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¶ … labor market in Harlan County, Texas, was monopolistic in the sense that Duke Power had a significant amount of wage-setting power at the time that Harlan County, USA was filmed. The company and its subsidiary, the Eastover Mining Company, were one of the largest employers within the county. Moreover, the sort of people that the company hired did not have a lot of other career prospects. Most of them were relatively uneducated by contemporary standards and had high school diplomas or did not finish high schools. As such, the work afforded by this company was fairly important to their livelihoods, which is why the laborers were willing to endure a strike for as long as they did.
Since Duke Power was one of the larger employers within Harlan County, they were able to set wages in the region. A testament to this particular fact is the scab replacements that the company got to replace its regular workers during the strike. The scabs did not make as much money as the regular employees did, and did not even have the paltry health benefits that the striking workers did. Due to the fact that Duke Power could hire these laborers for less than their regular ones, it is fair to say that it had a degree of wage-setting power in this part of the country.
Women had a predominant role in this movie and in the strike that the documentary depicted. Their input was invaluable, and all the more remarkable for the fact that at the time, there were no female miners...
Therefore, it was a little surprising to see them take the forefront in the initiative to strike, and to continue the strike, and to defend themselves against the dangers that accompanied such a choice.
In retrospect, however, the involvement of the many wives of the workers actually is not that startling. The adage goes that men make the money and that women spend it so, in that respect, the participation of these women was merely part of the husbandry that many women naturally exhibit in marriage. However, the lengths that the women depicted in the movie went to keep the strike going were certainly encouraging. The most prominent one, Lois Scott, showed the type of tenacity that ultimately saw the strike through to its completion, as her pistol-pulling episodes unequivocally revealed. Even the presence of the documentarian, Barbara Kopple, had a prominent role in this particular strike as it has been posited that the mere presence of a camera helped to reduce -- not eliminate -- the threat of violence (Long, 2006). The beating that she received was endemic of the role of women in this strike, which was actually at the forefront and more dogged than the involvement of the workers, their husbands.
If one considers the henchmen hired by Duke Power company's Eastover Mining Company to help scabs cross…
References
Krundt, R. (2011). "Cinematic Journalism at its best." The New York Times. Retrieved from http://community.nytimes.com/rate-review/movies.nytimes.com/movie/21576/Harlan-County-USA/overview
Long, C. (2006). "Harlan County USA dvd review." Movie Metropolis. http://moviemet.com/review/harlan-county-usa-dvd-review
Schneider, D. (2010). "You can't topple Kopple." Culture Wars. Retrieved from http://www.culturewars.org.uk/index.php/site/article/you_cant_topple_kopple/
In 2006, production workers, earned $21.40 an hour in oil and gas extraction, $22.08 an hour in coal mining, $22.39 an hour in metal ore mining, and $18.74 an hour in nonmetallic minerals mining, compared to the private industry average of $16.76 an hour Figure 1 and Figure 2 below show the 'Average Earnings of Non-Supervisory Workers in 2006 and Median Hourly Mining of the Largest Occupations in Mining, May
There is also a lack of healthcare facilities capable of doing the screenings in many small, rural Kentucky communities, which is another barrier for many miners. Health professionals need to become more involved in information and screening information. They need to stress the importance of early screening and regular screening, and they need to create educational resources for the miners, so they can take steps to avoid black lung. Health
" President Truman did not deal with the UMWA because he had a love for labor, either. He feared that a prolonged strike would hurt a nation recovering from World War II, and so, he signed the fund into action with the union president. The UMWA was crucial in settling the strike and getting benefits for the miners and at the heart of the organization was its president, John L. Lewis. Lewis
In other words, the finances of a deficit country were constrained because they did not have enough gold to go around, while a country with a surplus did not face those issues. In addition, usually the weight of modification falls on these weaker countries, which is another flaw in the gold standard. Because the weaker countries could not react quickly enough to economic problems, they had less capital to
Another historian notes, "Economically, baby boomers experienced unprecedented national affluence throughout their childhood. During the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. economy expanded greatly, raising the living standards of most American families" (Clydesdale 606). Religion played less of a role in society by the 1990s, as church attendance and membership began to decline in the 60s. Historian Clydesdale continues, "When the cultural challenges of the 1960's disestablished this religious ethos,
" The prominence of this type of mining method is underlined by a study prepared for the Governor of West Virginia which states that, "Mountaintop removal methods are essential to maintain the state's present level of coal production. The lower production costs of MTR have contributed significantly to maintaining West Virginia as a competitive coal producer." 3. Environmental impact of coal mining in the Appalachians. 3.1. Underground mining The earliest coal mining in Appalachia consisted