Arnold Ray Miller (April 25, 1923 – July 12, 1985) was a miner and labor activist who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), AFL–CIO, from 1972 to 1979.
Winning as a reform candidate, he gained positive changes for the miners, including compensation for black lung disease.
Miller was born in 1923 in Leewood, West Virginia, a small town in the Cabin Creek area east of Charleston.
At the age of 14, George Miller was already an activist in the union and was forced to leave Kentucky by thugs employed by the mine owners.
[1] When the mine owners broke the UMWA locals in the Cabin Creek area in 1921, Miller's father and maternal grandfather were blacklisted and unable to find work.
Although Miller's mother was pregnant, his father George took a job in Fayette County working for the Gauley Mountain Coal Company (where he became president of the local miners' union).
He was trained as a machine-gunner, and severely wounded in the Normandy invasion of Europe in World War II (most of one ear was shot away).
On February 18, 1969, Miller and thousands of other West Virginia miners launched a 23-day wildcat strike to demand enactment of the black-lung bill.
On New Year's Eve, December 31, 1969, three hitmen shot Yablonski, his wife, Margaret, and his 25-year-old daughter, Charlotte, as they slept in the family home in Clarksville, Pennsylvania.
[3] The day after news of the Yablonski killings was published, 20,000 miners in West Virginia walked off the job in a one-day strike — they believed that Boyle was responsible for the murders.
On January 8, 1970, Yablonski's attorney waived the right to further internal review by the union and requested that DOL initiate an immediate investigation of the election.
Its members included most of the miners who belonged to the West Virginia Black Lung Association and many of Yablonski's supporters and campaign staff.
A number of union members were seen as potential MFD candidates, including Miller, Trbovich and miner Elijah Wood.
Arnold Miller was the first candidate to defeat an incumbent president in UMWA history, and the first native West Virginian to lead the union.
[11] "He was not an exceptionally good United Mine Workers President..."[5] It became clear that Miller, whose only previous administrative experience had been running a 200-member local, was not capable of managing a 250,000-member union.
Miller proved naive about union politics and only reluctantly controlled meetings (most of which turn into "parliamentary pandemonium, quarreling, shouting and ... nearly coming to blows").
He also became somewhat paranoid about his enemies: He sold his home in D.C. and moved to a small, secure apartment in Arlington, Virginia, kept a baseball bat by his desk, and carried a Smith & Wesson .38 handgun to local union meetings.
His leadership style became increasingly autocratic, and he adopted the trappings of power (for example, like Boyle, he began using a huge limousine) and fired staff frequently.
But the membership's unhappiness with the new collective bargaining agreement led to a continuing wave of wildcat strikes, and significantly slowed the union's organizing growth.
In early June, 1974, Trbovich circulated a letter among UMWA's board of directors accusing Miller — and, to a lesser degree, Patrick — of gross financial mismanagement.
At a meeting of United Mine Workers locals in northeastern Pennsylvania in early May, Miller and Trbovich engaged in a shouting match in front of the members.
A 1978 landmark complaint to the Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs was brought by the Coal Employment Project, a women's advocacy organization.
Miller's vice president and successor, Sam Church, responded with an off-color joke when pressed by the women for the addition to the contract for affirmative action and improved sickness and accident coverage.
But in order to shore up support during the campaign, Miller agreed to seek additional democratic reforms advocated by militant district leaders.
Few observers believed he would emerge strong enough from the election to control the union's executive board and bargaining council and avoid a national strike in December.
Miller relied instead on a law firm for bargaining advice, which caused confusion among UMWA negotiators and sent mixed signals to the employers.
[20] Eventually, UMWA and mine negotiators settled on new, improved dispute resolution procedures which they hoped would lower the number of wildcat strikes.
[citation needed] On March 29, 1978, just ten days after the coal mining contract was ratified, Miller suffered a stroke while on vacation in Miami Beach, Florida.
By this time, his political opponents had decided that his erratic behavior and poor physical condition justified putting him on involuntary leave.
"Possibly Miller's greatest achievements were the internal reforms he instituted within our union and the historic breakthrough he led in the area of black lung legislation," Trumka said.