Splicetoday

Politics & Media
Oct 03, 2008, 07:08AM

Fired Up Unions

Hopefully you've checked out the hard-hitting speech by Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO. Here's another example of labor unions bringing the fire.

Stereotypes are meant to be broken. West Virginia might seem like a state ripe for guns and Republicans and the NRA. It is, to some extent. But look what happened when the NRA tried to shoot an attack ad at a West Virginian mine:

More than 440 workers who are members of the United Mine Workers of America took what's called a Memorial Day instead of going to work.

Union officials say they took the day to protest after a film crew from the National Rifle Assocation showed up at the Consol mine last week to interview union workers.

They say the crew tried to get union coal miners to speak out against Barak Obama.

The UMWA has endorsed the democratic presidential nominee.

"This was a surprise visit," explained VP Local 1702, Safety Chairman Eric Greathouse, "and a lot of the miners felt this was a direct slap in the face of the union because they were trying to coerce our people into saying things against Barck Obama."

"Consol doesn't let anybody on their property - never," said Safety Committee Member Mark Dorsey, "And for them to let the NRA come on the property and solicit our membership was totally uncalled for. We made our endorsement to our political process and we didn't bother them and they shouldn't be harassing our membership over this.

Pretty inspiring stuff.

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