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Alabama's coal mines are deep.

Methane gas collects in high concentrations beneath the surface, creating a constant risk of explosion.

This is the landscape miners slip down into each day, working below ground, in the darkness, to harvest a hard dark fruit that helps power the country.

Alabama mines are "very dangerous, very deep," said Phil Smith, communications director for the United Mine Workers of America. He said he thinks that distinction — more potential danger — partly accounts for the state's high union membership.

Alabama's coal mines remain heavily unionized, even as the union fades as an active presence in former strongholds like eastern Kentucky.

Although the rise of mechanization and strip mining has affected both employment and union numbers, Alabama still has a "much higher percentage," of union miners, and the union represents "almost all of the underground miners in Alabama and some surface miners," Smith said.

It still doesn't take long to find a UMWA member in eastern Kentucky. But in a part of the state where coal has long powered the economy and generations have toiled in the mines, you can't find a UMWA member mining coal.

UMWA members say a variety of factors contributed to the union's decline in eastern Kentucky — the rise of less labor-intensive strip mining, increased mechanization at underground mines, scaled-back mining operations that employ fewer workers, smaller companies that are strongly anti-union, and labor laws that make it tough to organize new mines as unionized workplaces.

And, they say, there is another, less tangible but very important reason for the lack of unionized mines in the region today — a changing view among younger workers about the need for a union.

According to Department of Energy figures, 70 percent of Alabama miners were unionized in 2005. Only 4.8 percent of Kentucky's miners were.

There were 2,893 unionized miners in Alabama in 2005, out of a total of 4,128. Underground miners were more heavily unionized — with 2,799 union workers and 83 non-union workers, while surface miners accounted for just 94 of the unionized work force and 1,152 of the non-union workers, according to the Department of Energy.

A historically strong presence

One key factor in the union's survival in Alabama is its long and persistent presence in the state, said Colin Davis, a labor historian and professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who co-edited a book about the UMWA in Alabama.

The long history of the union in the state has led to a "custom" of union membership, he said.

Alabama is also different than some of the other coal-producing states because the environment is comparably "union friendly," he said.

In Alabama, "you had the steelworkers, the ironworkers, bricklayers, construction trades, railroad workers here" — all unionized work forces, said Davis. Having other unionized workers close by meant that Alabama's coal miners had a sense of working class solidarity, he said.

In contrast, coal has long dominated the eastern Kentucky counties where the UMWA once was strong, the economy was not diversified, and one did not find other concentrations of industrial workers. That left coal miners in a more delicate position. Central Appalachia's isolation served to further isolate the union as well.

A "multi-industry, multi-union," environment "creates an atmosphere of acceptance. There's a sense of brotherhood or sisterhood," said Davis.

The United Mine Workers of America made early forays into Alabama, emerging as a strong presence in the 1890s, said Davis. The union lost a strike in 1894, gained strength during World War I, and lost another strike in 1921.

The 1921 strike served to virtually "wipe out," the union in the state, he said.

Race baiting was a key part of the power structure's strategy in breaking that strike, said Davis. The UMWA was integrated. "Color was not an issue with pay," as blacks and whites toiled together in the mines, and struck together, he said.

Employers, the media and government used this to rail against the dangers of an organization that they claimed was "advocating social equality" between the races, said Davis.

The mines formed company unions. They held picnics, created baseball teams and even instituted small pension programs — rather pointless, Davis said, because most workers then didn't live long enough to collect pensions — all in an effort to continue to keep out the union.

But by the 1930s the UMWA was back in Alabama.

The resurgence of the union paralleled a "more energetic labor movement" nationwide, buoyed by the despair of the Great Depression and a federal government friendly to organized labor, said Davis.

Still, some Alabama companies continued to hold out against the union and met attempts to organize with violence.

Some union organizers were "machine gunned" and killed, others were run out of town, he said.

Through the strife of the thirties, and the decline of the coal industry after the 1950s, the historical memory and deep ties to union tradition seem to have been kept alive in Alabama.

Many miners know "organizing a union in a Southern state is a hard fight," said Smith.

Coal miners in Alabama choose to carry on that tradition of union membership, he said. It was a "tough fight," to organize, and Alabama miners today have not forgotten their labor history, he said.

Many retired union members in eastern Kentucky do still know their history and they can't talk about the decline of the UMWA without stressing why it matters.

They speak with palpable pride in the union, and also a deep sense of loss.

Without a union, health and safety suffer, they said, and benefits are stripped away.

"People who forget their history are going to repeat it," said Leonard Fleming, 65, of Kona, in Letcher County, Ky. "It used to be the coal company owned everything. They could evict you out of town. The UMWA came in and changed all that."

Fleming worked in the mines for 32 years and was a UMWA safety representative. Mining, and the union, are in his blood. He has three uncles listed on the fatality stones at the Letcher County Coal Miners' Monument in Hemphill, Ky.

He was lucky, he said — he never got hurt bad in the mines, just getting some rock on him a few times, back when he was "young and tough."

The mines were good to him — he was able to provide for his family and to stay in the mountains. But coal mining always has been dangerous work — something Fleming knows firsthand, from responding to mining disasters throughout the country. He said he thinks a union makes a difference when it comes to health and safety.

"Employees who work in a nonunion mine are afraid to speak out at all about health and safety," agreed Bobby Ray Hicks, 58, of Knott County, Ky., a retired miner who also works as a union organizer. "I think safety is a lot better in a union operation."

Hicks said he has worked as an organizer in eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Wyoming, and "the climate is the same all over," mostly because workers today don't see the need for unions.

"I feel sorry for the younger generation," he said. "They're just living from pay day to pay day."