Summary Of Killing For Coal

Coal mining industry has been often portrayed as one of the major catalysts for strong economic growth and sustainability of capitalism in Colorado and all over America. In fact, it was the coal that has brought the capitalistic companies in Colorado that later resulted in shifting of the economic balance away from the mine workers and towards the interest and protection of the capitalistic mining companies. Furthermore, coal mining has led to the Ludlow massacre in 1914 which has been portrayed as the most violent civil revolution in the United States since the civil war. This is evident trough the book of Thomas Andrews, Killing for Coal, which introduces the concept of workscape which is essential in understanding the complexity of the conflicts

Andrews has coined the word workscape and defines as the interaction between the workers and their surrounding working environment. Within the book, workscape refers to how the coal mining landscape or the labour process builds the social relationship of the mine workers. Moreover, the inherent dangers and unbearable working conditions in coal mining such as falling of rocks, noxious air environment caused by massive fire and explosions, have a vital role in the concept of workscape. Consequently, the prevalent dangers in mine workscapes made mutualism and solidarity to prevail between the mine workers that also helped in adding fuel on their desire for a self-ruling union, despite of having different ethnicities. Despite of the deaths that the workscape within the coal fields had caused, workscape is still considered as a vital concept on how mine workers won the battle against the capitalistic mining companies which is evident of having today’s laws and constraints towards company exploitations. Clearly, it is vitally important for Andrews to use the concept of workscape to explicitly explain the major important events that happened during the coal

To begin with ,it was first found by the mining companies that hiring foreign workers was found to be less expensive than hiring white miners. With this reason, mining companies later preferred to hire more unskilled foreign labourers from Europe and Asia to suppress the wages of white miners and to have less overall human resource cost. Companies later found another way to lessen production cost and improve profit by introducing machines that will cut down huge number of labourers into the coal fields. As machineries did not do quite well in the coal fields, companies had to bring back the manual labours. During the time when the demand of coal went up all over USA and other countries, coal mining companies started to slash the wages and decrease the tonnage rates of the mine workers to gain more control in supplying less expensive coal products. Moreover, coal companies had to contain the mine workers to secure more control over the coal fields, by initiating welfare but in a capitalistic way. As a protective measure, mining companies later secured a seat on the senate gained such control over the local governments that prevented intervention towards the labour issues over the coal mining industry. Consequently, these factors of containment towards the mine workers had led coal mining