Tim Burga, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast as part of the Labor 132 series to trace a personal and institutional labor history rooted in the coal mines and steel mills of eastern Ohio.
Burga's grandfather survived the March 1940 Willow Grove Mine explosion in Belmont County. His father was president of a United Steelworkers local in the 1960s. He connected those personal threads to the broader history of organized labor in Ohio — from the founding of the United Mine Workers of America in Columbus in 1890 and William Green's authorship of Ohio's workers' compensation law in 1911 to the defeat of Ohio Senate Bill 5 by a 62-to-38 margin in 2011 and the current organizing surge among young workers who want a voice at work but need help navigating how to get there.
Throughout the conversation, Burga described the labor movement's 200-year fight for the right to collectively bargain as the foundation of every opportunity working-class Ohioans have today.
- The United Mine Workers of America was chartered in Columbus, Ohio in 1890, with a plaque marking the founding site in the alley next to the Ohio Theater across from the statehouse on State Street; William Green, who served as UMWA president in Ohio, was elected to the Ohio Senate in 1911 where he authored what became Ohio's workers' compensation law — still in operation today as one of the best-run government-administered workers' comp systems in the country — before going on to become president of the American Federation of Labor in 1924.
- Senate Bill 5, which would have stripped collective bargaining rights from approximately 350,000 Ohio public servants including nurses, teachers and firefighters, was placed on the ballot in 2011 through a citizen referendum effort led by the Ohio AFL-CIO and defeated by the same 62-to-38 margin that defeated a right-to-work ballot initiative in Ohio in 1958; Burga described the consistency of those margins as evidence that Ohioans across generations have rejected attacks on collective bargaining when given a direct vote.
- Burga said public approval of organized labor is at its highest point since the 1960s and is highest among young workers, who want a voice at work but are not always sure how to go about getting one; he cited the weakening of the National Labor Relations Board under the current administration as a significant barrier to private sector organizing and said getting workers from a successful organizing vote to a first contract remains the most critical labor law reform priority, connecting it directly to the Faster Labor Contracts Act.
A Family Story That Starts Underground
Tim Burga did not arrive at the Ohio AFL-CIO through a straight line. He arrived from a family history that runs through the coal mines of Belmont County and the steel mills of Canton, Ohio — the same industrial corridor that shaped the state's labor movement for more than a century.
His grandfather on his mother’s side and his brothers worked in the mines. His other grandfather worked at Republic Steel in Canton before his father worked at Republic and then J&L Steel, where his father became president of the USW Local in the 1960s. In March 1940, the Willow Grove Mine in Belmont County exploded, killing miners. Burga's grandfather was among those who worked in the mines during that era. Burga said it was not the mines or the steel factories alone that allowed his family to climb out of poverty. It was the unions his family helped build in those dangerous places. Every opportunity he has had in life, he said, he owes to the United Mine Workers of America and the United Steelworkers.
Where the United Mine Workers of America Was Born
The United Mine Workers of America was chartered in Columbus, Ohio, in 1890. A plaque marks the founding site in the alley next to the Ohio Theater across from the statehouse on State Street. Eight years after its founding, in 1898, the UMWA won the eight-hour workday.
Burga traced the significance of that founding forward through one of the most consequential figures to emerge from Ohio's mine labor movement: William Green. Green served as UMWA president in Ohio before being elected to the Ohio Senate in 1911, where he authored what was then called the Workmen's Compensation Law — now Ohio's workers' compensation system, still government-run and among the best-administered in the country. Green went on to become president of the American Federation of Labor in 1924, a direct line from the coal mines of eastern Ohio to the leadership of the national labor movement.
Burga also noted the AFL's founding in Columbus in 1886, with Samuel Gompers as its first president, and the 1958 creation of the Ohio AFL-CIO in Cleveland, following the 1955 national merger of the AFL and the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
200 Years of Fighting the Same Fight
When Flash brought up Ohio Senate Bill 5, which attempted in 2011 to strip collective bargaining rights from approximately 350,000 Ohio public servants — including nurses, teachers, firefighters and other public employees — Burga put it in the longest possible context. For two hundred years, he said, organized labor has been fighting for the right to come together and bargain for a better life. Senate Bill 5 was one chapter in that fight.
Ohio has the constitutional right to a referendum. The Ohio AFL-CIO and its allies gathered the signatures needed to put the Ohio SB 5 repeal on the ballot and defeated it by a margin of 62 to 38. Burga pointed out that the same margin, 62 to 38, defeated a right-to-work ballot initiative in Ohio in 1958. Ohioans have answered the same question twice across more than 50 years and given the same answer both times.
He acknowledged that right-to-work legislation continues to be introduced in the Ohio statehouse and that anti-union sentiment, while not a majority position, remains persistent enough to require constant vigilance. That vigilance, he said, is one of the central jobs of the Ohio AFL-CIO — protecting collective bargaining rights, keeping Ohio from becoming a right-to-work state, preserving prevailing wage in building and construction and ensuring the legislative frameworks established under the Roosevelt administration, from the National Labor Relations Act through the Fair Labor Standards Act and Davis-Bacon, remain intact.
Young Workers, Organizing and the First Contract Problem
Burga ended with a forward-looking assessment that he said he is genuinely optimistic about. Public approval of organized labor is at its highest level since the 1960s, and the demographic group with the highest approval is young workers. Workers aged 18 to 34 want a voice in the workplace. What they often lack is practical knowledge of how to obtain one. Labor history education has diminished in Ohio schools, and that knowledge gap is one that the movement must actively fill.
Organizing is happening in both the public and private sectors, and Burga said new organizers are finding new ways to reach workers across an economy that has changed dramatically from the one that produced the UMWA and the Steelworkers. He repeated a line he has used before: the best organizer is a bad employer. Workers who are mistreated organize. The challenge is converting that organizing energy into a first contract before the momentum is lost.
He cited the weakening of the National Labor Relations Board under the current administration as a significant obstacle to private sector organizing and said the mission of the NLRB — protecting workers' right to organize — has been undermined. Getting labor law reform that compresses the timeline from a successful organizing vote to a ratified first contract remains the most critical near-term legislative priority, and Burga said the Ohio AFL-CIO is excited about the growth opportunities ahead for the trade union movement when that path becomes more accessible.
More information on the Ohio AFL-CIO is available at ohioaflcio.org.
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