"CO: UMWA Ludlow Memorial", by AFL-CIO America's Unions, CC BY 2.0
When considering workplace artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and new digital technologies, one might envision workers in Silicon Valley or remote factory robotics. However, coal miners represented by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) are addressing the effects of technological change in coal mines and Wall Street from New York City to the Navajo Nation.
In the workplace, contemporary mining technologies and practices without adequate regulations and implementation of safety technologies have resulted in a surge of silica-dust-induced Black Lung disease. At the bargaining table, the union saw how finance automation and AI have restructured operations and decision-making at mining companies whose major shareholders are Wall Street investment funds. Both technologies serve the same purpose: extracting maximum value from workers while minimizing human oversight and accountability.
The situation can appear bleak when the speed, method, and degree that technologies shape our workplaces seem beyond our control. However, the UMWA’s concerted efforts to simultaneously advocate for, on one level, stricter enforced workplace health and safety regulations and, on another level, human intervention in increasingly AI-driven decisions on Wall Street underscore the fact that technology itself is never determinate. Instead, workers across diverse employment sectors can and must assert collective agency in shaping the role of technology and sharing its benefits.
UMWA and Workplace Technology, Health and Safety, and Regulation
An increasing number of coal miners are facing pneumoconiosis, an incurable industrial disease once thought to be on the verge of eradication. Historically, pneumoconiosis, better known as Black Lung, was associated with miners breathing in coal dust. However, today, the resurgence of Black Lung comes primarily from miners breathing in rock or silica particles 20 times more toxic than coal dust.
Black Lung’s Deadly Comeback
The spike in silica-caused Black Lung is often attributed to contemporary mechanical mining technologies which mine narrower coal seams and produce greater quantities of finer rock dust. Dr. Robert Cohen from the Mining Education and Research Center at the University of Illinois Chicago “attributes silica-driven resurgence as likely due to changes in mining technology like the mechanized coal extraction devices introduced in the U.S.”
Too often workers’ health and safety bear the brunt of workplace technological change, and workers–through their unions–must increasingly demand a say in how new workplace technologies are implemented, evaluated, and regulated. UMWA and its members are leading the charge for regulatory requirements to mandate that mining companies adopt technological adjustments to safeguard worker health and safety, while the union simultaneously advocates on behalf of miners already suffering from industrial illnesses.
Black Lung on the Navajo Nation
“I go out and visit all the local retirees and their widows…I started from A to Z. And, of course, it takes me away from home, but I need to get the recruitment for Black Lung benefits and screenings,” explains Alex Osif, a Navajo and Hopi coal miner currently serving as president of UMWA Local 1924 near Kayenta on the Navajo Nation. Despite the closure of the UMWA-represented Kayenta Mine in 2019 by Peabody Energy, Osif emphasizes the ongoing challenges of industrial disease faced by miners and their families. Working through the UMWA and utilizing skills acquired from training provided by the Mining Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), Osif offers resources on Black Lung screenings and counsels former miners and their families on federal Black Lung benefits.
Alex Osif at UMWA Local 1942. Photo by Ericka Wills.
While Black Lung disproportionately affects U.S. regions such as Appalachia, miners afflicted with the disease on the Navajo Nation encounter additional challenges in accessing healthcare and federal benefits. For instance, during peak COVID years, the Navajo Nation had only 12 healthcare facilities. Today, these facilities may not possess the necessary Black Lung screening equipment or medical professionals trained in interpreting imaging and conducting certain specialized testing. Also, because the Navajo Nation is a high-elevation, rural region encompassing areas of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and extending up to the Colorado border, Osif explains that it may be 500 miles each way for miners to reach medical facilities with state-of-the-art technologies and medical experts to provide Black Lung screening, diagnostic testing, and disease management options. Osif underscores that the availability of transportation, cost of travel, and seasonal conditions that render rural roads impassable on the Navajo Nation prevent some miners with Black Lung from receiving critical care.
Osif’s observations are corroborated by data demonstrating that, for a variety of reasons, Indigenous miners with Black Lung are less likely to receive federal benefits from the U.S. Department of Labor. Historically, language barriers have impeded access to safety information and benefit applications for some Navajo individuals who speak their indigenous language, Diné. Additionally, a 2023 medical study focusing on western U.S. Indigenous coal miners critiqued the current U.S. Department of Labor medical criteria for federal Black Lung compensation. The researchers concluded, “Indigenous coal miners experience greater adjusted odds for pneumoconiosis and respiratory impairment per decade of life and greater decline in forced expiratory volume in 1 second despite lower smoking rates. Structural inequities exist in federal spirometry requirements for Indigenous miners seeking DOL black lung benefits. Regulatory reform is needed to address barriers to compensation for these underrepresented workers.”
Fighting for the Safety of Indigenous Mine Workers
UMWA Local 1924 seal. Photo by Ericka Wills.
The UMWA and Indigenous advocates–including Osif and other Navajo coal miners working through the union in collaboration with the Navajo Nation–are committed to addressing the specific challenges faced by Navajo miners in accessing Black Lung medical care and federal benefits. To confront the resurgence of Black Lung caused by modern mining technologies and methods, the UMWA advocates for mine companies on the Navajo Nation and across the United States to adopt additional safety technologies to control and track silica dust exposure. Silica dust monitors that record collective shift exposure and rudimentary water spray attachments that mitigate airborne dust from machinery could be swiftly implemented.
Joe Main–a mine safety expert who led the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration–asserts, “It is imperative to take the CPDM [Continuous Personal Dust Monitor] and convert that into a silica dust monitor. I had interest in moving that way. I had NIOSH [National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety] focused on that. I had that as the next technological improvement step. Then the Trump Administration tossed that thing in the garbage can as quick as you can. But NIOSH did develop a basic [silica dust] monitor tool, and I have urged that needs to be in effect in every mine to give us a full end of shift measurement of the silica that miners are exposed to.”
Main’s experiences underscore the fact that coal companies appear reluctant to invest in health and safety technologies until government regulations and enforcement mandate their implementation. Recognizing this and increasing cases of Black Lung, the UMWA has spent years fighting for lower respiratory silica dust limits in mines.
Phil Smith, UMWA Chief of Staff and Executive Assistant to the President, explains, “UMWA President Cecil Roberts first testified before Congress about the growing dangers of silica dust exposure in 2013. We have advocated at MSHA for a rule to be developed since then, with little to show for it until 2024.” On April 16, 2024, Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su announced a Department of Labor final rule “reducing silica dust exposure, better protecting miners’ health from irreversible workplace illness.” The same day, Su joined President Roberts to discuss the importance of this regulation with UMWA members.
However, since January 21, 2025, the Trump Administration and an 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling have blocked implementation of the rule, which would have cut in half the amount of permissible silica mine dust exposure during an eight-hour shift. Smith elaborates, “The association representing sand and gravel companies filed suit to stop the implementation of the silica dust rule, and when it became clear that MSHA was not going to aggressively move forward with its implementation, we filed a motion to intervene in that suit. However, the court summarily denied the motion, without comment as to why…The fact that mining companies are suing to stop this rule’s implementation tells you all you need to know about their priorities. They still care more about the mule than the man.”
This blow to worker health and safety was followed by the announcement of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) plans to close dozens of MSHA offices, the agency responsible for enforcing mine safety laws, and slash the budget for NIOSH, which conducts research and provides recommendations to prevent work-related injury and illness. Notably, NIOSH also previously provided Black Lung screening at no cost to miners.
However, the UMWA confirms that it will continue to fight for a silica dust limit that protects miners from the resurgence of rock dust-based Black Lung, as well as broad-based protection that benefits all workers.
“Our efforts to implement the silica dust rule extend far beyond our members. Truth is we don’t see much black lung caused by inhaling coal dust in mines where we represent the members any longer, because our contracts give workers the authority to ensure safety laws, including coal dust exposure, are enforced. Nonunion miners do not have that ability, so they are also the ones we are fighting for here with the silica dust rule,” Smith clarifies. “That’s not new for us, as we often find ourselves in the forefront of many worker-centered fights. For example, we are still engaged in reforming America’s bankruptcy laws because of the terrible consequences that fall on workers in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy and reorganization.”
UMWA and Workers v. Wall Street
In addition to the struggle against the resurgence of Black Lung, another front on which UMWA addresses the impact of rapid technological transformation on workers is in Wall Street private equity firms’ acquisition of distressed companies’ remaining assets through the bankruptcy process. During bankruptcy, companies are frequently permitted to reject previous labor agreements, including union collective bargaining agreements, retiree pension and healthcare agreements, and other labor contracts. Subsequent private equity restructuring of purchased company assets may minimize human decision-making processes and maximize the utilization of automated technologies to balloon shareholder profits.
The same forces that are driving a resurgence in Black Lung are reshaping corporate decision-making on Wall Street. While coal companies deploy new technologies that prioritize extraction over worker safety, the investment firms that own these companies increasingly rely on AI algorithms to make buying and selling decisions without human oversight. This creates a double burden for workers: they face health risks from automated mining equipment in their workplaces, while the financial decisions that determine their jobs, wages, and benefits are made by computers programmed to maximize shareholder returns. UMWA's strike against Warrior Met Coal revealed how these two forms of automation work together—mining technology that sickens workers serving Wall Street algorithms that extract wealth from their labor.
UMWA’s Strike Against Warrior Met Coal
Addressing the impacts of workplace technologies on worker health and safety and advocating for enhanced protection may fall squarely within the fundamental responsibilities of unions encompassed under “wages, hours, and working conditions” in Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act. However, UMWA adopted a more assertive and comprehensive stance regarding technology as they attempted to disrupt artificial intelligence (AI) decision-making on Wall Street during and after the 2021-2023 UMWA strike against Warrior Met Coal. This ongoing struggle between collective workers versus Wall Street in the context of automated finance capitalism remains an unresolved issue that the broader labor movement must urgently address.
In 2015, private equity firms Blackstone, Apollo Global Management, and KKR acquired the remaining assets of coal company Jim Walter Resources, Inc. during Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. Subsequently, with the court’s authorization, the firms declined to honor prior labor agreements, including the collective bargaining agreement negotiated by the union miners and the retiree pension and healthcare agreement. As the newly formed Warrior Met Coal emerged from the bankruptcy process, the UMWA-represented miners agreed to provisional wage and benefit reductions, which the workers regarded as a temporary sacrifice to safeguard their jobs until the company achieved profitability.
However, following its public offering in 2017, Warrior Met distributed over $1.4 billion in dividends to shareholders without restoring the temporary concessions made by the workers. By 2019, the original private equity firms that assembled Warrior Met during the Walter Energy bankruptcy proceedings sold their shares to a new group of investment funds–BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard–collectively known as the Wall Street Big Three. When UMWA members went on strike against Warrior Met in 2021, a spokesman for the union described these Wall Street private equity and asset managers as “vulture capitalists”–investors who acquire distressed companies at low prices and then extract value for themselves and their shareholders at the expense of workers and their communities.
UMWA President Cecil Roberts speaking to strikers in Brookwood, Alabama during the Warrior Met Coal strike. Photo by Ericka Wills.
Testifying in United States Senate Committee on the Budget, UMWA President Roberts did not mince words: “By their very nature, private equity firms have no incentive to care about workers, their families or their communities. They are not part of these communities. They never see the havoc they create. They never experience the personal anguish workers and families endure as a result of decisions made hundreds or thousands of miles away in New York, Boston, or other financial centers. For private equity, the only consideration is the size and speed of a return on their investment. They use America’s failed bankruptcy laws to gouge where they can.”
Therefore, when UMWA members went out on strike against Warrior Met Coal, they were confronting an army of faceless Goliaths. In 2022, the UMWA had to quickly pivot tactics and try to insert human agency into automated, AI-driven Wall Street processes. Smith recalled, “Renaissance Tech [was a] top ten shareholders of Warrior Met, but when planning a picket, we found that in their New York headquarters, the only people working there are hired to service the computers…Decisions on when to buy and sell stocks are no longer made by humans.”
What the UMWA recognized was not an anomaly. An April 2025 article titled “The Disruption of AI in Stock Markets: A New Era of Investment Decisions and Automation” explains, “AI-powered algorithms can process massive amounts of market data and execute trades at lightning speed based on predefined criteria, identifying profitable opportunities in real time without human intervention.” This recognition underscores one aspect where labor must address and incorporate human agency and workers’ collective will into shaping, regulating, and implementing AI processes. Significant work remains for the labor movement to more fully address this aspect of emerging technologies, although the UMWA employed various strategies to try to achieve this objective,
In April 2022, after UMWA Warrior Met miners had been on strike for over a year, the union achieved its goal of having BlackRock, the largest shareholder of Warrior Met at the time, issue a statement during Warrior Met’s annual shareholder meeting that advised the mining company to settle the labor dispute. UMWA expected that this active human intervention, a departure from BlackRock’s established passive stance, might yield results. However, BlackRock’s statement did not help facilitate a fair contract negotiation between Warrior Met and its workers, and the strike lasted another ten months.
On February 16, 2023, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) extended an unconditional offer to Warrior Met effectively concluding the strike without the miners’ ratification of a new labor agreement. Four months later, in June 2023, workers were reminded of just how slow the wheels of justice grind when a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administrative law judge finally ruled on unfair labor practices filed by the union before the strike began. The judge determined that Warrior Met had violated the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in its bargaining conduct before, during, and after the strike and ordered that Warrior Met bargain in good faith immediately.
Following the return of UMWA miners to Warrior Met operations, the union and company continued to engage in contract negotiations. However, as of the date of writing, an agreement has not yet been reached. Nevertheless, at Warrior Met’s annual shareholder meeting held on April 25, 2024, UMWA and AFL-CIO continued a shareholder activism campaign through proxy solicitation, seeking support for a package of corporate governance proposals. Notably, 46% of Warrior Met’s voting shareholders expressed their support for the UMWA and AFL-CIO’s proposal on freedom of association and collective bargaining. This represents a significant level of support for such a proposal that “is second only to a majority vote at the Starbucks Corporation in 2023.” The union highlighted that Global Proxy Watch, Activist Investor, and Corporate Counsel acknowledged UMWA and the AFL-CIO’s tactic as an innovative approach to holding Warrior Met’s management accountable, as the union continues to strategize how to assert worker power and human agency at Wall Street-owned companies.
When AI Meets Private Equity
The power of automated, AI finance capitalism, the Wall Street Big 3, and private equity over U.S. workers extends far beyond a single strike, a particular company, or a specific employment sector. Within the last few years, these three asset and investment management firms have amassed significant command over corporate America. Recent estimates state the Big 3 are shareholders in 96% of Fortune 250 companies and collectively hold a median stake of 21.9% in S&P 500 companies with projections suggesting that voting power could reach 40% of all votes at S&P 500 companies’ shareholder meetings within the next two decades. Concurrently, the power and reach of private equity has rapidly expanded in sectors including healthcare, housing, retail, as the industry currently manages over $10 trillion in assets and owns companies that employ close to 12 million workers in the U.S.
The UMWA Warrior Met strike exposed the extent of Wall Street’s influence over companies, while UMWA’s campaign for regulations to prevent silica-induced Black Lung underscores the necessity of implementing common-sense measures to safeguard workers. Together, these struggles emphasize the necessity for workers and their unions to devise strategic approaches to assert agency over technologies that endanger or restructure the labor force, from new workplace automation to algorithmic stock trading. From their workplaces to Wall Street and from technology industry programmers to coal miners, workers must mobilize through their unions to establish a unified labor movement that collectively demands a voice in shaping the future of our workplaces, economies, and future. However, substantial work remains for organized labor to develop increasingly effective, actionable strategies to proactively address the role of technology in the workplace and ensure that workers share in the benefits of technological advancements.
For more on the UMWA Warrior Met strike and coal mining technologies, see “‘The Coal Machine/What Will a Coal Miner Do?’ Automation, Financialization, and Union Mobilization in Underground US Coal Mining” by Ericka Wills in The Handbook of Digital Labor edited by Jack Linchuan Qiu, Shinjoung Yeo, Richard Maxwell (Wiley-Blackwell, 2025)
Oral history collection on the Navajo Nation was funded by grants from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment.
