You don’t often read headlines about environmentalists joining forces with coal miners. Environmentalists want to shut down coal plants that pollute our air and water, while miners understandably fight to keep and defend the jobs that the coal industry provides. Between these two forces, there sometimes appears to be little common ground.

As previously reported, the Mine Workers (UMWA) contend that Patriot Coal was set up by Peabody Energy and Arch Coal purposely to fail in order to dump costs associated with retirees who had worked for the two companies. Now Ben Hatfield, the current CEO of Patriot, says that he agrees with UMWA President Cecil Roberts that the creation of Patriot seemed destined to fail. Hatfield was, at the time, CEO of International Coal Group. Patriot recently has filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in order to shed retiree costs, mostly from Peabody and Arch.

AFL-CIO Field Communications staffer Cathy Sherwin sends us this report.

Fed up with inaction and partisan-political game playing in Washington, Kentuckians gathered in Louisville to call upon Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell to stop the partisan politics and pass a budget that works for all working families, not just millionaire CEOs. They called out their senator for putting the 2012 elections ahead of the needs of his own constituents who would be impacted by deep cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Workers at two mines owned by subsidiaries of Alpha Natural Resources are receiving a $1 per hour pay raise immediately now that management signed the Mine Workers (UMWA) national collective bargaining agreement today. The agreement covers nearly 1,400 miners at the Cumberland and Emerald mines in Greene County, Pa., and will be retroactive to July 1.

Members of the Mine Workers (UMWA) overwhelmingly ratified a new five-and-a-half-year contract with the Bituminous Coal Operators Association (BCOA) in a nationwide vote Friday.

The 444 workers at the Willow Lake Mine in Equality, Ill., voted last week to be represented by the Mine Workers (UMWA).

Across the United States and around the world, thousands of working people marched today to demand that Mexico’s government allow its workers to enjoy the freedom to form a union, to create safe workplaces and bargain for family-supporting wages. The marches are part of a global six-day week of action, which began Feb. 14, to call for an end to the intimidation and labor rights violations of workers in Mexico.

Across the country late last week, hundreds of union members, religious leaders, community activists, farm workers and victims of bank home foreclosures protested at 200 JPMorgan Chase branches to demand the bank respect the basic human rights of people to have decent places to live and work.