The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership with In These Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we’ve got an important follow-up to a story here in Baltimore that we reported on back in April. To refresh your guys’ memory on April 9th, nearly a year after workers voted to authorize a strike, non-union city and commercially contracted security officers in Baltimore walked off the job on an unfair labor practice strike against their employers, Abacus Corporation, Metropolitan Protective Services, and Urban Development Solutions. The strike involved security guards stationed at city and commercial sites around Baltimore, including Harbor East, the water treatment facility, the Able Woolman Building, police stations, and housing developments among others.

In what has been a protracted years long effort to unionize with the Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, workers have been fighting for more job security, better pay, accessible healthcare, and safer working conditions. And in the episode that we published just before the strike, I got to talk about all of that with Laura Dixon, a veteran security officer and Abacus employee and Jaime Contreras, Executive Vice President of SEIU Local 32BJ. And today we’re talking about the latest infuriating update from this story. On Friday, May 22nd, I got a press email from SEIU Local 32BJ with the title, City Security Officers Fired and Threatened after going on strike according to labor charges filed against city contractor. Now, according to the union, quote, “Non-union security officers have filed unfair labor practice charges alleging their employer, city contractor Metropolitan Protective Services, fired and harassed workers following a lawful strike that took place on Thursday, April 9th.

NPS, which employs at least 70 officers who protect 10 public housing units run by the Baltimore Housing Authority, among other sites, receives $15 million from the Baltimore Housing Authority and $6 million from the Maryland Department of General Services. Starting the day after officers went on strike, NPS also stopped bringing paychecks to Baltimore from their Hyattsville headquarters and instead required officers to drive over 30 miles to Hyattsville, creating a new barrier between officers and access to their pay. Seven officers reported losing their jobs or being removed from their schedule for actions that MPS permitted prior to the strike, including Victoria Cox for simply eating lunch in her car after two years on the job protecting Westport housing in South Baltimore, where Cox dealt with domestic violence, break-ins, and shootings. After the strike in early April, an NPS supervisor interrogated an officer over union involvement and told the officer that he could lose his job.

Multiple officers also reported being interrogated by a supervisor after their participation in the lawful strike. So as part of my journalistic due diligence, I reached out to NPS for comment on these allegations and I received a reply from CEO and president of MPS, Derek Parks, which says in part, “Metropolitan Protective Services, Inc. Maintains that no employees have been terminated due to union involvement. We fully support our employees’ right to choose whether or not to join a union. Of our 175 employees, only six have been removed from the schedule or terminated all due to licensing issues or performance concerns. We find these allegations to be without merit and believe they are being used by the union to exert pressure on the company.” So I’ve included the full statement from NPS CEO and President Derek Parks in the show notes for this episode so that you can read the full thing.

But for now, as we always do, we’re going to take you guys to the front lines of this struggle so that you can hear directly from the working people at the center of it. And I am really grateful to be joined on the show today by Victoria Cox herself. Victoria is a former MPS employee who worked to get to the rank of Sergeant. And we’re also joined by Daril Riley, a former MPS employee who’s been working there for 15 months and reached the rank of corporal. Both Victoria and Daril have had their shifts taken off the schedule and essentially their jobs taken away and they have both been put under investigation by NPS since the strike began. Victoria, Daril, thank you both so much for joining me today. I really, really appreciate it and I really wish we were meeting under less infuriating circumstances and I want to talk about all of this with you in the short time that we have.

And to start, I wanted to just ask if you guys could both remind our listeners where this strike came from. What are the key issues that you and fellow security guards face on the job? Why have you been trying to unionize and why were you prepared to go on an unfair labor practice strike in April? I just want to make sure that folks listening remember before we talk about what happened after the strike, what this is all about.

Victoria Cox:

Well, for one, I just want to say thank you for taking the time out to hear us. We need to be heard. Enough is enough. Things need to be stopped. I’m a little emotional because we’ve been riding it out for a minute without pay. We got families, we got bills. I just bought a new car. We got bills and stuff to pay and we’re behind. So basically I’m just reaching out for help answers. The investigation being investigated too long. The reason why I’m low emotional because two years is coming up and I’m a sergeant. I’m not understanding why is this happening. I did overtime. I even did fire watch for them on my days off and the union has really stuck by me supporting me. I just need answers and why is this happening? Ever since we’ve been on strike, things has been really like hell, truthfully help for us.

Change has been like every day since we’ve been on strike, things has been like a change every day. Every day is everything. More has been added onto us and we obeyed it. When I did the 16 hours and came in the next day at nine o’clock, I think I was rightfully deserved, rightfully deserved a break. And I took my break at 11:30. As I took my break at 11:30, they came marching down like military people and asked me why was I sitting in my car on my lunch break and even lied to me and said in post orders, “I’m not allowed to sit in my car for a lunch break.” And I asked them to show me that in the post orders. They couldn’t. I pulled it up. It was nothing there. I screenshotted, sent Gmails no reply nicely. And it started off, I said, “Good morning and good afternoon.” It also ended with, “Thank you.

Can you respond to me to let me know what am I under investigated for? ” No response. So today I have gotten a Gmail saying, “Oh, it got moved to higher up chief. We need answers. We have bills. We have family. This is not fair.

We are not taking off the schedule. If you’re done with us and we’re fine, tell us that so we can move on and get unemployment and go further.” But they’re not responding and not saying nothing to us. Right now, we’re not getting paid, noth. And it’s so unfair. I just need answers.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Thank you so much for sharing that, Victoria. I really appreciate it and I completely understand why you’re feeling the way that you are. My heart breaks thinking about all the many working people I’ve talked to who are in situations like yours and just how callous these bosses are towards our pain, how callous politicians can be to that pain, how much the media can ignore it. And of course we’re doing our best here to sort of counteract that, but I guess I’m appealing to everyone listening to this that don’t let these stories and these injustices just fade into the background. Nothing’s going to happen here unless fellow workers stand up and demand accountability. And we’re going to talk more about that as this conversation goes on. And Darrell, I wanted to bring you in here and I wanted to ask if you could talk a little bit about what it was like working for you at NPS before the strike and then help remind our listeners why you went on strike and then we’ll talk about what happened to you after the strike.

Daril Riley:

Actually, before the strike, the job really wasn’t so bad. We didn’t have a whole bunch of rules or whatever. However, the job always been dangerous on most jobs is the police and then you. On our job, it’s us first and then the police. So we go into everything, like I said, head on, we get paid a little bit of money and we take all the brunt of the work. Like I said, we go in all kind of dangerous situations where it’s shootouts, where somebody got killed in the house, all that. We go first. The police is second to that, but we was really doing our job just fine basically until after the strike. So I mean, of course we want better situation because at the end of the day, we not the police. You know what I’m saying? But we acting like it, but we don’t get to pay that they get.

You know what I mean? So basically we was just trying to ask for better conditions for the job that we worked. I mean, we think we deserve it.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and I’m just remembering some of the things we talked about in that last episode. I mean, all the different things you guys have to deal with. And we also talked about the fact that it’s tough because most people don’t have good interactions with security guards. And so people tend to not want to sympathize with workers that they hear are security guards. But then when you listen to the kind of stuff that you guys deal with on your shift and the kind of pay that you’re getting and the kind of crap you got to deal with from your management, I think it’s really important that everyone hear that and consider the human being behind the uniform. And so talk to me about the strike itself. I mean, how were you both feeling going into the strike? And then let’s talk about how quickly things changed after the strike in early April.

Victoria Cox:

Well, wow. I’m going to take it a little bit and rewind it back and I apologize I didn’t bring this up. We also, me and my partner, which is Daril Riley was stuck at work for three days and they promised us that they were going to … I don’t know what the surprise was supposed to have been and we never got it. We stayed away for three days. They never called a checkup on us or anything. So we sucked that up, let it go, say, “Hey, well, we rolled it out. We still doing to do our job. We still was dedicated. I didn’t know it was going to go this far. We still continue to do our job.” But soon as when the union got involved, of course they said, “No, y’all don’t need no union, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” We said, “No, we need a union.” So of course I stuck out that sore thumb because I said, “We need this.

” So I made sure that I went up to a lot of the other officers. We got it done. Of course we go on strike and who faces biggest days on the poster mine. So of course I was a target. I was told by other officers that, “Oh yeah, we’re going to get her. She going to be the first one.” They were going after everyone that went on strike. But again, I kept a professional. Before I went on strike, I did. I told them I’m going on strike, but I have courage. And I did have coverage and I did the rightful thing. I just didn’t walk off the job. I didn’t abandon anything and I still did the rifle thing to protect my job and I still get treated like this.

I’m lost. I’m lost for words. So I just feel like they made it even worse. When we joined the union, it’s like, “Yeah, okay. Y’all not going to do what we say. We got something.” So it was like they was trying to find … I felt we were set up. They were trying to find something, something on us. So they said, “Let’s just pick with Sergeant Cox. She was sitting in our car, this just did 16 hours, came back nine o’clock. When all of us make 11:30, nah.” But I always cover myself by having proof. It was nothing said on the post orders. And then it was a smack my face the next day. The captain told me, “Hey, what so- and-so did 16 hours?” And I gave her 40 minutes and she went off post. I said, “I’m a sergeant, so what’s make her different from me?

” And she’s a new guard, so that’s why I’m hurting. I’m not understanding. I never have gotten written up either. I always was a yes or a person, even though when it was wrong, because at the end of the day, I have bills. I have bills to pay. I didn’t have a family to feed and now my family questioning me, what’s going on? And now I’m behind on some things. And I don’t even know, and I’m going to be honest with you, we even try to cash out with PTO. I don’t even know if they going to set that. And we’re in this interview right now and it’s crazy because I just got a call from Metropolitan and I got a text message from SOC telling me to call her. That’s what I wanted to bring up as well. I don’t know what this is about either.

What they going to say, no, I can’t get PTO now.

Maximillian Alvarez:

So just to make sure that we’ve got it all clear here. So Victoria, we’re working at Westport Housing, you’ve worked there for a while. Like you said earlier, you’d never been written up, you did double shifts, you’re a team player, right? And then after working a 16-hour day, the next morning you come in and at 9:00 AM in the morning, you take your lunch break at 11:00 and you have your lunch in your car and then they use that to essentially take your shifts and your job and everything away.

Victoria Cox:

Yes. They literally told Fib and said, “Oh, you on your lunch break for a whole hour.” I’m like, “What?” And I’m not being funny because I have a monkey joke. Literally, they was walking down. I didn’t even really start my lunch this year. I was eating a banana and I continued to eat my banana as I was talking to them. But I also, when they were saying something crazy, I showed them a screenshot where the post order saying that I cannot leave the post or cannot sit in my car for a lunch break. They just had their head down. So they was really trying to find something on me.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And again, this is just my ignorance of the situation. They’re trying to say that this is like a fireable offense.

Victoria Cox:

Yes. Under investigation,

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yep. Yeah. I want to be careful for listeners because Sergeant Cox has not been fired, but is under investigation, has essentially been taken all off the schedule, which is effectively firing a person without firing them, but I want to be careful with the language that we’re using. And so Victoria, so they said that because you left your post to eat your lunch in your car, that’s why it happened?

Victoria Cox:

I have them laugh on this. I’m sorry, because it’s my nerves. I have to laugh on this because when they said I left the post, I swear if you go down there, anybody that hear this go down at Westport, they be like, “Wait a minute, I even showed pictures.” I did not leave the post at all where where I was at was right there that still said Westport. I was still on the property, still there. No restaurant carry out, nothing. I was sitting in my car on the side that still say Westport. I was still in … If that’s the case, if I was off the property, how did you find me?

Maximillian Alvarez:

And how soon did this happen after the strike? Oh,

Victoria Cox:

God. I’m going to say I’d say three weeks. Again,

Maximillian Alvarez:

I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but from what you’ve been saying, it sounds like things were kind of getting noticeably worse

Victoria Cox:

Over the course

Maximillian Alvarez:

Of those three weeks.

Victoria Cox:

Yes. It seemed like ever since that happened, they would come down ain’t never their entire life because me and Corporal Riley kept saying, “Wait a minute, I’m Sergeant, you called. Why are they coming down here every day and they switch stuff up? All right y’all, y’all can’t be right here. Y’all can’t eat inside the building.” I said, “Well, I’m going to sit in my car to eat lunch.” Or, “I’m going to need y’all to start checking the front and unlocking it. I mean, making sure these doors unlock and lock.” It was things changed. It was changing every day, every day. And I even asked her when it’s pulled down raining, we said, “Yeah, I want y’all out here. Just keep walking, keep walking.” So if your legs start hurt, just keep walking or laying up against the fence. It just kept getting worse and worse and worse.

And now I guess they feel they won, “Well, yeah, we got her out of here on my lunch break.” And they also asked me why was he in his view? I said, “He’s not supposed to be alone. If something happened to him, then it’s not going to fall on me. ” So what is the problem? No one stands alone, correct? We supposed to be a team together and we were still on property. So if something did kick, we had the radios. We had to stop what we was doing and jump to it immediately like we always do.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And Daryl, how about you? Can you talk us through what this was all looking like from your vantage point after the strike?

Daril Riley:

After the strike, basically rules we never even heard of before, never even seen was now a rule that we didn’t know nothing about, you know what I’m saying? It was all new. They was basically just doing everything off the cuff, you know what I’m saying? After that, it was just like whatever, we’ll just find anything or whatever. But before then, these same things and all that with never an issue was never talked about or whatever. And the thing about it is everybody anyway goes off a property to go take their 30-minute break. You call it into command that you taking your 30-minute break so they know it. You call it in and then you call it out when it’s over. So two days before that, our captain came and said that one of the people from the contract said that we left the site or whatever.

I said, “No.” I said, “I left the site.” I went to Popeye’s. I said, “I called in the 30 minutes to command and then when I got back, I called it back out. ” And he said, “Well, that’s for us. That’s not for them.” So basically he was saying, “Okay, it’s really okay for the company.” But he don’t want the contractors to know that that’s what it is. But basically we got in trouble anyway because of it just after that.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And again, I’ll qualify this by saying that I’m drawing this comparison just as myself, Max Alvarez, a journalist who’s interviewed workers in different situations across this country, including workers at Starbucks stores that have been unionizing or trying to unionize or successfully voted to unionize. This is the kind of crap that those workers have been telling me for years. They say, “Yeah, man, all of a sudden managers are writing us up for things that they have never written a single person up for ever before. They’re saying that they’re not retaliating against us for union activity, but suddenly my hours are getting cut and now I’m losing my healthcare. I’m being assigned shifts in another store. It feels like blatant retaliation and punishment for protected union activity for everyone listening, that is illegal. Employers cannot do that. It is illegal for an employer to retaliate against you or any other worker engaging in lawful concerted union activity.

Those are your rights. And what it sounds like here is that we have another situation where workers, yourselves included, engaged in those protected rights to walk out on an unfair labor practice strike and then faced what sounds like weeks worth of retaliatory action culminating in these BS investigations and charges that you guys abandoned your posts and got taken off the schedule. So that’s again, just my commentary and observation, but the question I want to ask you both because it’s a significant one is do you suspect that you were being retaliated against for engaging in the strike?

Victoria Cox:

Yes, I know for sure. I’m telling you, I have gotten a lot of phone calls that was backing me up and saying, Hey, and I’m not even being funny, but they said, I’m just letting you know since you’ve been on that strike, you’ve been on the news and you posted up. The major came to them and told them, which is unprofessional, that I was on the chopper board. They want to make sure they get rid of me.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And Daril, do you believe you were retaliated against for participating in the strike?

Daril Riley:

Yeah, of course. I mean, because the company never wanted it to begin with. They made all kind of snide remarks and basically tried to put us against the union. They never wanted. And then once we went to it and then once it was over, then basically they showing us that they never wanted this. And so basically that’s what we’re going through now.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, let’s talk about what you’re going through now. As much as you’re comfortable sharing, nothing you’re uncomfortable sharing, but I know I got to let you guys go in a few minutes. And with the little time that we have left, I wanted to talk about what this has meant for you and your families, like how this has affected your lives and where the hell things stand now with this investigation, your jobs, and what is the union doing to help and what can people listening do to help?

Victoria Cox:

Well, I have to say this, and I’m sorry I’m getting emotional again. The God I serve, I know he’s going to have an answer for me and they always say when one door is shut another one open and thank God that I have a good support system and my fiance has really supported me through it all. They told me keep fighting, keep fighting, keep fighting. So without her and family members, trust me, you just don’t know. I probably had a nervous breakdown, but like I said, the God I serve and thank God I have them in my life, I will be devastated with how y’all be out here doing things I ain’t got no business doing. So I’m just asking those that’s listening to keep us in prayer and keep fighting and fighting for us and we just want answers. We need your help. We out here and been out of work with no pay, no unemployment and not understanding why.

Why? We just need help and prayer.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And Darrell, please hop in here, but I just wanted to underline something that Victoria said for everyone listening in case we haven’t made it clear if you don’t get outright fired but you just get taken off the schedule, you can’t collect unemployment. So it’s like screwing someone over twice. They can’t work to pay their bills and they can’t collect unemployment to help with the cost of that. And that’s what Daryl and Victoria are dealing with right now. Daryl, please hop in here and whatever you’re comfortable sharing with folks, just tell us where things are for you, what the union’s doing and what folks listening can do to help.

Daril Riley:

Wow. I mean, basically the union has been great for us and very supportive and basically, I mean, I’m glad I’m with them and I mean, I’m glad I met those people. However, bills do still go on even though since pretty much now I’m at a standstill. I mean, I’m sure it’s fired because basically they saying that, but they won’t say that. So basically, like you said, I mean, no unemployment, can’t get my 401k out until something happened or whatever. So basically, I mean, I have a family, I don’t know how it’s going to be, really, really tough to support them. So I mean, right now, I mean, I really don’t know what. We just going

Victoria Cox:

To keep fighting. We just going to keep fighting. Like he said, the union has really, really has been reaching us even on holidays. They reach out to us to make sure that we okay. You need anything, let us know. So we just want answers and need you guys help. Don’t give up on us and we are not going to give up on you guys. We just going to keep fighting.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us today. I want to thank our guests, Victoria Cox and Darryl Riley. Victoria is a former employee of Metropolitan Protective Services who work to get to the rank of Sergeant and Daryl is a former MPS employee who’s been working there for 15 months and reached the rank of corporal. Both Victoria and Daryl have had their shifts taken off the schedule and essentially had their jobs taken away and they have both been put under investigation by NPS since they participated in an unfair labor practice strike in early April. And of course, I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see y’all back here next time for another episode of Working People. And in the meantime, please go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots reporting that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle.

Check us out across our YouTube channel, our podcast feeds, our website, and our social media pages and help us do more work like this by going to the realnews.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you guys it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership with In These Times Magazine and the Real News Network. The show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we’re talking about coal miners and workers in the coal mining industry and what the government is doing to help them or hurt them under President Trump. Mr. I love coal miners. It’s been a meme ever since the 2016 presidential election. Trump loves throwing on a coal miner’s helmet and lining up coal miners around him for the cameras. He loves talking about bringing coalback quote unquote. He loves talking about quote beautiful clean coal.

Trump and right-wing media are so obsessed with cultivating this image of him as the coal miners champion and this so- called blue collar billionaire who really gets the working class. And obviously the industry itself is all for it. Earlier this year, Trump was even crowned the quote undisputed champion of beautiful clean coal. And he was presented with this big stupid trophy by the Washington Coal Club, which is an advocacy group with financial ties to the coal industry. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s one video that the White House posted on Instagram in early February of this year.

President Donald Trump:

The most important people here today are those who get their hands a little bit dirty to keep America running at full speed. Our frontline coal workers.

Coal Miner 1 (Kayla Blackford):

My name is Kayla Blackford. I work at the Bear Run Mine. I drive a haul truck and I think what the president has done for the coal industry is really important and we’re able to keep electricity prices down.

Coal Miner 2 (Vernon Roche III):

My name is Vernon Roche III. I’m a coal miner in Alabama, Shoal Creek Min. We know that President Trump loves clean coal.

Coal Miner 3 (Drew):

Been in the coal industry for 16 years and the time with Trump being in office. It’s been a great deal for my family, from a small coal mining town in Southern West Virginia originally.

Coal Miner 4 (Scott):

Conveyor belts are the machines that we use to transport coal from 600,000 feet below ground to the surface where it goes to power plants that fuel America’s energy.

Coal Miner 5 (Matt):

We are thankful for President Trump’s commitment to coal to bring affordable energy to American people. It gives us the ability to sell coal to the power plants to get us to the extreme cold temperatures, the extreme heats in the summers when our energy grid would be struggling. It always has been and always will be affordable, reliable source for electricity.

President Donald Trump:

The really dependable form of energy that we have and that’s clean, beautiful coal.

Coal Miner 1 (Kayla Blackford):

Thank you, President Trump.

Child 1:

Thank you, President Trump.

Coal Miner 2 (Vernon Roche III):

For knowing the clean coal.

Child 1:

Clean, beautiful coal.

Coal Miner 3 (Drew):

Keeps the lights on.

Coal Miner 5 (Matt):

Keeps the lights on.

Coal Miner 4 (Scott):

Thank you, President Trump for knowing that clean coal keeps the lights on.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. So now that we’ve got that Trump marketing machine BS version of reality, let’s contrast that with the shocking news about what the Trump administration is doing to protect those coal miners that they call brave and claim to love so much. And in her latest report for in these times, Kim Kelly writes, “On May 1st, International Workers Day, Trump administration officials targeted the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, the FMSHRC, abruptly firing Commissioner Moshe Marvit, and closing down one of the agency’s three offices. In total, the FMSHRC lost 16 workers as well as the entire Pittsburgh office that day. Marvit has spent the bulk of his career, including 12 years as a supervisory attorney advisor at the FMSHRC unabashedly representing workers’ interests, both in court and as a freelance journalist for outlets like in these times, the Washington Post and dissent. The pro worker reputation preceded him when President Joe Biden first nominated him for a commissioner position back in 2022.

It took three tries to get him confirmed to his current role and he’s not giving it up without a fight. On May 7th, Marvit filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over what he calls his quote unlawful and unjustified purported termination, which has left a backed up FMS HRC even more shorthanded. The Trump administration’s war on coal miner’s health has become especially pronounced during the president’s second term, Kelly continues. The simplering Trump digs coal image the administration seeks to project is vastly at odds with the actions it’s taken to limit minor protections, endanger their health and exacerbate the black lung crisis consuming Central Appalachia, where one in five veteran minors has black lung and one in 20 has the most severe and totally disabling form of the disease. So to talk about all of this, I am really grateful to be joined once again by friend of the show.

You love her, you know her. She’s the one and only. Kim Kelly herself. Kim, for those who don’t know and have been living under a rock, is a freelance journalist and author based in Philadelphia. She is a labor writer for in these times and regularly contributes to many other publications including The Real News Network, he first book, Fight Light Hell: The Untold History of American Labor and the Young Reader’s Edition, Fight to Win. Heroes of American Labor are both available from One Signal Simon & Schuster publishers. Kim, thank you so much for joining us against this. I really, really appreciate it. I want to just kind of jump in and toss it to you. Please pick up where I left off reading from your really important article, which we’ll link to in the show notes, but just break down for folks like what the hell is actually happening here with this little known agency that actually has really important consequences for the lives and health of coal miners and their families.

Kim Kelly:

So here’s the thing, the FMS HRC, I kind of think of it as like talking about a ship named after Hillary, the FMS HRC. A lot of acronyms. I mean, honestly, the acronyms of it all, that kind of plays into the issue here.This is a smaller, respectfully not that sexy little government agency that impacts a very specific group of workers and communities. And it’s being absolutely torn apart as part of this ongoing kind of Trump administration push to deregulate and de- skill and dethrone every possible government employee imaginable that isn’t expressly falling in line with their authoritarian project. I did get to interview someone with very deep knowledge of the agency. Obviously I had to keep their identity to ourselves because there’s only like 30 people left and he was just kind of saying it felt like the thought of someone in Trump world just kind of going down a list of agencies and like it’s their turn.

And this has happened to a lot of other like smaller commissions, boards, OSHA, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, their equivalent of this commission they got, got like the NLRB has gotten all types of jacked up.

It feels as if we’re in kind of a new stage of this dismantling. We had the Doge era where it was like really big, bombastic slash and burn Intel’s going through your computer, like lots of press coverage. And then Doge, it was KIA, took about back, shot, done with that. But this ongoing project has not ceased. It’s just become quieter and arguably more insidious because public attention has understandably shifted towards all of the other cataclysms that our country and our government is responsible for right now. But this came across my radar. Of course, we need to shout out Jordan Barab, the worker safety guy. He incredibly experienced runs confined spaces, fantastic publication. He reported on this first and that’s how it came to my attention. And honestly, the thing that stuck out to me besides the fact that it was about coal miners, coal miner safety is kind of my thing, but I recognize that name, Moshe Marvit, because I remember earlier fights to get him confirmed to this arguably pretty atypical, pretty non-controversial agency.

He’s a lawyer, he’s pro- worker, seems like a fairly inoffensive type of guy to end up on this type of agency that essentially deals with civil cases and worker discrimination cases, but he had a hell of a time getting confirmed and I think it is because he’s an outspoken worker advocate who’s written for lefty publications and was very clearly like pro- worker and he was nominated by Biden. It took forever for him to actually get confirmed and now he gets fired out of nowhere and it seems very clear that there is some kind of ideological purging kind of effort behind this and he is fighting back. The reason I wasn’t able to interview him personally, we chatted a bit, but I couldn’t speak to him on the records because he’s suing the government over this. I think Jordan mentioned that this was the first time in I think the 50 years of this agency’s existence that someone had been removed from the commission in this way.

And this commission was created as part of the 1977 Mine Act, which is really mostly one of our, I think, lesser known but more impressive pieces of labor legislation in this country is obviously coal miner specific, but it really did a good job of laying out very specific protections and building up agencies like MSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Administration. It’s a good law. It’s a good law. And this is something that obviously the people that run coal mines and make money off of coal mines and get their little clean, greedy fingers all over coal miners paychecks, of course there’s stuff in there that they would prefer not to have to deal with like safety regulations like worker safety laws, like union organizing rights. And something that stuck with me when I was talking to this anonymous worker at the agency, they were saying the fact that there’s three people left, one’s Republican, then there’s two Democrats whose terms end in August.

And with Moshi currently out of the picture, if they lose people, they lose the ability to have a quorum, which essentially means they can’t do anything. And I asked them, “Do you think more people will be confirmed? What do you think will happen?” And they said something that I thought was so interesting and terrible like, “Well, what if the reason that there isn’t a big rush to confirm even Trump loyalists is that they just don’t want to deal with enforcing this law at all What if they’re trying to kind of kill it by a thousand cuts by just chipping away at things?” And I thought that was a really astute and stressful observation to make because this is the thing, right? It’s not all like this onslaught against worker safety and human rights and every other possible decent thing that people are able to derive from this government.

So much of it has been big, bombastic, like big fights, but a lot of it has been happening behind the scenes in these little agencies, these smaller commissions, boards, federal, like places with beige offices that they’re not as exciting, they’re not as photogenic, they’re not going to get headlines necessarily, but they really have a very important role to play. There’s a reason they exist and they have an impact on people’s lives. For example, the FMS HRC, there are coal miners who are waiting for cases to be heard. There’s workers who have filed discrimination complaints over them being discriminated against for calling out safety issues at work. Those are people. There’s civil penalty cases in which MSHA has basically found that a mine is unsafe, that it’s engaging in unsafe practices or violating safety practices. Someone has to do something about that. I know it can be a little like red tapey and bureaucracy and all of this.

It’s a little convoluted reading up on this stuff enough to write a useful article took a little bit of time, but that’s almost kind of part of it, right? Like what they do in the shadows.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And that work done in the labor done in the shadows in these government agencies that you’re talking about, it is such a shame that we have so little understanding of that and the media is as culpable for that as anybody, but your average citizen doesn’t understand that and thus can’t see past the word and the hatred for the concept of government bureaucracy. And so when these cuts from Doge or Trump or wherever they are, the firings from Trump, the cuts from Doge, people just see a sort of attack on that bureaucracy, but they’re not seeing the people who are responsible for resolving these disputes and claims that matter a hell of a lot to coal miners who are spending their lives underground and trying not to be taken advantage of for it. They matter to … I interviewed some whistleblowers who were both fired from HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development earlier this year or last year and they were whistleblowers talking about how that agency has effectively become defunct and like the people like them who were lawyers who were responsible for ensuring that like battered women and people in life threatening situations get the housing that they need, that they’re not being exploited by like landlords or anything.

These are real people in life critical circumstances that all of that, like you said, Kim, is now just being sort of hushed and silenced at the same time that the media industry and the whole media ecosystem is going haywire. And so it’s a real crisis, but you are one of, again, those sterling examples of like a committed journalist who has maintained through the chaos a commitment to the coal miners that you report on, the industry, the working conditions in this industry, the environmental conditions. You’ve been doing excellent reporting on the black lung crisis in this country. We connected and worked together here at the Real News for years as you were reporting on the Warrior Met coal strike in Alabama. So with all of that knowledge and firsthand contact with people in the industry, I wanted to ask before I let you go, what state was the coal industry and coal workers in going into the second Trump presidency and how has whatever the hell this administration is doing, like for all it says it loves coal miners, like is it actually helping coal miners?

Is it helping the coal industry? What’s actually happening here?

Kim Kelly:

It’s interesting. I think back to the beginning, I guess of this, not even this one, I think back to like 2020, 21 in the earlier days of these things, and I remember talking to a minor in Alabama who had said, “Just so you know, I’m a Trump guy and he brought coal prices have been super high since he got in. ” And I was like, “Oh, well, have you seen any of that? ” And he’s like, “Well, no ma’am.” And I was like, “Oh, okay.” And that always plays in the back of my mind when it comes to this reporting because it is I think a true thing that coal industry interests have found the Trump administration to be positive at the very least just in terms of skewing the playing field in their favor and trying to destroy previously approved and funded renewable energy projects.

They’ve been pushing this coal line incredibly strongly against anyone’s conventional wisdom or scientific wisdom, really just like a fool’s errand and that’s endeared them to the industry movers and shakers. But for the workers, it’s been bad. It has not been bad. Wages haven’t gone up. The jobs aren’t coming back. I think we’re down to about probably less at this point. I think last year, the year before, it was about 33,000 coal miners left in the country. If I double check the stats now, I’m sure it’s gone down. And some of the big worker safety wins that coal miners across any political persuasion, because it is not a monolith, it’s not just a whole bunch of white guys voting for Trump. I’ve met plenty of people that do not fit that description and have talked to union representatives for the UAW that are very aware that they have a pretty diverse coalition of, well, not even coalition, just a diverse group of people in their union.

Retirees are one thing, but the younger folks and other generations, you’d be surprised. But a lot of the work that has been doing around these sort of community issues like the black lung crisis, like worker safety, like pensions, like black lung payments out of this fund, the existing black lung benefits fund for workers and former workers who have been diagnosed and disabled by black lung. A lot of that work actually started bearing some fruit during the Biden administration because there weren’t as many roadblocks. The one thing I learned through reporting on agency doings that I hadn’t known that much about before I kind of dove in was how pivotal it is that there is a nominally at least pro- worker or not cartoonishly anti-worker at least a person in the executive chair and then the administration because a lot of the people, especially pre-Trump purges that work in these agencies are just trying to get shit done, but their ability to do so can be either helped or hindered by who’s in charge.

So for example, in 2024, at the very end of the Biden administration, minors and their advocates, because they did the real work, they finally got this new silica exposure rule basically approved. The process is a whole situation, but we’ll just say they got it, right? They got this new rule that was going to limit the amount of silica dust that coal miners could be exposed to during their work days. This is not a new thing since 1974. We’ve known that silica dust is toxic, 20 times more toxic than coal dust. It is the absolute biggest factor driving the uptick in black lung cases and severe black lung cases among coal miners, especially those that are much younger have much less time underground. We’re talking late 20s, 30s, 40s folks dealing with the most severe and debilitating form of this disease. Silica is the biggest reason.

And up until this rule finally got through, coal miners were legally able to be exposed to twice as much silica dust as any other worker in the entire country because silicate is something that exists in a lot of other professions. There’s construction workers, courts countertop workers in California that are dealing with their own silicosis crisis right now, but we know all this workers have been trying to do something about this for a really long time. Finally got to the finish line, 2024. It was supposed to be implemented April 2025. What happened between those two things happening, Trump got elected all of a sudden that rule very specific, very much not something the coal industry wanted to deal with because it required them to follow some more rules and maybe spend a couple more dollars on safety equipment and engineering controls and ate into their profits the tiniest bit.

They didn’t want anything to do with it. And so this rule that took decades of activism and law being organized and by coal miners and public health advocates and everybody who wasn’t a total thickhead were trying to get this through and it kept being delayed, just kicked down. At first, I think it was a three month delay. Then it was like a six month delay. It just kept getting delayed, the implementation and enforcement to the point where the most recent development is that it’s been basically pulled back for more judicial review, further study, more changes for essentially they’re going to make it easier for the coal industry interest to come in and weaken it and just chop it all up.This is something that should not be controversial no matter what values you have. Making it so that fewer people get black lung seems pretty infensive, seems like a decent win even at the point where some of Cold State senators like full on Trump zombies came out earlier during the Doge era when NIOSH and black lung monitoring services were getting slashed up.

They’re like, “Oh, wait, wait, maybe can we keep some of that? ” And the administration pulled back. So all that to say, things have gotten worse. They’ve gotten worse. It’s just as dangerous, if not worse, because there’s this emphasis on coal and this emphasis on trying to open new mines and new coal fired facilities. It’s not going to be good for anyone but the people who have been making money off of these workers, blood, sweat, tears, and lung tissue for centuries now. And it’s really disappointing. We don’t expect anything good to come out of the kind of people that Trump puts in charge of these agencies or Trump himself, but it’s like, what is the constituency for killmore coal miners? Who is asking him and them to make it harder for workers to have safety discrimination cases heard? Who’s voting for that? It’s not like these are big popular … No one’s like, “You know who really deserves a comeup into those fat cats at the FMSHRC.” It’s like, who is this for?

There’s like one cold guy somewhere who’s like, “Yeah,

We got them.” And it’s just unfortunate. And I’ve been reporting this for a long time. This is one of my things I report on. I ended up being that guy. And the one thing that … Well, there’s a lot of things that make me sad, but one thing that makes me sad and frustrated when I share stories on social media like, “Here’s this article I wrote, please clap.” There is always, always some people, some commenters who are like, “Well, they voted for this. ” Well, that’s what they get. Who did they vote for? Who do they vote for? And that has been a recurring theme ever since I first started writing about coal miners, gosh, almost like six, seven years ago. There’s a real lack of empathy and a real sort of spitefulness from some folks who just assume that coal miners are all the same, they’re all the same kind of person, they all voted the same way.

And it’s just disappointing to see because I guarantee you, no one voted to get black lung and lose the ability to breathe or play with their grandkids or their kids. People being sold a bill of goods, I don’t think anybody deserves to die because they voted for someone who lied to them.

Maximillian Alvarez:

No, I wholeheartedly agree. And it’s like the exact same thing I say to people who say those exact same comments when I’m reporting from East Palestine, Ohio or that train derail. They’re like, “Well, they voted for that. They deserve it. ” I was like, “Are you kidding me? Do you see what they’re going through?” How could you say that on a video that is showing you that they’re dying? Have we lost so much of our humanity that we can’t even empathize with each other on that basic level? And again, I could talk to you about this for days, but I know I got to let you go. And I want to underscore for people that that is why Kim’s work is so important and why we work so well together with Kim here at the Real News is because if you’re not tending to that human stuff, then you’re not actually interested in the truth, right?

You’re interested in an argument about the truth and how you can twist the truth into something else for your own purpose. We are reporters who care about human beings. So we go out and get the truth wherever it lives in the complex lives of complex people, like the ones that Kim is talking about. And Kim, with just a two-minute maybe wrap up, I wanted to end on that note, not asking you to speak for anyone or any group of people, but just any points you want to impress upon people who are thinking that way, especially in an election year. Well, they voted for that. Why should I care about that? What do you want them to know about what black lung actually does to your body? What do you want them to know about what it’s actually like to work in a coal mine or live in a coal mining community?

Just anything you want to leave folks with before we let you go and wrap up.

Kim Kelly:

So years ago, I made friends with a retired coal miner named Danny Witt and he got diagnosed with black lung in 1988, that’s the year I was born. So for my entire life, his lungs have been struggling to function. He’s had a hard time walking. He had to stop doing a job that he works to care for his family and put food on the table and he kind of got off easy in a way, which is a wild way to frame it. But Danny’s lungs are full of coal dust. I’ve met people my age, I’m 38. I’ve met people my age and a little bit younger who have lungs full of silica and they can’t breathe on their own. They can’t really walk anymore. If you’ve seen photos of what a lung with black lung coal miners pneumoconiosis, it’s government name, it literally turns black.

There’s a man named John Moore, a black father of three in West Virginia who he wasn’t even a career coal miner. He picked up some shifts while he was doing other stuff. He had a wig shop, he does events now. He was all over the place. He was hustling and he’s dying and he’s 42 and I don’t think he deserves that. I don’t think he voted for Trump, but he might have. I didn’t ask. I asked what he was doing to take care of himself and how his daughters were coping. And I think there is so much humanity that is missed when we give into these kind of divisions and this manufactured tribalism. I know there’s people that I report on that probably think I am just the worst godless calmy piece of trash. And you know what? Join the club. I’ve been online for a long time.

Not everybody has to … You don’t have to like me. I still don’t think you need to choke to death. I might wonder why does some tattooed broad from Jersey going down to Alabama all the time talking to coal miners? Well, because they remind me of my dad. He works in construction. He has terrible political opinions, but there’s a lot of things we do agree on and I’ve been able to move him a little bit towards the way to seeing the world I see it. Not that it’s the right way, but it makes sense to me. I think we need to give each other a little bit more grace. And it is easy for me to say that I’m a whitebroad from Jersey. There’s a lot of structural things. There’s a lot of racist things. There’s a lot of stuff that I don’t have to think about that other folks have to think about because of who they are Or how they’re born, where they’re from, how they identify.

And I understand why some people would be like, “Well, I don’t have any sympathy for these people. Why would I care? They don’t think that I deserve to exist.” And that’s fair. You’re allowed to think that. I get why you would. I would just ask if you have the time to think about it a little bit, maybe nobody should suffer. Maybe there’s some things we can sort out after the revolution. If we just have to ensure that enough of us make it there to have time to sit down and have those conversations.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us today. I want to thank our guests, the indomitable Kim Kelly, freelance journalist and labor writer. Go find Kim’s book, Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor and follow more of her writing using the links that we provided in the show notes for this episode. And of course, I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see y’all back here next time for another episode of Working People. And in the meantime, go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the Real News Network across all our different platforms. And we’re doing grassroots reporting that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the real news newsletter so you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the realnews.com/donate and becoming a supporter today.

I promise you guys it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other. Solidarity forever.