How Coal Miners Helped Shape America’s Labor Landscape.

A huge sigh of relief could be heard across the coalfields on Sept. 16 when Murray Energy Holdings, America’s fourth-largest coal producer, announced that a federal bankruptcy judge had approved its Chapter 11 plan to sell all its assets to American Consolidated Natural Resources (ACNR), a new company set up by its former creditors. ACNR is now the largest privately owned coal operator in the United States. Its owners hope to extract about 35 million tons of bituminous coal a year from its pits, and they have agreed to hire United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) coal miners, who once worked for Murray, to help them do it… read more >