The last union coal mine in Kentucky, a state where workers fought and died for the right to organize, has closed, the Associated Press reports. Patriot Coal had announced the closing of its Highland Mine, which employed about 400 hourly workers, late last year.

According to the AP, union leaders and retirees like Johnson argue that increasing environmental regulations, a chaotic coal market, and anti-union political operatives have all contributed to the union’s undoing in Kentucky:

For the first time in about a century, in the state that was home to the gun battles of “Bloody Harlan,” not a single working miner belongs to a union. That has left a bad taste in the mouths of retirees: men like Charles Dixon, who heard the sputter of machine gun fire and bullets piercing his trailer in Pike County during a long strike with the A.T. Massey Coal Company in 1984 and 1985.

“I had my house shot up during that strike,” said Dixon, the United Mine Workers local president at the time. “I was just laying in bed and next thing you know you hear a big AR-15 unloading on it. Coal miners had it tough buddy, they sure have.”

The shots fired at Dixon’s home recall the even deadlier organizing battles of the 1920s and ‘30s, many in Harlan County.

One ambush shooting in 1937 ended with the death of union organizer Marshall Musick’s 14-year-old son, Bennett, when “a shower of bullets tore through the walls of the house,” according to union leader George Titler’s book, “Hell in Harlan.”

“A lot of people right now who don’t know what the (union) stands for is getting good wages and benefits because of the sacrifice that we made,” said a retired union miner, Kenny Johnson. Johnson was arrested during the Brookside strike in Harlan County in the 1970s. “Because when we went on those long strikes, it wasn’t because we wanted to be out of work.”

A national spokesman for the United Mine Workers, Phil Smith, expressed concern that now that the union is absent from Kentucky, business interests will exploit the lack of protections: “When the coal industry rebounds to the extent that it does, and non-union operators take a look around and see that there’s no union competition, and they’ll see that they can begin to cut wages, they can begin to cut benefits, they can begin to cut corners on safety, they’ll do that.”

Bill Bissett, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, an industry group, disagree. “I just don’t think there’s that level of discontent between the company and working coal miners, which I think is a very good thing,” he said.

“If anything, they’ve won,” Bissett continued. “They’ve worked themselves out of a job.”

Photo via AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.