Unionist Arnold Ray Miller (April 25, 1923-July 12, 1985) introduced democratic reform to the United Mine Staff of America. He was born the son and grandson of miners at Leewood on Cabin Creek in Kanawha County. He give up college in his mid-teens to develop into a coal miner.
In 1942, Miller joined the military. As an infantryman in the course of the D-Day invasion, he acquired extreme facial wounds from machine-gun fireplace and misplaced most of his left ear. Over the following two years, he underwent 19 operations in navy hospitals in England. Returning residence in 1946, he labored at an auto restore store for a number of years till he discovered a mining job. In 1970, black lung illness and arthritis pressured him to retire from the mines.
Whereas working as a miner, Miller was president of his union native and one of many founders of the Black Lung Affiliation. In February 1969, he helped the Black Lung Affiliation lead a three-week coal strike and a march on the state capitol that led to the passage of West Virginia’s first black lung compensation legislation. In Could 1972, the Miners for Democracy group selected Miller in a gathering at Wheeling Faculty (now Wheeling Jesuit College) to problem UMW President Tony Boyle. A federal choose had ordered a particular election due to irregularities in Boyle’s victory over Jock Yablonski within the union’s 1969 election. Boyle later went to jail for arranging the murders of Yablonski, his spouse, and daughter.
After defeating Boyle in December 1972, Miller instantly issued orders to let rank-and-file members elect their regional leaders as an alternative of getting them chosen by the president. Throughout his presidency, Miller had the union’s structure rewritten to permit members to approve or reject new contracts. In 1974, he negotiated the nationwide coal contract with an improved well being care plan.
Regardless of early successes, turmoil marked Miller’s presidency. He received reelection in 1977 however acquired lower than half the vote in a three-man race. Quickly, he confronted an industry-wide wildcat strike from miners upset over cuts in well being advantages. An try to recall him was in the end defeated on grounds that it violated the union’s structure.
After a sequence of well being issues, Miller resigned as president in 1979. He died six years later in Charleston. Arnold Miller has two West Virginia freeway bridges named for him. A bridge on the West Virginia Turnpike in Marmet honoring his conflict service was devoted in 1977. In 2019, one other bridge on I-77 close to his hometown on Cabin Creek was named for Miller with the phrase “UMWA President 1972-1979.”
To be taught extra about West Virginia’s historical past, such because the Monongahela Nationwide Forest is the one nationwide forest utterly throughout the boundaries of West Virginia, go to register-herald.com
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