THE WILDCAT MINERS
Gibbons, Russell W
THE WILDCAT MINERS RUSSELL W. GIBBONS An unresolved powder keg of grievances West Virginia is a state of tales and legends-as many as the "creeks and hollers" which wind through its Appalachian...
...They went to jail...
...And, almost as spontaneously as it had begun, the wildcat ended...
...Convicted of criminal contempt charges in West Virginia's Boone County in early September, they had been among those jailed by a federal judge for violating picketing orders...
...Miner resentment also built up over the continued reliance of the operators on the courts rather than on established bargaining procedure...
...When civil contempt fines were levied against the International Union-$100,000 a day, which soon piled up to exceed one million-the heat was applied to local leaders to return to the mines...
...Under the direction of Yablonski son "Chip," the UMW legal department was molded into what the Wall Street Journal said was one "of the best in the American labor movement," providing not only negotiating skill with the industry but devising strategy which finally broke the anti-union stronghold of eastern Kentucky in 1974...
...The new grievance procedure-inserted into the pact only after the three-week strike which preceded the signing of the contract last December-has reduced the process to a 60-day maximum period between complaint and decision...
...For while the wildcat issue is a festering one which is central to the application of any meaningful contract won by the UMW, it is something which the onetime coal miner from Cabin Creek, West Va...
...The conflict may be deeper than that...
...The trouble was an unresolved power keg of grievances surrounding safety issues-one of the big items in the 1974 contract negotiated by UMW reform President Arnold Miller, and described by him on that occasion as "the best in American labor history...
...The walkouts by those whose trust he shared do not come easy...
...Their departures may or may not be related to UMW board infighting in which some Miller critics have described some of the president's aides as "house Reds" and "radicals...
...Placed on probation for a year, they returned to court and asked to be placed in jail for 90 days because the probation terms prohibited diem from carrying guns for the next year...
...Notorious in its "sweetheart" relationship with the coal owners, the union had descended to such a level that corruption, nepotism and sell-outs'were accepted as inevitable...
...Final acceptance of the pact was achieved in a coalfield referendum only with the adoption of a new grievance procedure for safe working conditions...
...For this month three of his key aides are leaving the UMW organization staff, in a move which is seen by some as a reaction to his reform administration and by others as initial success in removing a cadre of young and highly motivated technicians who have provided much of Miller's direction...
...These horrendous figures lead to the low tolerance level of miners unable to cope with conditions in which there is no real resolution or correction offered...
...can understand and cope with...
...For the first six months of 197S the U.S...
...When that went out, and the revulsion over the contract slaying of anti-Boyle candidate "Jock" Yablonski became known, the UMW experienced under Miller a virtual facelift...
...Stillman is going to the Auto Workers as their top publicist...
...What Miller may yet be unable to cope with is the process which is now taking place in the interior politics of his union, still heady from the democracy which he and his Miners for Democracy insurgents brought with their historic 1972 rank-and-file victory over the Boyle machine...
...There could even be some substance to hints of back-country anti-Semitism, because of the similar background of Miller appointees...
...The seven-figure fines are the least of Arnold Miller's troubles (most observers doubt if the companies would ever demand payment...
...In addition to West Virginia, mines were temporarily closed in Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia...
...The injunction route is another West Virginia and Kentucky tradition: for decades the heavy arm of government has come down on the side of the mine owners and their clients...
...Unassuming and totally honest, he came up from the pits into the Washington, D.C...
...The cultural roots of many UMW members run deep into the mountains, and they assert suspicion toward sophisticated, knowledgeable people regardless of what "side" they are on...
...Arnold Miller may just shake his head and tell them about Sammy Hawkins and Dave Sprouse...
...Like many of the other college-educated and sophisticated UMW staff, he was a VISTA worker in Appalachia, moving to the Miller crusade before the downfall of the Boyle machine even became a remote possibility...
...Arnold Miller understands this, for he knows the frustration and rage of a man forced underground to make a living...
...They made murder contracts, not collective bargaining contracts," says a Miller aide...
...Wildcats are an understandable response to the technicians who have set up unworkable rules and regulations while miners die in the bowels of the earth...
...Bureau of Mines reported 75 fatalities-an increase over the 67 deaths reported in the same period the previous year...
...He may wish he were back in the Carbon Fuel Coal Company mine in Kanawha County, but he has come too far down the road to look back...
...Fatal accidents such as these would be intolerable in virtually any other industry, but have been accepted as a way of the workplace in underground mining in this country...
...The foot-dragging process was favored by the companies, and they were not about to give it up in many locations simply because of new language included in the new contract...
...The mildly leftward stance of die UMW since the Miller election is in contrast to its isolation under Boyle for more than a decade...
...When almost 30,000 of the state's 60,000 miners were recently out in wildcat strikes unauthorized by their union and prohibited by the courts, they retold the story of the new oculist in Charleston who visited several of the mines when the shift was changing, holding an eye chart in front of him to bring queries about his practice...
...It was not an occasion for local stories within the board rooms of the mining companies, however, when in late August upwards of 80,000 miners-about three-quarters of the nation's soft coal workers-were off the job...
...The UMW Journal, once a moribund example of unrestrained puffery for Boyle and his cronies, was transformed into an attractive publication which has employed investigative journalism in the finest traditions of muckraking...
...As the coal companies have sought to steadily increase production to take advantage of the high prices which have resulted from the oil embargo, hazards have increased and mine safety has suffered...
...A rally by some 300 militant miners in Charleston in late August protested the sentencing of a local union president to 90 days in jail...
...Former West Virginia University Professor Don Still-man, who had served as Miller's campaign press secretary, has been the spark behind the Journal...
...headquarters of the UMW, which was bought by the late John L. Lewis from the Union League when he moved the union from the Hoosier flatlands...
...If we can't hunt, we might just as well go to jail," they told the judge...
...Rick Bank, Miller's executive assistant, and Tom Bethell, another key staff person appointed by Miller, have also been involved in much of the decision-making since the UMW came under new leadership...
...That attitude has been characteristic of the industry, whose workers are now aware that their calling places them in a new perspective within the complex aftermath of America's energy crunch...
...russell W. gibbons, a frequent contributor, is a labor editor in Pittsburgh...
...Coal companies get injunctions anytime they ask for them," says Sam Howze, who was jailed for refusing to order his men back to work, "and miners usually just ignore 'em...
...Now this may be breaking up...
...As a classic, decent reformer, he may not be able to withstand the battering rams of counter-reform at the UMW door...
...The problem becomes epidemic under the old system, in which miners who filed grievances would wait up to six months for a decision to be made about their complaint...
...Yablonski and the union's associate counsel, Daniel Edelman, are quitting to form their own law firm...
...Consequently, there has been little respect and less awe toward strike injunctions or writs handed down by federal judges riding circuit...
...All the mines, of course, were shut down...
...The wildcat-a strike unauthorized by the International Union, United Mine Workers of America- brought thousands of its members into conflict with not only the company but with federal courts which began to issue back-to-work injunctions based upon the contract...
...THE WILDCAT MINERS RUSSELL W. GIBBONS An unresolved powder keg of grievances West Virginia is a state of tales and legends-as many as the "creeks and hollers" which wind through its Appalachian mountains...
...The Lewis legacy in its finest hour is there to achieve- the Boyle nightmare is there to remind them of what can happen again...
...If Arnold Miller is an anachronism, so were his predecessors light years apart in both motivation and style: there is an instinctive rejection toward efforts to lump together the majesty and the tyranny of a Lewis with the tenure of "Tough Tony" Boyle, the convicted murderer...
...Implementation, however, has been lost in the limbo of good intentions promised by coal companies for years...
Vol. 102 • November 1975 • No. 17
