The Coal Employment Project was a non-profit women's organization from 1977–1996 with the goal of women gaining employment as miners. With local support groups in both the eastern and western coalfields, CEP also advocated for women on issues such as sexual harassment, mine safety, equal access to training and promotions, parental leave, and wages.
Founding
The superstition that a woman even entering a mine was bad luck and results in disaster was pervasive among male miners. The spark that lead to the organization's founding was when a woman team member from two Tennessee grassroots advocacy organizations, the East Tennessee Research Corporation and Save Our Cumberland Mountains, was barred from a planned mine tour. The ETRC director contacted attorney Betty Jean Hall and the two began to seek funding for an organization to research issues related to women's employment in the industry. The first funding came from a $5,000 grant from the Ms. Foundation.
Legal strategy
The initial legal strategy was based upon a 1965 Executive Order of U.S. President Lyndon Johnson that bars sex discrimination by companies with federal contracts. Tennessee Valley Authority, the largest publicly owned U.S power company, held coal contracts with many Kentucky and Tennessee coal companies. Based upon this, CEP founder Betty Jean Hall filed a landmark discrimination complaint in 1978 with the Department of LaborOffice of Federal Contract Compliance Program. Named were 153 companies, among them coal companies Peabody and Consolidated, which produced about half of nation's coal. The complaint called for the hiring of one woman for every three inexperienced men until women constituted 20 percent of the workforce. The KentuckyHuman Rights Commission began cases against coal companies on discrimination against women in 1975. This legal strategy was successful. Almost 3,000 women were hired by the close of 1979 as underground miners. In December 1978, Consolidated Coal Company was ordered to implement affirmative action and agreed to pay $360,000 in compensation to 78 women who had been denied jobs between 1972 and 1976. Originally headquartered in Jacksboro, TN, CEP moved to Oak Ridge and added field offices in Hazard, KY, Westernport, Maryland, and Denver, Colorado, as well as regional support teams. Its last headquarters were in Knoxville, TN. CEP produced a grassroots newsletter, Coalmining Women’s Support Team News and held national meetings.
, the largest miners’ union, initially had a lukewarm approach to CEP and support for women miners. An 1978 CEP endorsement request resulted in the failure of President Arnold Miller to submit to the International Executive Board. By the next quarter, with a concerted effort by UMWA women, the IEB passed the support endorsement. Nine women were among the 1,267 delegates to the UMWA constitutional convention a year later. Miller's 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. With the election in 1982 of Church's opponent, Richard Trumpka, UMWA's support for women miners changed substantially. UMWA women strongly supported his candidacy. The union officially endorsed the CEP Annual Conference, and Trumpka was the keynote speaker in 1983. Trumpka approved excused absences for women to attend CEP conferences and sent letters to local unions urging them to send women to the conferences.
At the close of the 1980s, women in coal mining peaked at about 4,000, four percent of the total. In the 1990s, the demand for coal decreased, mechanization in underground mining increased, and production in surface strip mining increased. These factors led to widespread layoffs. CEP, at its 1990 national meeting, held sessions on options for displaced miners meeting women's needs based on changes in the industry. Noted by an Illinois miner, “...no one wants to hire women anymore; they don’t even make excuses about why it’s done on seniority alone.” The “last hired first fired” practice meant that thousands of women lost their jobs. In 1996, the number of women miners had dropped to about a thousand.
Media Coverage
, a media group in Whitesburg, Kentucky produced a film Coalmining Women in 1982. CEP staff as well as well as women miners and support groups started by CEP are featured throughout the film. Interviewed at home and on the job, the women miners talk about why they sought these jobs. They also tell of the problems encountered once hired.
CEP Archives
In August 2013 a reunion of CEP staff, women miners and their supporters was held in Jonesborough, TN. Attendees were from the U.S., Canada, and England. During the reunion a visit to Eastern Tennessee State University was planned. The Coal Employment Project records are archived at the Center for Appalachian Studies and Services at ETSU.
