Miners in Harlan County, Kentucky are demanding weeks in back pay after a major coal company issued bad checks to hundreds of non-union workers before abruptly declaring bankruptcy, resulting in lost jobs and overdrawn bank accounts.
Protestors have occupied a section of railroad tracks near the remote town of Cumberland since last Monday, when six out-of-work miners gathered to block a train loaded with about $1 million worth of coal from leaving a mine owned by their former employer, Blackjewel LLC. The encampment grew last week as churches, politicians, and a community already ravaged by a declining coal industry rallied to support the miners’ effort to get compensated for their work. Blackjewel reportedly wrote cold checks to about 350 miners in the county.
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