Support The Miners

AS THE NATION'S COAL STRIKE enters its 15th week--and it may very well go on longer, if the third contract offer by the Bituminous Coal Operators Association (BCOA) to the UMWA is not accepted by the rank-and-file--it is wise to remember exactly how important the strike is, both to the UMWA and to American labor in general.

To a beleaguered UMWA, pressured by militant young miners in the eastern coalfields and led inefficiently by Arnold Miller, the failure of this strike could mean the end of the union. Perhaps more significantly, the failure of the present walkout could set a dangerous precedent for management-labor relations in other industries for a long time to come. The coal strike is unique in that it is the first industry-wide walk-out in the post-war era in which what have been heretofore regarded as "fringe" benefits--health-and-pension plans, the right to strike at a local level if unsafe conditions are involved--figure as prominent issues. To end arbitrarily a strike in which conditions of the workplace and health-and-pension issues occupy the center stage would not only be wrong, and perhaps hamper workers in other industries--but to end unsuccessfully a strike in what is known as the nation's most hazardous industry would be criminal.

Furthermore, it is necessary to remember what is at stake as stockpiles dwindle and workers in other industries that depend on coal are thrown out of work. When the strike began last December, most utility plants and steel mills--prime clients for the low-sulphur bituminous coal that comes from the eastern fields--were sitting on stockpiles that in some cases approached 90 days, and averaged 75. These stockpiles were used as cynical chips in bargaining with the union throughout the winter; it is only since the huge mountains of coal that surrounded the electrical and steel producers in December melted to tiny hillocks in March that the BCOA has made an attempt to bargain in good faith. It is clear that the onus of the strike rests with the operators and not the miners, most of whom experienced a bleak Christmas in a strike that began last December 6.

President Carter's handling of the present strike has been abominable. Sitting tight in the White House for three months, and making no obvious overture to the miners except threatening to cut off their food stamps--the only way many miners made it through one of the harshest winters the coalfields had ever known--Carter stumbled to action only ten days ago. His order of a Taft-Hartley injunction only angered and bewildered the UMWA, leaving many miners muttering John L. Lewis's 1943 offer in a similar situation: "Let them dig coal with bayonets." Tacitly disregarded by the UMWA, perhaps more than anything else the injunction strengthened the resolve of the membership to stay out until the strike was won. The federal judge who refused to sign the order last week is to be applauded; in a turnabout, miners hampered in the past by injunctions from federal district court judges are left with the sinking feeling that only the federal bench has any sanity.

BUT PERHAPS the one thing the strike points up the most is the shakiness of the UMWA itself. Percentages of union-mined coal have decreased in Kentucky, perennially the leading producing state, every year since Miller took office in 1973, and 85 million man-days have been lost to wildcat strikes in West Virginia alone in the past two-and-a-half years. Clearly, the rank-and-file is dissatisfied with the leadership of Miller, who has seen the exodus of most of his staff over matters of union policy. There is no wistful feeling for the days of the corrupt Tony Boyle; and it is not the influx of too much democracy into the union, as some observers have suggested, but a simple feeling that perhaps Arnold Miller has lost touch with the membership.

Miller, the winner of a bitterly-contested three-way race, was re-elected as union president last June with barely 40 per cent of the vote, and has certainly given the miners nothing to be cheerful about in the past few months. The UMWA is rare in that the membership votes on all contracts; it is thought that the union president will not test his prestige on contracts the rank-and-file are likely to reject. Miller has already done this, on a contract that contained such regressive measures as the fining of miners who walk-out on wildcat strikes $110 a week, expelling from the union leaders of wildcats, and that the miners themselves take over the industry-financed health-and-pension plans. It was defeated resoundingly.

The third contract, while stripped of these oppressive features, does force the miners to pay up to $200 a year in medical costs. In an industry that has most working miners receiving minor injuries on a weekly basis and retired miners who make periodic visits to the hospital for black lung checks and other assorted ailments that come from a lifetime of hard work, it is obvious that the $200 will be paid immediately, perhaps in the first month of the year. In this matter, the federal government should intercede; for 30 years the cost of basic medical care in the backward areas of Appalachia has been borne by the union.

It appears that the vote on this latest contract will be close--it contains a healthy pay increase, and exhausted miners with doctor bills and car payments to meet seem anxious to get back to work. Haste should be cautioned; a speedy resolution of the current impasse will lead only to another three-year period of wildcats and another long strike at contract time, with the further erosion of an already-weakened union the result. But for the time being, we cannot lose sight of the long-range implications of this long-range strike, for both the UMWA and other industrial unions, and we must support the miners wholeheartedly.