protect miners from toxic coal and silica dust and mine accidents.

They’ve also protested delay in implementation of a landmark rule the Biden administration finalized last year to decrease MSHA’s federally allowed exposure limit for toxic silica dust driving up incidence of severe black lung disease among increasingly younger central Appalachian miners.

In July, MSHA proposed eliminating the authority of the agency’s district managers to require additional provisions in ventilation control and roof control plans beyond requirements in federal code. Mine operators no longer would have to revise roof control or ventilation plans at the request of an MSHA district manager.

Last week brought West Virginia’s third mining fatality of 2025 when Eric Bartram, 41, of Chapmanville, a mine electrician working at an Alpha Metallurgical Resources-controlled coal preparation facility in Raleigh County, died in an incident whose cause has not yet been publicly identified by investigators.

“He can come down to ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä and put on a hat and pretend that he digs coal,â€� West Virginia Delegate Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, chair of the West Virginia Democratic Party, said of Trump to the crowd, alluding to the then-presidential candidate’s 2016 ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä Civic Center rally at which he donned a miner hat. “He’s more concerned about the owners than the most important thing that comes out of the mine, and we all know that the most important thing that comes out of the mine is the miner.â€�

Attorneys for MSHA and industry groups reported in a federal court filing this month they are discussing a potential settlement after the court put the rule on hold in response to a challenge from the industry groups.

The UMWA is one of nearly a dozen unions that have filed a federal lawsuit alleging the Trump administration has persisted in unlawfully eliminating NIOSH divisions that carry out statutorily required functions that safeguard workers’ health. The UMWA also has fought the silica rule’s delay in federal court.

UMWA International Secretary-Treasurer Brian Sanson, who Roberts endorsed in March to succeed him as president, blasted MSHA’s settlement talks regarding the silica rule with mining industry groups under Trump onstage Monday.

“I don’t know what kind of deal you can make with a coal company that’s poisoning coal miners every day,� Sanson said. “I don’t even know what that deal would look like. But it’s not going to be good for workers.�

'This is home for me'

West Virginia Coal Mine Health and Safety Board member Ted Hapney, 68, expressed concern to the Gazette-Mail over the direction of federal mine oversight.

He also estimated he’s been to at least 60 of the UMWA’s 87 annual Labor Day celebrations, going back to when his father was a coal miner.

“This is home for me,� Hapney said.

But UMWA leaders made clear Monday the welcome mat is out for anyone who wants to join their fight — no matter who’s leading it.

“I’m retiring. I’m not dying,� Roberts told attendees. “I’m going to be the best union member that Brian Sanson has. If he needs me to get arrested, I’ll get arrested. If he needs me to walk a picket line, I’ll walk a picket line. If he needs me to go on a march, I’ll go on a march. If he needs me to make a donation, I’ll make a donation.�

For mine veterans hoping to breathe easier, that attitude isn’t sycophancy. It’s survival.

“[The UMWA] is the only weapon we have,� Seagraves said.