Blood Runs Coal
The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America
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4.2 • 9 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A vivid account of “one of the most shocking episodes in organized labor’s blood-soaked history” (Steve Halvonik, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).
In the early hours of New Year’s Eve 1969, in the small soft coal mining borough of Clarksville, Pennsylvania, longtime trade union insider Joseph “Jock” Yablonski and his wife and daughter were brutally murdered in their old stone farmhouse. Behind the assassination was the corrupt president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), Tony Boyle, who had long embezzled UMWA funds, silenced intra-union dissent, and served the interests of Big Coal companies—and would do anything to maintain power. The most infamous crimes in the history of American labor unions, the Yablonski murders catalyzed the first successful rank-and-file takeover of a major labor union in modern US history. Blood Runs Coal is an extraordinary portrait of one of the nation’s major unions on the brink of historical change.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former CIA officer Bradley (A Very Principled Boy) delivers a page-turning study of the 1969 triple-murder of union leader Joseph Yablonski and his wife and daughter, and the crime's impact on the United Mine Workers of America and organized labor in general. Head of his local district of the UMWA in southwestern Pennsylvania, Yablonksi was locked in a power struggle with union president Tony Boyle, who had provoked outrage by publicly defending the Consolidation Coal Company in the aftermath of an explosion that killed 78 miners in West Virginia. Yablonski challenged Boyle for the union presidency in 1969 and lost, but asked the U.S. Labor Department to "impound the ballot boxes and investigate the election's irregularities." Less than a month after the election, three hit men hired by Boyle (with funds embezzled from the UMWA) murdered Yablonski and his family. The killings galvanized a reformist takeover of the union that advanced the interests of rank-and-file members on safety standards, wages, and health benefits. Bradley fluidly interweaves union politics with insider accounts of the murder plot and details of the investigation and five trials it took to bring Boyle to justice. The result is both a juicy true crime story and a tribute to the power of effective labor movements.
