No Union Mines Left in Kentucky, Where Labor Wars Once Raged

Kentucky coal miners bled and died to unionize.

In this Oct. 15, 2014 photo, coal miners return on a buggy after working a shift underground at the Perkins Branch Coal Mine in Cumberland, Ky. As recently as the late 1970s, there were more than 350 mines operating at any given time in Harlan County. In 2014, it's around 40. AP Photo/David Goldman, File

HARLAN, Ky.—Kentucky coal miners bled and died to unionize.

Their workplaces became war zones, and gun battles once punctuated union protests. In past decades, organizers have been beaten, stabbed, and shot while seeking better pay and safer conditions deep underground.

But more recently the United Mine Workers in Kentucky have been in retreat, dwindling like the black seams of coal in the Appalachian Mountains.

And now the last union mine in Kentucky has been shut down.

“A lot of people right now who don’t know what the (union) stands for is getting good wages and benefits because of the sacrifice that we made,” said Kenny Johnson, a retired union miner who was arrested during the Brookside strike in Harlan County in the 1970s. “Because when we went on those long strikes, it wasn’t because we wanted to be out of work.”

The union era's death knell sounded in Kentucky on New Year's Eve, when Patriot Coal announced the closing of its Highland Mine.