A New Era For Mine Workers

THE LABOR-MANAGEMENT time bomb is ticking in anticipation of the November 12 expiration of the current United Mine Workers contract. The confrontation promises to burst into a protracted strike with potentially crippling effects on the American economy. The strike will climax the present period of flux in the relationship of the coal industry to the national economy. This changing relationship has been caused by rapidly rising oil prices, which have given coal new importance as an abundant source of energy. The increased importance of coal has given the U.M.W. new leverage in contract negotiations, and the Union hopes to close the long-standing gap in benefits between coal miners and other organized workers.

The United Mine Workers' newly elected president, Arnold Miller, has taken office in a union wracked by scandal but vows to "get tough with the operators until they scream." Miller's tough approach consists of demands for a 20 per cent wage hike, higher safety standards and a rise in the ante contributed by mine operators to the Union pension fund from $.80 to $2.40 per ton of coal. These benefits would increase the industry's manpower costs by only 50 per cent, while coal prices have doubled in the last four years. Miller is threatening the coal industry with a strike of up to six months to secure his long overdue goals.

Miller's new staff of union officials, which has been recruited from the coal fields, can readily appreciate the worker demand for a decent standard of living and security in old age. To demonstrate miners' vital need for pension and safety benefits, his advisors emphasize the industry's meager pension benefits of $150 a month and an injury rate three times that of manufacturing industries. The fatality rate of 120 miners a year far outstrips that of any other country's coal industry, and the infamous "black lung" disease afflicts one out of three miners--including Miller himself.

In response to union demands, industry officials are pointing to comparatively high wage levels of $50 a day and a worker absenteeism rate of over 15 per cent. But mine owners were slow to adjust to the operating standards of the 1969 National Mining Safety Act and do not relish the prospect of accepting more stringent Union safety regulations. The industry's sole defense against Union demands for higher pensions is their supposedly inflationary effect. But the operators just don't have enough leverage to counter the new bargaining power labor enjoys.

The opportunity for American coal miners to win twentieth century working conditions has arrived. The economic climate, which has traditionally been to the advantage of the management, has been drastically altered by the rise in fuel prices. Economic conditions unconducive to equitable contract settlements have existed almost continuously since the United Mine Workers' inception in 1892. In the early' nineties the union won modest gains for its members until technological advances in the industry and a decline in coal prices reduced the coal companies' need for manpower. This trend continued through the 1950's when the introduction of such fully automated equipment as the "continuous miner" cut the ranks of the nation's coal miners from 400,000 to 120,000 men. When miners' jobs were threatened by technological advances it became difficult to win concessions from the mineowners and most labor-management disputes resulted in victory for the companies, including the 1931 gun battle between miners and deputized guards in "bloody Harlan," Kentucky.

THE DEMAND for coal began to rise slowly in the late 1960's and increased dramatically after the Persian Gulf oil embargo until it reached the current price level of $30 a ton. The industry's simultaneous rush to expand production has increased the need for miners so that for the first time in over a decade the large coal companies have begun hiring new workers. Miller intends to use the union's resulting leverage over management to obtain such benefits as paid sick leave and a cost of living escalator clause that have become standard in the contracts of many manufacturing industries.

The current energy crunch may also induce government intervention in the impending strike. While an invocation of the Taft-Hartley Act and an injunction providing for an eighty day cooling-off period would be the government's simplest move, such action would merely delay the strike to the coldest months of the winter if concessions by the management were not forthcoming. Such a delay would put even more public pressure on the producers to come to terms with union demands.

The imminent elevation of the miner's position to that of workers in other industries comes during a period of change for the coal industry. American energy needs will require a doubling of coal production by 1980. The coal industry, which has undergone a longterm decline since the disappearance of the steam locomotive, will have to expand at an unprecedented rate to meet the nation's energy requirements. Electric generators that presently burn oil will have to switch to coal, and coal gasification plants will begin to replace diminishing natural gas reserves in the late 1970's. Despite the impending boom, the coal industry can still be considered a "sick industry" whose symptoms are a very high incidence of wildcat strikes and absenteeism, obsolete capital stock, and a long-standing reliance on government paternalism in the form of subsidies and import quotas.

Arnold Miller's democratic, grassroots approach to organized labor has done much to mitigate the calcification that the United Mine Workers leadership experienced under the autocratic tenures of John L. Lewis and Tony (W.A.) Boyle. An industry formerly saddled with a union in which, in Miller's words, "you couldn't tell labor from management" now has a more progressive, responsive union leadership. If the coal industry is to fill the energy gap it must extend the long overdue benefits to the miners and eliminate the unhealthy working conditions that cause absenteeism and wildcat strikes.

Miner's rights are no longer a matter of managerial largesse; the union now has the economic power to force the companies to share their bloated coal profits with the miners. The longterm economic stagnation suffered by the coal industry has left the mining companies with selfish and antiquated goals. A departure from this mentality of greed will enable the coal companies to imitate the U.M.W.'s advancement from its own archaic past.