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• 1 2016-04-14T11:07:29-07:00 Spreading Information to the Membership 6 plain 2016-05-20T15:46:28-07:00 The first party that the union was obligated to share information with was their membership. This information ranged from internal information, such as updates on the logistical side of the union, to updates on the recent endeavors of the union such as strikes and rallies, to material that was meant to educate the workers. Both of those categories of information have already been discussed in this Scalar book in terms of the organization of those activities (the hyperlinks on "logistical" and "strikes and rallies" lead to the pertinent sections of this Scalar book), but informing the membership of election results and the results of strikes is another matter. The Hearl Maxwell collection lacked documents that provide examples of the spread of this type of information within the organization, but there are allusions in various letters telling leaders of local unions to spread certain pieces of news, such as the success of a recent strike or a change in membership fees, during local meetings and to spread the word among the membership. This is in addition to some bulletins announcing decisions made by the international organization and official notices of election results.
  
  The third category of information that the union spread to its laborers, educational material, is something where a few artifacts of more direct interest are available. Shown below is a flier contained in the collection that would have been posted at local meeting places around district 14. The flier urges members of the UMWA to take professional development classes. The organization is spreading this knowledge not only because it is intended to hopefully make the miner a safer worker, but also because the union has an obligation to the professional betterment of its membership. In the same way that Van Tine points out that unions only allowed what they saw to be morally upstanding and skilled laborers to become members, they also have an obligation for further developing the skills of their workers. By promoting these classes, they hope to increase the average quality of their membership, thus increasing the image of the union and the desire of employers to hire union instead of non-union workers. In addition to the collective bargaining ability of a union, it is classes like these that provided incentive to join a union. There was little else that a laborer could do to attain a new set of skills that made him a more attractive candidate for a job or promotion.
  
  Another form of educational material given out by the UMWA was a book on coal mining ventilation. This book would have been available for workers and employers to read to educate themselves on how to protect themselves or their employees who worked in the mines. The cover of this book is shown at the bottom of the page, but the document itself is sixty-seven pages long. Topics covered range from tools used to gauge the safety of a mine's air quality to different methods of providing the ventilation needed within a mine. The availability of this book to members of the UMWA shows the union fulfilling its purpose of providing safer working conditions to its workers by directly equipping them with the knowledge they needed to personally ensure their safety.