UP FROM THE PITS
Rice, Charles Owen
THE COAL MINERS UP FROM THE PITS My Uncle Joe was a CIO organizer back in the forties and he was often stuck with strikes by small and unseasoned unions. His organizing budget was skimpy so he...
...Desperate is not too strong a word for their situation...
...There was one grave flaw in this fine system...
...It won't work...
...His organizing budget was skimpy so he had to go to established unions for help...
...In the course of this bitter strike not only will all wages cease but also funded hospitalization and medical care...
...Although the operators are set for this strike, the miners have not hesitated...
...They cut back the flow of money into hospitals and medical plans, causing alarm in the communities...
...Still the operators and their customers will not hurt for months, while the...
...We have a true impasse...
...Marx somewhere said that the miners would be the vanguard of the revolution...
...While one wishes them well, one cannot be optimistic as to the long-term results...
...The miners were to be softened by a taste of suffering for themselves and their dependents...
...A generation ago John L. Lewis forced the coal industry to finance an elaborate system of hospitals, pensions and medical care that became an accepted and expected part of the life of the coal country...
...They are still that way...
...Profit drives one, freedom and safety drive the other...
...In the United States coal miners are the vanguard of trade unionism in Border and Southern States...
...Irish miners along with Welsh and some Scots were the founders of the UMW...
...Then leaders disappeared in the night and 2,000 soldiers came...
...The most significant phenomenon is that American coal miners of whatever religion or ethnic heritage act like miners...
...They need our good wishes and more...
...The authorities did not hit them head on but made promises, which they appeared to be fulfilling for awhile...
...There has been violence, there will be more...
...It is miserable work but it makes them very tough and in a way fatalistic...
...COMING john j. logue writes on the "Salt Talks and the Salt-Water Talks": / "As law of the sea diplomats work to give away the common property of mankind, arms negotiators are having one more try at restraining the mad race for nuclear armaments, delivery systems, laser beams, neutron bombs and the like...
...20 January 197S: 40...
...The opposite is true...
...The reaction of the miners was significant...
...So it is today, when, as has happened often in the past, the miners and their UMW are in hard straits, everyone with a feel for the labor movement and a sense of history sympathizes with the miners and cheers them on...
...Coal may be stockpiled to the heavens, and non-union coal may be flowing to the market, but the miners are out and militant...
...Even though the situation is desperate the miners are striking and will strike...
...CHARLES OWEN RICE (Monsignor Charles Owen Rice, a Pittsburgh pastor, has long been associated with labor movement activities...
...They stalled on grievances, became over-technical and drove the coal miners mad...
...Wildcat strikes flared and the companies retaliated to give the miners a taste of what could come...
...In the North and Middle Atlantic, Catholic ethnics are the prevailing forces...
...It is one of the most hopeful of modern signs and would seem to indicate that trade unionism has a fine future in the United States...
...As Phil Murray pointed out to me, whsn it was inaugurated, it was not actuarially sound and depended on tonnage being mined...
...The tin miners of Bolivia have been the only stragglers in that passive land...
...They brought trouble on themselves and compounded the trouble by being toughly technical on the flow of money into the various funds of the UMW...
...A working miner lives with death, and, when his grievances concern avoidance of death or serious injury, he does not accept stalling tactics and fine legalities...
...The operators did not begin to negotiate seriously until the strike was on...
...that is, the right to have a local strike on a local issue, especially the issue of safety...
...I shall attack...
...They booed Nicolas Ceausescu, president of the State Council, and held a couple of his men hostage...
...They were not cowed but enraged...
...One day the other industrial workers of those regions will follow the lead of their brothers and sisters in the North...
...Now a deal is proposed to the effect that, in return for a renewed no-strike clause, the health and welfare provisions will be funded and guaranteed...
...He gave the orders, the soldiers did the fighting...
...The union does not maintain a strike fund so there will be no strike pay...
...They are acting in precisely the same militant fashion as the coal miners of the Northeast and Midwest have acted...
...miners will hurt right away...
...He needed all his political skill to cool the situation and we cannot be sure that all is quiet permanently...
...He was not terribly impressed with the quality of brotherhood and trade union solidarity that he generally encountered, but there was a consistent exception...
...Theirs is the most hazardous of occupations and the dirtiest...
...The strike became inevitable...
...The strike had been brewing and it had been obvious that the miners and the operators were not getting along...
...pensions and insurance will be adversely affected...
...They too lack vision—and boldness...
...Over 900,000 people have been depending on that system for one thing or another...
...Miners may not be the vanguard of revolution but miners of all sorts tend to be the vanguard of trade unionism...
...When mining stops, the flow of money into the system stops and the flow of support and sustenance can be shut off by the industry...
...One of the earliest Labor Priests was the fabled Monsignor John Curran of that area around Wilkes Barre...
...Both sides are very stubborn...
...As they confronted the grim reality of their position and with almost one voice favored the bold step of striking, one is reminded of what Marechal Foch is purported to have said: "My center is giving way, my right is in retreat...
...Local unions of the United Mine Workers, (UMW), always responded even when their own situations were poor...
...The companies during the last negotiation won a standard no-strike contract, and proceeded at once to abuse their new privilege...
...This strike will be a long and bad one...
...In the case of coal, the soldiers mandate the orders and send themselves into battle...
...Peace will not come to the coal fields through such a deal...
...The operators are equally adamant...
...Only coal miners would react in this fashion...
...The quality of life and the imminence of death...
...In an otherwise accurate piece in the National Catholic Register, the curious assertion was made that the UMW was one American union without Catholic background or tradition...
...The harbinger of the union was the Molly Maguires of the Hard Coal region...
...Their contract with the Bituminous coal industry lapsed on December 6, and since, as a matter of principle, they do not work without a contract, they are now on strike...
...Knowing how painful it could be and having known hardship in the recent past, they are sustained by their grasp of the ultimate reality...
...One day we may expect to hear from the gold and diamond miners of South Africa...
...There is a big difference between the coal miners and Foch...
...The miners want a new contract that will give back to them a right which they have had traditionally and which was given up only of late...
...It is a matter of life and death to them...
...Some 166,000 striking miners and their families will suffer...
...They will pay much higher wages but they demand that no-strike contract...
...They were receptive to the pleas of fellow workers battling tough employers for survival...
...In Romania, a tightly controlled Communist country, the coal miners in the Jiu Valley staged a combination strike and revolt that has just been put down...
...A total of 35,000 miners had erupted in August and refused to work...
...So will entire communities, not merely from loss of purchasing power but in a peculiar fashion...
...It was that way in Spain but not over here...
...Coal miners have been rather resistant to revolutionary talk, but one can see how in a different ideological climate they would indeed be in the vanguard...
Vol. 105 • January 1978 • No. 2
