Title: Coal Employment Project (CEP) Records, 1977-1991
Show Historical Note
In the spring of 1977 members of two Jacksboro, Tennessee public interest groups, the East Tennessee Research Corporation (ETRC) and Save Our Cumberland Mountains, planned a trip into an underground mine in Campbell County, Tennessee. Upon learning that a woman was to be on the tour, the local mine operator refused permission for her to go underground because of the superstition, long held by male miners, that women are "bad luck" in the mines. As a consequence of this incident, ETRC's director, Neil McBride, contacted a friend, Betty Jean Hall, then working as a lawyer in a Washington, D.C. firm, to do research on both women in mining and federal law on gender discrimination in hiring miners. Hall complied with McBride's request and provided the information.
As a result of McBride's request, Hall become interested in the subject of women in mining. Therefore, when in May of 1977 McBride asked her to accompany him on a fund raising trip to New York City to secure financial help to start a research organization dedicated to issues concerned with women in mining, Hall gladly accepted the offer. Hall and McBride succeeded in securing a $5,000 grant from the MS. Foundation and thus was born the Coal Employment Project of the East Tennessee Research Corporation.
In September 1977 Hall, who became project director of the Coal Employment Project, moved to Jacksboro where CEP had its first office. She proceeded to interview women miners on various aspects of their jobs and on whether they, and others they knew, had experienced difficulty in getting hired as miners. As a result of these interviews, and additional research on hiring in the mines, Hall in May of 1978 announced the filing of a gender discrimination in hiring suit against 153 coal companies. The suit generated a lot of publicity so that CEP, by then in a new office in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, received numerous phone calls, especially from women who had tried to find employment in underground mines. To deal with the increased work load, CEP added three staff members by the end of the year. CEP separated itself from the East Tennessee Research Corporation, when on July 14, 1978 it became a Tennessee non-profit corporation.
In the years from 1977-79 Hall served as both as project director and legal counsel for CEP. She decided in the fall of 1979 to move back to the Washington, D.C. area, and thus resigned as CEP director. The CEP board determined, however, that the organization would be better served with a legal office in the capital area, in addition to its national office in Oak Ridge. Hall agreed to accept the board's offer to become general counsel for CEP and to maintain the legal office in Dumfries, Virginia. This legal office became known as the Legal Support Office (LSO). Joyce Dukes became the acting director for CEP, 1979-80, and then in June of 1980, when Hall assumed the position of executive director, Dukes became the assistant director.
During the 1980s CEP continued to pursue legal avenues of redress for women applicants who were victims of gender discrimination in hiring by coal companies, and for women miners who were victims of sexual harassment on the job. CEP promoted unity among women miners through the National Conference of Women Miners, held annually beginning in 1978. CEP established contacts with other grass-roots organizations, among them the Southern Empowerment Project, Southeast Women's Employment Coalition and the Rural Coalition. CEP also worked with the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) to secure support for women in mining, and to promote unionism among women miners. CEP sought to ensure safe conditions for women miners by its advocacy of higher safety standards in the mines. The organization fought for equitable and uniform standards to govern pregnancy leave for women miners and for adequate clothing and footwear designed especially for women. Moreover, CEP advocated family leave for both parents, and in the early 1980s led the effort to secure UMWA support for family leave. CEP also became part of the national campaign to secure federal legislation on parental leave. Eventually, the federal campaign produced legislation which went into effect in early 1993.
To finance its general operating costs and its special projects, CEP relied primarily on funds from such private foundations as Ford, Whitney, Clark and MS. CEP was, in many respects, at the mercy of funding trends and availability. In the mid 1980s this produced a financial crisis which resulted in a curtailing of projects. But the organization survived the crisis, regrouped, and continued in its strong advocacy of women miners.
Over the years CEP evolved as an organization. During the 1980s it added field offices in Hazard, Kentucky and Westernport, Maryland. Regional support groups, though, by and large came to supersede field offices. CEP women miners established support groups in eastern and western Kentucky, East Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Illinois and southwest Virginia, among other areas. CEP also started a Western project in 1983, and hired a Western Area Coordinator, Michele Smith, who worked out of Denver, Colorado. The Denver office became a permanent part of the CEP structure.
CEP underwent significant structural changes in the late 1980s and survived a crisis in mining which weakened the organization in that decade and in the early 1990s. In January 1987, CEP closed down its Oak Ridge office and moved the national office to Dumfries, Virginia, where executive director Betty Jean Hall essentially ran the organization from her home. The following year, a February CEP board meeting brought additional changes. At this meeting the executive committee of the board asserted that its analysis of CEP revealed that the organization would be more effective if the membership of women miners exerted more leadership and control in the organization. The executive committee thought it especially important that the executive director be a miner. The committee also favored moving the national office from Dumfries to an area closer to CEP's membership. The full board accepted the findings of the executive committee, and, as a consequence, asked Betty Jean Hall to resign her position as executive director but to remain as legal counsel. In response, Hall resigned both her positions with CEP. Other staff members who could not move from the Dumfries areas also resigned their positions. Following a national search for a new executive director, Madeline Rogero accepted the position effective June 1988. Since Rogero lived in Knoxville, the national office moved to that city.
CEP's leadership changed again in March 1990. Rogero resigned and Carol Davis, a miner and board member became the new executive director. Apparently, Davis ran the organization from her home in Bentleyville, Pennsylvania. Davis stepped down as executive director in 1993, and Cosby Totten of Tazewell, Virginia assumed the directorship. As of the spring of 1995, Totten remained executive director.
The early 1990s continued to be a difficult time for CEP and for women miners. Nationwide, lay-offs and work reductions in mines adversely affected all miners. Moreover, once-reliable sources of foundation funding dried up, so that CEP's fund raising committee had to be inventive in discovering other means of financial support. Yet, CEP has survived and has made more of an effort to reach out to newly-organized workers in traditionally low-paying, non-unionized industries, among them poultry-processing, for example. CEP in the 1990s seems more committed to such women's issues as domestic violence. The new slogan emblazoned on the organization's newsletter, CEP News, perhaps captures the essence of CEP in the 1990s: "Building Women's Solidarity in the Coalfields and Beyond."
