Early Women Miners
Women have played a significant part in mining since the early days of our Nation’s history.Many of the newly-hired women worked in underground mines in the Appalachian coalfields. Between 1974 and 1980, almost 2,400 women were hired as underground coal workers in the East; only 242 were hired in the Midwest; and 272 in the West. The reason for these differences in hiring patterns was because underground coal mines required a larger workforce than other types of mining.In November 1978, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) unanimously passed a resolution to help support widening the options for women in mining.
Women became active and hard workers for the UMWA, and several women were elected as delegates to the UMWA’s 1978 convention, where union policies and contract demands were formulated. This was the last “boom” year of the decade, with nearly 18,000 miners hired nationwide. For the years 1978-1980, females comprised 6.5 percent of all new underground workers.Mining is a dangerous occupation, and miners daily face a variety of environmental and industrial hazards.
In 1979, 144 miners perished in accidents. One of these was Marilyn McCusker; a roof bolter helper, and the first woman coal miner to die on the job.On October 2, Marilyn McCusker, 35, perished in a roof fall in a coal mine in Pennsylvania. It had taken her two years and having to file a sex discrimination suit in Federal court in order to get her job. She had about two years’ mining experience, roughly three months of which she worked as a roof-bolter helper.McCusker was retreating from an intersection in the mine after she had noticed the roof starting to dribble. The roof fell, pinning her under the edge of a 20x25x2-1/2-foot-thick slab of rock. Accident investigators later found that the accident was due to the operator’s failure to adequately support a known bad roof area with temporary roof supports until additional permanent roof supports could be installed.The number of women coal miners had increased from zero in 1973 to 33,730 in 1983 when women comprised 8.6 percent of the mining work force.In most underground mines, women are hired as general inside laborers (or “trainees”), as are inexperienced men.
These are some of the most physically demanding jobs in a mine, such as shoveling coal that has spilled from conveyors, or transporting heavy timbers to lay track for the mine’s rail haulage system. Experienced women may operate shuttle cars, which carry coal from the working face to the belt, or operate mining machines or roof bolters. A similar job progression occurs in surface mines where new miners usually begin employment by working in simpler tasks and moving into more difficult assignments as they gain experience.In the mid 1980's when the underground coal mining industry started to decline, many women lost their mining jobs because of the rule, “last hired, first fired.”Although overall employment in the underground coal mining industry has declined in the past two decades, women have taken their place in the nation’s mines. They do all types of jobs, from general laborer to mining engineer in underground and surface coal and metal nonmetal mines.Most women miners surveyed love their jobs, regardless of the risks involved, and have no desire to seek employment elsewhere.