 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Over 1,100 workers have been on strike since April 1st at the Warrior Met coal plant in Brookwood, Alabama. Organized by the local branch of the United Mine Workers Association, UMWA, the strike is currently among the longest-running walkouts in the United States. Negotiations have continued into the strike, but Warrior Met has constantly refused to accept any of the demands put forward by the workers. Recently, I called a strike at our operations in Alabama, four local unions at Warrior Met, and many people might look at this and say, why did you do that? Over the past five years, Warrior Met has been a terribly difficult company for our people to work for, working as long as 12 hours a day, seven days a week, in some of the most dangerous conditions in the mining industry in North America. These are the deepest mines that we find in the United States. You go down an elevator, 2,000 feet, and these mines liberate so much methane they could destroy an entire city if indeed this methane could explode at one time. So we have people working in dangerous conditions, in deep mines, long hours, seven days a week, and even working or being forced to work on holidays. Among the measures imposed by the company's new owners in the name of bankruptcy are wage cuts as high as $6 per hour, loss of paid sick leave, loss of holidays, increased health care costs, and more. The workers have also complained of ruthless anti-worker measures, including layoffs as part of disciplinary measures. Workers are demanding reversal of all of these measures along with a substantial hike in wages and benefits to compensate for the losses made by them during this period. Warrior Met is one of the largest producers of metallurgical coal in the United States, which is used to produce steel in North America and Europe. The company has decided against releasing the first quarterly report for this year, citing market uncertainty, making it unclear whether the company's argument that it is suffering losses is based on facts. Shortly after the strike was launched, the company came up with a tentative agreement which offered a wage hike of $1.5 per hour increase over the next five years. We're on an unfair labor practice strike against Warrior Met coal, and I don't know about everybody else, but I'm tired of the way they treat our people. I'm tired of the contract we've got. This deal was overwhelmingly voted against by union members with over 91% voting no. On April 12th, union members voted along similarly large numbers to continue their strike. Ever since then, the union has alleged that the company has become increasingly hostile towards them. A general lockout was imposed that froze some of the non-wage benefits that workers and their families enjoyed despite the wage loss. The company has recently hired dozens of outsourced contract workers to replace the strikers even while negotiations continued with UMWA, the height of which was on May 26th when 11 miners were arrested by the local police from a picket march against such outsourcing. Despite the company's hostility, striking workers have only received more support from outside the mines. The UMWA has set up a relief fund for the striking workers to partially compensate for lost wages.