TROUBLES IN THE COAL FIELDS
Bensman, David
The coal strike of 1977-78 resulted in a serious defeat for the United Mine Workers' Union. After a remarkable display of solidarity, the miners returned to work on March•27 dissatisfied...
...More: they were responsible for her father's agonizing, slow death from black lung...
...The UMW needs drastic overhaul...
...now the coal companies will provide health insurance for their employees through private carriers...
...Wouldn't full production bring down the price of coal, lower the cost of living, and make American steel and other products more competitive...
...not only did the union fail to gain satisfaction on these issues, it was not even able to get company representatives to take them seriously...
...In the Madison subdistrict, union leaders like Hal Jackson disagree sharply with militants like Tim Vance and Jerry Dickens...
...he had never held union office...
...when one shift goes out, the following shifts do not work until the first decides to go back...
...Jim seemed such an unassuming character when I first saw him, with his baggy blue jeans, faded work shirt, and misshapen red truckers' cap, I had a hard time understanding that he was indeed the subdistrict officer...
...But I did meet two activist miners who sympathized with the Committee...
...Sunday nights, in particular, were "good times for a wildcat...
...is president of the familyowned Chafin coal company...
...Refusing to accept the boss's harassment and their leaders' judgment, the miners insisted on filing grievances...
...The contract provides far less than parity...
...But few miners and union officials seemed to believe the problem was that narrow...
...But T.C., what are you telling me...
...rank-and-file miners make fun of union officials...
...They're smarter, better educated, more self-confident, less willing to take crap from the "bosses" (as foremen are called), but they just won't let their machines do the work they can do...
...Eddie would not criticize the dissidents...
...John Chafin, Sr...
...Jim wasn't optimistic...
...Two union officials told quite a different story...
...A harrowing two-hour, nighttime drive up and down winding, hilly, and pothole-scarred secondary roads brought me to Madison, West Virginia, a small town in the heart of Appalachian mining...
...had changed, had become so entranced with the productivity of the machines he repaired that he'd lost objectivity...
...Finally, the union officials brought to the early bargaining sessions a list of other demands concerning the grievance system, discipline, health, and safety...
...255 That New Breed ARE THE YOUNGER MINERS really so different from their older colleagues...
...His decision to put the coal operators' first contract proposal before the union's bargaining council, early in the 1977-78 strike, badly undermined the UMW's bargaining position, and contributed heavily to the union's strike defeat...
...Jim didn't believe all this would happen...
...People like Lu Gardner made the miners' long strike possible...
...Although Tim looks like a hippie, he isn't...
...But in another area, where the mines had been opened recently, the workforce consisted mostly of young men...
...Bobby Burt, a Logan-area miner, agreed with Bethell's dire predictions...
...The coal companies were not only to blame for the strike...
...Anytime Tim believes there is danger, for example, he simply stops work...
...Weighing far heavier on their minds was the fact that the contract gave them none of the goals they had set at a prebargaining convention in 1976...
...Then, when the arbitrator disallowed the complaint, the men chalked their defeat down to bias...
...2) During that time, the coal companies took few significant initiatives to improve the safety and health conditions of mine labor...
...Thomas Bethell, former UMW research director, wrote recently in the New Republic: The UMW has been historically opposed to such plans for the simple reason that they kill people...
...But to mutiny you need a leader...
...They'd have to learn to trust their officers...
...These new workers were something of a mystery to company bosses and union leaders alike...
...Tim Vance said simply, "the younger miners are less production conscious...
...He estimated that his own 257 work crew could double production if the men believed they were working for themselves, instead of for the company...
...Though Hal is disgusted with the wildcatting, he does not blame the young men for all the problems...
...And a spirited young woman miner who was working throughout the strike as a volunteer in the Madison subdistrict's relief program confessed she was having nightmares about why the strike support money had not reached the miners before the contract vote...
...Moreover, the men are new to the mining industry...
...His speech urging a "no" vote on the contract was far harsher in its treatment of the UMW leadership than of the coal operators...
...Lewis concentrated all power in his presidency and used his hold over the loyalty of half a million men to force the coal operators to establish a unified bargaining committee...
...First I spoke to "Jim Jones," one of the subdistrict officers of District 17...
...But the combination of new leaders with a new democratic constitution proved problematic...
...The hoot-owl phenomenon seemed bewildering...
...Suspicious that their men are trying to put something over on them, foremen don't try to resolve disputes peacefully, for fear their reasonableness would be interpreted as weakness...
...On March 23, the night before the miners voted on the final contract, 150 miners met in Logan High School to discuss rumors that Miller had signed a secret agreement with the coal operators to limit drastically the medical benefits in the companies' health insurance plans...
...Hundreds of union leaders lost their offices under Lewis's reign...
...Moreover, Appalachians are very sensitive to slights, and if a miner believes he's not being treated with respect, he takes immediate action- -to hell with proper procedure...
...The same coal operator who described the shortcomings of Vietnam veterans estimated that only one-fifth of the new miners were "bad workers...
...From the beginning of contract negotiations, the miners had demanded that pensioners who had retired before 1950 be given benefits equal to those received by recently retired miners...
...He's been working atone of the Eastern Associates Coal Company's mines for two and a half years, ever since he finished high school...
...I traveled to Appalachia determined to give the lie to the coal operators' version of the causes of the conflict, namely, that the incessant wildcat strikes, excessive absenteeism, and low productivity were making it impossible for the unionized coal companies to compete with Western non-UMW producers...
...But then T.C...
...Danny Petit, president of the UMW local at one of Armco Steel's mines in Madison, told me that his local has few work stoppages because labor and management are committed to solving problems on the spot...
...He's married, his wife does not work, and his wellfurnished, bright new trailer is just the sort of home many of his contemporaries would like to own...
...When a company wants to provoke a strike, the "bosses" badger the men on the night shift, knowing that the inexperienced miners will strike rather than file a grievance...
...Perhaps the Appalachians' fierce individualistic egalitarianism accounts for the problem...
...This series of articles discusses the prospects and problems of trying to enact through democratic means structural reforms in advanced industrial society...
...they were responsible for Appalachian poverty, for they took all the wealth from the Mines...
...Among more militant union activists, antiMiller sentiment was fiercer...
...The free, comprehensive health care John L. Lewis won for the miners in 1946 is gone...
...If you tell a man he has no grievance against his boss, that he's obligated under the contract to return to work, you may make an enemy...
...Although the Company ruling was clearly illegal and would have been disallowed by an arbitration panel, the men at Eastern struck, closing down not only Eastern but all mines in the region...
...Many other miners, regardless of their own position on the incentive plans, told me they believe Bobby's prediction is correct...
...the new leaders, from President Miller down to local grievance men, had more responsibility than they could handle...
...Economic prosperity and spiritual deficiencies were only two of the explanations I heard for the emergence of the new breed...
...I'm suspicious myself half the time...
...hundreds of thousands of men were fired or retired...
...The grocers, barkeepers, neighbors, parents and friends made credit available to the strikers to an extent that workers elsewhere must envy...
...by then, vindication would often be meaningless...
...Bobby Burt, another intelligent young miner, agreed with Tim...
...A more disciplined workforce would have filed a grievance and held fast to its jobs, building up the union's treasury in anticipation of the December negotiations...
...Moreover, he estimates that his men mine 25 percent more coal per shift than work crews do in the average Logan mineshaft...
...After a remarkable display of solidarity, the miners returned to work on March•27 dissatisfied and discouraged...
...he had worked in a Cleveland auto plant represented by the UAW: "Now there was a union...
...Mary Maynard, tough and articulate president of a Dehue local, agreed with this charge...
...Skillful politicians learn when to be firm and when conciliatory...
...Both his father and his father-in-law had been miners...
...Any union capable of mounting an 110-day strike still has tremendous reserves of solidarity to draw on...
...Whatever the reason, they're angry, unwilling to take orders anymore, whether from their "bosses" or from union leaders...
...Although Tim shared the young miners' safety consciousness, he was not happy with their tendency to walk off the job on slight pretext...
...Rather than settle problems on the spot, they dare their workmen to file grievances or to walk out...
...Hal Jackson, a man in his mid-30s, is Madison's resident intellectual, and probably the only person I met in the coal fields who ventured his own generalizations about what was happening in the industry...
...For officers in any union, knowing when to drop grievances and when to press them is a fundamental problem of union politics...
...Moreover, his personal qualities made him seem an unusually valuable informant...
...I saw no signs of determined opposition to this reversal of UMW practice...
...They live isolated from metropolitan America in communities where coal miners predominate...
...Bennett Kremen's Dateline America reports that similar things are going on in Lordstown's auto plants, the steel mills of Indiana Harbor, and the typing pools of corporate America...
...Is Chafin deluding himself...
...But more important was discouragement...
...The young miners would have to be taught how to handle their gripes with their bosses, how to distinguish gripes from grievances...
...Madison is the site of Subdistrict #2 of the UMW's District 17...
...American miners still suffer many more serious injuries and fatal accidents than their counterparts in European mines...
...the "boss" knows that Tim can call in the union safety committee, and the committee can call in state mine inspectors...
...The local president, who works days, which high-seniority men usually prefer, is able to prevent most walk-outs on his shift...
...So even if major improvements in productivity were achieved right now, the effect would only be to boost coalcompany profits even higher while thousands of miners were laid off...
...And if the union's position is weak vis-a-vis the nonunion operators, it follows that the UMW's standing with the unionized coal companies of the Bituminous Coal Operators' Association has fallen...
...Production Incentives BUT THE ENGINES of economic "progress" are relentless...
...Hal Jackson agreed with Jim that outsiders were inflaming the situation...
...Thousands of miners were added to company payrolls...
...Labor relations in the coal industry are different from elsewhere, there is just no trust...
...What were the machines doing the other six hours...
...And in Logan's subdistrict office, on Thursday afternoon, less than 24 hours before the crucial vote, an angry knot of miners stood discussing the alleged "deal" signed by President Miller and the coal operators...
...Unfortunately, I was not able to speak to leaders of the Right to Strike Committee, for it operates very cautiously, preferring to work behind the scenes...
...The best example Tim gave was a prolonged wildcat at Eastern, which the company provoked last fall when coal piled high on the ground around the tipples because the rivers were frozen and barges couldn't travel...
...Traditionally, the UMW has opposed such proposals...
...But many UMW local presidents have less experience...
...Union officials scapegoat Communists...
...But don't the miners have an obligation to produce as much coal as they safely can...
...I left Madison with a strong sense that the organizers of the Committee were effective, however obnoxious their politics may be...
...They had lost confidence in their union's ability to win substantial improvements...
...We met in Summersville, West Virginia...
...Indeed, those local officers with leadership skills did not last long, for Lewis did not tolerate potential rivals...
...The Perils of Democracy IT is not surprising that the UMW has failed such an important educational task...
...Tim Vance is a 20-year-old, rank-and-file miner, with long blond hair...
...The older men have the best jobs operating the machines and "they just don't like shutting the machines down," nor do they "want to bother with timbering...
...Young miners, unlike their parents, have completed high school...
...Gene Fraley told me he once got so frustrated by a strike called by the men of the hoot-owl shift that he led a group of his shift mates in pursuit of the wildcatters, caught up with them, and spent a couple of hours remonstrating with them until they finally agreed to give up their strike...
...The UMW's future is troubled...
...I'll lose every friend I have...
...260...
...Since the grievance machinery is overloaded, a decision might not come down for six to eight months, and the men of the hoot-owl shift don't like to wait for vindication...
...was a popular figure in the coal fields...
...These men are good trade unionists, every one of them...
...Perhaps this is because mine locals are small...
...Under Lewis's reign, the union was strong on top, but not at the local level...
...The Productivity Problem JOHN CHAFIN, president of the Chafin Coal company, can afford to be complacent about "the productivity problem...
...Appalachia experienced a boom...
...Moreover, most miners believed that the system was rigged in the owners' favor...
...The strike started when Eastern, fed up with high absentee rates, ruled that henceforward no employee would be allowed to leave work sick unless a foreman inspected him and agreed he was in need of medical care...
...Moreover, it would be a mistake to focus exclusively on unprovoked wildcats of the hoot-owl shift...
...Its ultramodern headquarters in Huntington, West Virginia, comes from another world, unlike anything in the coal fields, but somehow the business still has a family touch...
...Gene Fraley, local president in the Logan subdistrict, told me he had supported Miller before, but now believed that the union's first order of business would be ridding itself of Miller's leadership...
...The Arab countries announced an oil boycott...
...Being a local president in the coal fields is a tough job even for experienced officials...
...the U MW was one of America's least democratic labor organizations...
...It is a fact that half the workforce is new to the coalfields...
...3) Appalachian coal output cannot be significantly increased at present because there is a shortage of railroad cars...
...I asked Tim if disputes over safety were the main cause of wildcats...
...Both middleaged Jerry Dickens, a local president, and young Tim Vance impressed me as sober, clear-thinking men...
...When Johnson complained, "I don't believe nothing the International Union tells me anymore," the audience--which was divided in its attitude toward the contract—broke out in applause...
...You'd go to work to find the last shift out, and you didn't even know why...
...The final contract gave them a 37 percent wage increase spread over three years, but the miners dismissed that increase as insignificant...
...THE COAL FIELDS, for 25 years, have been undergoing profound changes...
...I asked him what he made of the men...
...The Mystery of the Hoot-Owl Shift WHY DID wildcats occur...
...Dissatisfied with the reassurance they received from their subdistrict officials, the men stormed out, planning their antiratification rally that night...
...Why then did the miners ratify the March 24 contract by a sizable (57-43) margin...
...Surprisingly, one coal operator agreed with Tim...
...The mine workers' problems are not unique...
...Naturally...
...By cultivating good relations with his employees, he has been able to eliminate many of the minor work stoppages that cut into his competitors' production...
...A final word...
...So many bad things have happened," he said, "that you just can't blame the men for being suspicious...
...Later, Johnson expressed despair and bewilderment, "What have I done against this union for it to turn against me...
...The same sort of problem exists among local presidents...
...My first interview in the coal fields looked promising...
...The class struggle is a tangible reality...
...They get what they ask for...
...As time goes by, the young miners will marry and settle down, recent entrants to the industry will learn union principles, labor officials will learn leadership skills...
...And there is no middle class to mediate class relations...
...both blamed undisciplined young miners for weakening the union cause...
...wildcats were getting out of hand...
...The group of articles appearing in this issue will be followed by another in the next issue...
...Clearly, not all young miners belong to the "new breed...
...its members had voted down the second contract proposal by two to one...
...Consequently, if a boss harassed them, or discriminated against them in work assignments, they were only too happy to take a three-day weekend...
...He told me he'd lost 14 days' work to wildcats, all by "roving pickets" from other mines, none called by his own employees, for Chafin is the sort of employer who believes good relationships with his men pay off big in production figures...
...That's a difference measured in millions of dollars every year...
...And their officers would have to gain the skill and courage to resist demands to file unwinnable grievances...
...As for the companies, they could afford a few days of lost production...
...Hal Jackson reminded me that labor problems in the coal fields go much deeper...
...I do not mean to sound hostile to those young miners who walk off their jobs and picket other companies even on flimsy grounds...
...Though the union has a long and colorful history, in many ways it is also young and immature...
...They're a new breed, different from those who dug coal 30 years before...
...The coal operators are going to attempt to boost labor productivity, and apparently the coal miners will go along with them...
...Tim told me he had opposed the strike, believing it "played right into the coal companies' hands...
...Gene was able to exert leadership in this case because he had had some experience as a union man before he became local president...
...But Bobby, who's gone to college for a couple of years and looks forward to earning a teaching license so he can leave the mines, believes his shift mates will approve the incentive plans...
...They just don't believe producing more coal for the company is to their good...
...EDS...
...256 The Grievance DURING the recent strike, miners complained that the grievance machinery did not work...
...Many of the younger miners simply did not want to work, he said...
...Or to find that two grocerystore clerks and one miner from another coal company are picketing his mine shaft...
...Even the union rep wouldn't know...
...Antiunion sentiment among employers vexed by slow productivity gains is on the rise...
...By mid-1977, the older miners did not always honor the strikes called by the youngsters...
...Many of those who complained about labor instability were themselves young men, with wives to support, children to raise, parents to help out...
...Just about any settlement surrendering the union's medical plan would have been a defeat, but the final agreement had several other features obnoxious to the miners...
...Local officers did not have to learn how to lead their men, for Lewis took care of all important matters...
...Losing 14 days to roving pickets was bad, Chafin told me, but not financially crippling...
...One coal operator I talked to, a man who had grown up in the coal fields and raised a son there, believed that part of the problem was attributable to the Vietnam war...
...He blamed "outside agitators," men without the best interests of the union at heart, for stirring up the men, enlarging the miners' distrust of their leaders to unmanageable proportions...
...We invite comment from readers...
...But if the miners' grievance was not new, it did appear overwhelming...
...In general, "it's the younger men who care more about safety than production...
...I hope there is enough time...
...Leafing through his logbook, John Sr...
...Then war broke out in the Middle East...
...I knew the problem Jim described was not unique...
...4) Little of the wealth produced in Appalachia stays in the area, to spur regional development...
...Some companies do...
...Though the mines of Madison produce tens of millions of dollars of coal each year for such multinational concerns as Armco Steel and Occidental Petroleum, the town itself exhibits few signs of wealth...
...According to T.C., the continuous mining machines, worked by crews of seven or eight men, were in operation an average of only two hours each eight-hour shift, a figure that meant the companies lost tens of thousands of dollars each working day...
...Miller's leadership has been a virtually unmitigated disaster...
...How could that be...
...Their inexperience meant that the union lost some grievances where the men were in the right...
...Are productivity figures really as elastic as John says...
...The foreman corrects whatever condition Tim finds objectionable...
...Wildcatting is a luxury they can afford...
...A playful and intelligent person, T.C...
...such defeats turned the men against both their leaders and their grievance representatives...
...Many other unions, including such giants as the auto workers and the steelworkers, confront a similar discontinuity in the labor force, the same gap between young workers and older union officials...
...he could still make many hundreds of thousands of dollars every year as long as his men worked hard when the mines were open...
...During the strike District 17 had been a hotbed of militancy...
...His objection to wildcats was that they hurt the union...
...After one man from the audience climbed on stage to open the meeting with a prayer, Bob Johnson, a leading contract opponent, took the microphone...
...As a result, the union is in a weak position while trying to meet the challenge posed by nonunion coal companies, which have been expanding their operations in the West and in Eastern Kentucky over the past five years...
...The "bosses" are Appalachians too...
...The miners expect the "bosses" to screw them, and they're always expecting to be put down...
...In the current atmosphere of mistrust, it's hard to see where a movement for renewal will come from...
...although the trailers are improvements over the wood shacks Appalachian miners inhabited until recently, they give the town a look of transiency...
...The mines that had been worked for decades had few wildcats...
...Many wildcats, Jim claimed, were over issues that the union could have won through arbitration...
...But when the vets returned home, they found America had turned against them...
...Some of the miners, generally the older men, got tired of losing pay caused by frivolous strikes called by youngsters they considered irresponsible...
...married men blame unmarried...
...problems that older miners could resolve on the spot, by bluff or by appealing to the foremen's sense of tradition, the younger men find beyond control and so they simply walk out...
...Lacking confidence in their officers, the plaintiffs refused to accept the fact that all they had was a gripe, not a grievance, that however reprehensible the boss's conduct, it was legal according to the 1974 contract...
...That way, if Eastern had decided it was too expensive to keep the men on the payroll while the rivers were frozen, the company would have had to discharge the men, making them eligible for unemployment benefits...
...Miners for Democracy leaders chose Miller to head their 1972 slate because, with Yablonsky gone, there was no one else who could unite anti-Boyle forces...
...Whenever the market for coal turned soft--and 1977 was an off-year after three years of boom--the company "would just push the men into striking" by insulting someone or ordering him to do something unsafe...
...There are trailer camps all along the main roads, for the coal companies own all the land, which means housing plots are prohibitively expensive...
...If one looks past these six years, to the bad old days of Tony Boyle or the glory years of John L. Lewis, one is talking of a very different union...
...I told myself that T.C...
...Others attributed the young miners' independence to their education...
...259 consequently, they're less likely to take decisive action...
...But before we begin feeling sorry for the coal operators, we should consider the following facts: (I) In 1974-76, the coal companies' after-tax profits rose to $3.25 for every ton of coal selling for $21.50...
...When he came to town, it almost always meant there would be some good "picking," for he is one of Appalachia's oldtime musicians...
...But at most companies the "bosses" make names for themselves by being tough...
...Appalachian coal miners are unlike most industrial workers...
...During the years 1950-73, the coal industry contracted and mechanized at the same time...
...The U M W's challenge is that of the entire labor movement...
...There will be contributions by Michael Harrington, Ulf Himmelstrand, Dennis Wrong, Bogdan Denitch, Luther Carpenter, Kenneth Arrow and others...
...T. C. James, an employee of a company leasing and servicing mining machinery to coal operators, should have been in a position to say what the turmoil was all about...
...Usually, the miners would come to their union officers with complaints about their bosses' conduct...
...But at Tim's mine, the wildcatting got out of hand...
...A retired miner, who assured me he knew all about the games union leaders play, told me that Miller was withholding money donated to the UMW by other unions because he wanted to "starve the men back to work...
...What can it feel like for a local officer to report to work at 7:30 AM only to find that the hoot-owl shift has gone home for no discernible reason...
...Miners told me that it did no good to file a grievance because it would take six months or longer to get an arbitrator's ruling...
...If you back up your man, and lose the hopeless case somewhere in the grievance procedure, you will seem ineffectual...
...According to Hal, the Madison subdistrict is a stronghold of the Right to Strike Committee, which, according to Hal's research, had been organized by revolutionary Communists of a more or less Maoist bent...
...And perhaps their war experience itself was disillusioning...
...No one wants to work on the hoot-owl shift, so only young men are assigned to it and this makes them angry...
...Tim disagreed...
...They did not get a heroes' welcome...
...I was not surprised...
...He estimated that the Committee was responsible for 15 percent of the "no" vote on the , second contract...
...They resented the "carryings on" of their former classmates as much, if not more, than the older miners...
...Jackson showed me a map of the mines in Subdistrict #2...
...They can think for themselves," people told me time and again...
...Day or night you may be called to deal with a dispute in the mines, and often there will be no satisfactory way to settle...
...Sooner or later everyone begins to look the other way because the price is right, and that means murder in the mines...
...They may be misled, mind you, but I'm not saying one word against them...
...5) While the multinational energy companies drain Appalachia of its wealth, the steady erosion of the hills results in pollution of the streams and rivers, and recurrent deadly floods of which the Buffalo Creek disaster was only the most horrifying example...
...they were glad of the wages they drew, but unwilling to work hard, steadily, and unquestioningly...
...When Jock Yablonsky was murdered, Miller was a retired miner who had gained a local reputation as a leader of protests against the coal companies' and the unions' neglect of black-lung victims...
...If distrust and incompetence were limited to the president's office, the UMW would probably be able to weather the storm...
...Not all the miners on Tim's shift share his concern with safety...
...The 1972 victory of the Miners for Democracy brought Arnold Miller to office...
...Jackson agreed with Tim that a disproportionate number of wildcats occurred on the night shift, but that fact was entirely understandable...
...West Virginia sent thousands of young men to fight in Vietnam- -Appalachians are intensely patriotic...
...But on the "hoot-owl" shift--the late night shift---all the miners are young...
...Unblinded by the hysteria often afflicting union officials plagued by radical factions, Hal judged the Committee effective in feeding the militant spirit of a sizable chunk of the Madison-area rank and file...
...Old images of the coal industry and the people who work in it are no longer appropriate...
...So when I met a very militant young miner at union headquarters...
...The coal companies, many now subsidiaries of multinational oil firms, began to open shafts that had been sealed or abandoned...
...As new mines opened, after the boom began in 1973, unionists elected grievance men but the UMW never had the time, resources, or ingenuity to give them training...
...this caused hard feelings...
...This is the etiquette of the mines, "shift out, shift in...
...President Miller is not the only person in the UMW who took office in the last six years unprepared for new responsibilities...
...I had come to Appalachia believing the "new breed" of miners to be a product of the imagination of Eastern journalists, but everyone I met confirmed the theory...
...Yet, there is still solidarity: Tim and Jerry tell me that representatives like Hal press their grievances just as vigorously as grievances filed by administration supporters...
...Seeing disbelief in my face, he pulled out his workbook and showed me his notes...
...Another coal 254 company, Westmoreland, had temporarily laid off its men at that time...
...253 provoking the wildcats in an attempt to weaken the UMW, and to boost profits at the expense of the miners' safety...
...Many multinational firms are moving to "right-to-work" states where workers have less sense of their rights and powers...
...Was the major problem with such strikes that they cost the coal companies so much money...
...The coal companies are foreign, their headquarters hundreds of miles away...
...The current constitution and leadership are only six years old...
...The great majority of those hired after 1973 were youngsters, some recent high-school graduates, others Vietnam veterans...
...Well, wildcats did not occur equally often on all three shifts, Tim explained...
...A new constitu258 tion returned self-rule to the locals and districts and for the first time gave the rank and file final say over contract ratification...
...Thus, the democratization of the UMW coincided with the entrance into the coal fields of thousands of young men, and a few women, who had no experience in settling grievances or in running a local union...
...Community support for the miners sustains their solidarity, and that seems to be a fact that will not change...
...While he expected that figure to diminish when miners voted on the third contract, Hal seemed to think the Right to Strike Committee would remain a thorn in the UMW's side...
...But the fact that the strikers welcomed the incentive plan indicates that the UMW leadership has not succeeded in teaching its members fundamental union principles...
...On the other hand, when the men had legitimate grievances they wouldn't bother filing them, figuring the biased arbitrator would disallow good cases as well as bad ones...
...They robbed her of her sleep, during those long nights when her son worked in the mines against her fervent wishes...
...Surely, the coal companies were This Issue We feature in this issue of Dissent a special section beginning on page 293 devoted to the subject: "Beyond the Welfare State...
...they expect to lose it to inflation and taxes...
...The business press confirms Kremen's observations...
...miners take shortcuts and their own safety representatives are put in the politically impossible position of trying to enforce safety standards that, if enforced, inevitably would reduce production...
...The next day I left for southwestern West Virginia...
...Under the old contract," Tim told me, "there were just too many wildcats...
...And why should it be...
...Part of the reason is that many strikers had run out of savings and credit...
...The 1978 contract contained a provision making it possible for coal companies to establish "incentive production plans" by which miners whose locals agreed to the plan would be paid extra wages when they exceeded normal production targets...
...Thus Lu Gardner, proprietor of a Madison motel, told me a story of life in the coalfields that sounded like a tale from the 1930s...
...innumerable cases clogged the grievance machinery...
...On a "couple" of other occasions, Tim told me, the hoot-owl shift struck for no loftier reason than a desire for a three-day weekend...
...Jim told me that a grievance almost never reached the arbitrator when the company was clearly in violation of the contract...
...I can't go back to New York and say that...
...Miller proved he could not manage that task either but, nonetheless, he won reelection last June...
...To my surprise he said no, because "any man can refuse to work" if he thinks conditions unsafe...
...some have been to college...
...Perhaps sentiment will change in the next few months, as the miners get the strike behind them and settle down to the task of reconstructing their union...
...All they'll think about is the money...
...began telling me things that seemed all wrong...
...The new union officers were overwhelmed by their task, and there were not enough older miners to teach the youngsters...
...told me that the coal operators were the meanest bastards who ever walked the earth, rigid and contemptuous in their dealings with the men, rapacious in their strip-mining of his beloved mountains, callous in their unconcern with human life...
...Tim blamed labor problems on the operators...
...Chafin Coal is another example...
...The fact that T.C...
...Of course, the UMW has not yet taken the count...
...Back at the Madison union hall, I met a district official who explained the mysteries of the hootowl shift...
...Now the coal miners view Miller with a mixture of pity, loathing, and disgust...
...had once been a miner, and now occupied a neutral position, made him seem a natural source of information...
...These questions seem perfectly sensible, for they reflect the prevalent assumptions of our economic system...
...In the meantime, the system became so choked with cases that decisions took months to come down...
...Moreover, local union officials in the UMW don't have the status or prestige of their counterparts in, say, the Steelworkers Union...
...Both predicted approval of the third contract, despite their belief it would ensure future chaos and weaken the union...
...had an answer: the machines were idle as the men (and an occasional woman) prepared them, adjusted them, loafed, and then cleaned up after them...
...If they were unmarried, three days pay each week was enough...
...Then the union's democracy will prove a source of strength, not a handicap...
...The miners enjoyed sympathy where strikers elsewhere would meet hostility...
...Instead of gaining security for the unionadministered health system, the UMW lost total control of health-service delivery...
...Most of the miners I met wanted to depose their officers one way or another...
...It would be foolish to blame labor instability in the mines solely on a cultural trait...
...After the Strike HAVING LOST a lengthy and costly strike, the miners are blaming each other for their defeat...
...if the coal companies wanted continuous production, they would train their foremen to behave in a conciliatory way...
...Perhaps the experience of the college students of the '60s is now being repeated by Appalachian miners...
...Unlike their fathers, they seemed to lack a "work ethic...
...As the quota is met and exceeded, it is ratcheted upward and the bonus is made more substantial...
...After they'd gone, I found myself alone with "Eddie Workman," one of the sub-District's elected officers...
...All the miners I met substantiated his analysis...
...counted up the days his company had lost to wildcats in the past year...
...I asked Jim how the problem could be overcome...
...Afterward, OPEC raised petroleum prices high enough to make coal look like an attractive alternative...
...It was hard to believe that a whole industry could be plunged into chaos because a minority of the men didn't want to work or to wait for the settlement of grievances...
Vol. 25 • July 1978 • No. 3
