Coal Wars Again

...But saving a dollar now may cost them millions down the road...

...It was a lot different when my father worked in the mines...

...It costs me $400 a month for the oxygen," she says, pointing to the pulsing machine that is a double of Taylor's...

...and-a-half years...

...There has been no ruling," responds Mike Odom, president of Pittston Coal Group, "that the companies have committed any unfair labor practices, and it is our strong position that none have been committed...

...A strike is always very emotional...

...Mullins and the other strikers, many of them deeply religious, were outraged over a statement by Mike Odom that the miners should be willing to work on Sundays...

...On April 3, the NLRB added several more charges...

...The judge dismissed 90 per cent of the UMW's charges...

...They used to have feelings for the workers...

...Whittaker was one of about sixty miners who came to Greenwich on a UMW bus to picket at the company headquarters...

...There's not much around here but coal," says Chaffin, who has worked for Pittston for nineteen years...

...Whittaker's grandchildren are shown videotapes of films about coal strikes past— Matewan and Harlan County, U.S.A...

...The strike is certain to get considerably nastier before it is resolved...

...Our pension plan is superior to any they have in the UMW...

...They used to tell them their health cards were guaranteed for life...

...We worked for them in the mines, piling up the slate...

...At the picket line in front of Pittston's Castle-wood, Virginia, headquarters in April, the strikers were operating from a blue plastic Pittston president Mike Odom says he expects the miners to cross the picket lines soon and come back to work...

...Stump is not optimistic that the strike will be settled soon...

...He is permanently disabled—a victim, like many other Appalachian miners, of black-lung disease, which is contracted by inhaling coal dust...

...Coalfield analysts say Pittston is not going to get hung up on local public relations...

...And there are a lot more miners laid off—4,000—than are working...

...Gentry, now forty-two, was paralyzed from the waist down...

...Wise County has an official unemployment rate of 10.2 per cent, but most observers say it's really more like 20 per cent...

...Some of those trucks have union stickers on them, too," says Rich Griffith, a mine mechanic...

...Taylor lies on a hospital bed in his living room, which is adorned with an illustrated Bible on the side table and a bright red, Scotch-taped Easter scene on the wall...

...They're all wrapped up in their stock plans and golden parachutes...

...It's an undervalued company," Sprouls says...

...So I'm sticking with the union, whatever it takes...

...It is a protest against unfair labor practices...

...And the United Mine Workers are on strike against Pittston, a conglomerate based a world away in Greenwich, Connecticut, the wealthiest town in Connecticut's wealthiest county...

...The market for it is mainly abroad, so to sell it we have to compete with nonunion-ized companies in countries all over the world...

...I never believed there'd be people who'd stoop so low in America," Whittaker says...

...My father was hurt two years ago...

...If it takes to 1993, we'll be here...

...In 1974, the company made him a settlement of $4,450 for his job-related disability...

...Mullins smiles at mention of Eastern Airlines head Frank Lorenzo: "Down here we say Paul Douglas is the Frank Lorenzo of the coalfields...

...You couldn't hang out your clothes on the line," she says...

...his arm was shattered and half of his face ripped off in a conveyor-belt accident...

...I use it for my breathing on a four-hour schedule...

...he pays $79 a month from his meager pension for a union plan...

...They are carrying the coal to waiting railroad cars, which bring it to such ports as Newport News for export...

...Odom also denies that Pittston's economic position is secure: "The metallurgical coal we mine is hard to get to, and it's located in erratic seams...

...We're ready for that...

...I can see why they built their skyr scraper up there, away from the coalfields," he says...

...But there are a lot of others," he says, "who don't have anything else...

...Inside, twenty-five union representatives holding proxies were pushing for three union-sponsored resolutions that would create an independent board empowered to divest some of the company's subsidiaries...

...He said," recalls Mullins, "we got religion just to get out of work...

...They put the dollar above everything...

...His father was in for forty-four years, and his grandfather for forty-nine years—a family total of 111 years with Pittston...

...Odom says casually that he expects UMW miners to cross picket lines soon and go to work, but union leaders stoutly claim 100 per cent compliance...

...Unlike Harry Whittaker and Tommy Taylor, Gail Gentry of Wise doesn't have a lifetime of service to Pittston...

...Inside, the "ladies' auxiliary" dispensed homemade soup and chocolate cake...

...Already, there have been heated verbal exchanges on the picket lines, rock-throwing, and one disputed incident in which miners say a foreman tried to run down pickets with his truck...

...They told me if there's a cave-in to be sure and bring out the loader, because it costs $150,000...

...Pittston demands economic givebacks from the 1,500 striking miners and refuses to discuss important job-security issues...

...No amount of profit should get in the way of people's needs...

...Douglas makes $550,000 a year, with a $4.1 million severance agreement for himself and other senior executives.] They don't want to see disabled miners in wheelchairs in Greenwich...

...That's only half of what would be coming out of there if we were working," says striking miner Beaufort Mullins...

...Laid-off miners often leave the area for lack of work...

...Two out of three cars honked in support as they passed by on busy Route 19...

...Pittston pulled Miller's health card last year, along with those of the other retirees...

...Says miner Teddy Lester, "We're better prepared now than we've ever been...

...The strike, announced on April 5 by UMW president Rich Trumka, is the first in the coalfields since 1981 and promises to be long and bitter—despite Federal mediation...

...If Odom follows through on his plan to keep the mines open with "replacement workers"—the latest euphemism for "scabs"—there may not be any economic pressure...

...He also directs visitors to small mountainside houses with peeling paint, the homes of retired miners and widows, people dependent on Pittston pensions and benefits...

...Viola Miller, another Dante resident, agrees...

...Lying on his hospital bed, Tommy Taylor remembers a gentler Pittston Company: "It used to be you could go to anyone for help and they'd give it to you...

...This strike will last until we get a contract," says Charlie Chaffin, secretary-treasurer and safety committee member of UMW Local 28...

...Still, coal trucks run in and out of the gates, driven by nonunion workers who look straight ahead as they go past the pickets...

...I can't believe they would use our Sunday services to their advantage...

...I don't know where those people are at...

...ing, cited twenty-five violations by Pitts-ton, including replacement of union workers with nonunion foremen...

...A plastic tube attached to his nose is connected to a breathing machine that continuously pumps oxygen into his lungs...

...What we're offering the miners," he says, "would put them in the top 5 per cent of American wage earners...

...She is the sixty-five-year-old widow of a twenty-eight-year Pittston employee...

...It's pretty rough...

...These foremen, he says, "don't know what they're doing...

...This is prednisone," he says...

...Addair says the civil disobedience action is "only the beginning—look out, Pittston, here we come...

...He says fourteen months of negotiations yielded nothing...

...He leaves the house only for visits to the doctors, for which he must use portable breathing equipment...

...A few miles from the Miller home in Dante, but across the county line in even poorer Dickenson County, is Lambert Fork #2, a Pittston mine...

...He spent more than thirty-one years working for Pittston, contracted black-lung disease, and now pastors a small church in economically depressed Dante...

...They can't go in there and run coal like we can...

...But Gail Gentry, Tommy Taylor, and Viola Miller are still without health benefits...

...They got no feeling for the employees no more," he says...

...They like 'em," he says, "but they like Clint Eastwood movies better...

...The UMW, under the direction of the business-oriented Trumka, is showing increasing sophistication in hitting companies where they really live...

...I think the general public recognizes our role as the largest employer in the region," says Mike Odom...

...its 130 workers are on strike and the small quantity of coal being processed here is in the hands of foremen, many of whom have little hands-on familiarity with the machinery...

...The company even flew my family out to Colorado when I was having rehabilitation therapy out there...

...If my injury wasn't covered by workers' compensation, they'd have taken that, too...

...The NLRB's rulings are preliminary, he says...

...At the beginning I couldn't have asked for better treatment," he says...

...He'd been working for the company as a roofer for eight years when, in 1978, some beams collapsed and crushed five of his vertebrae...

...The air is full of coal dust as the enormous conveyor belt from the mine spews out a black stream...

...The company, part of the Pittston Coal Group, is the biggest employer in Wise County, a depressed area in southwestern Virginia...

...Each striking miner gets $200 a week strike benefits, plus hospitalization, and it will take some time to exhaust the union's contingency fund, estimated at $100 million...

...Chaffin scoffs at Pittston's claim that miners are bringing home $50,000 a year, making them unlikely victims of economic hardship...

...The Nippon Steel Corporation is a major buyer, with a contract that runs into 1994...

...His wife, Lucille, walks the picket lines and makes big industrial-size pots of food for the miners...

...But Tommy Taylor can only watch as the coal trains go rumbling past...

...Taylor shows off his medicines...

...Their assets are decent and their coal reserves are of a high value...

...Now they're dirty as a dog...

...This is cardizem, for my heart—I've had two heart attacks...

...The company earned $48.6 million, $36 million of it from coal, in 1988, a year of noncontract work...

...The Reverend Harry Whittaker is a colorful figure, his clothes covered with union buttons...

...One reasons both sides talk about a long strike is that Pittston, as long as it can continue to meet its many domestic and foreign coal contracts, will make record profits...

...Like her husband before his death, Miller has lung problems...

...If it hadn't been for the UMW, I'd be in a terrible state...

...They cite strong worldwide demand for the high-grade metallurgical coal Pittston mines and sharply increasing prices paid for it...

...Mark Sprouls, editor of the Chicago-based Coal magazine, points out that Pittston's stock rose from a low of $8.50 to a high of $15.38 in 1988...

...But they went through a complete change in attitude...

...Twin brothers, more or less...

...They care more about their damned machinery than they do for their men," says Wise...

...And, Odom says, contradicting the UMW claim, the strike is economic: "They are exerting economic pressure to make us accede to their demands...

...Everything was just black...

...As The New York Times put it in a story headlined Why Analysts Like Pittston, investment observers "expect the company to emerge from the standoff in a strong position...

...Dante was once the site of a major coal mine and reprocessing center, and Whittaker points out a now-forested hill built on a mountain of "slate," or coal waste...

...It could last a year—or two years...

...A few miles from Pittston's Virginia headquarters, over winding mountain roads colored by red-bud and forsythia experiencing an early spring, is Moss #3, once the world's largest coal reprocessing center, now forced to take a back seat to the Chinese and South Africans...

...tent scrawled with union graffiti...

...Pittston is the world's largest supplier of steel-producing coal to Japan...

...They're liable to blow the place off the map...

...A boom box played gospel and country hits...

...They charged us with 300 violations...

...But, says Trumka, the strike is not over wages...

...These citations, says Trumka, "tell Pitts-ton miners that the company will not abide by Federal labor law...

...The magazine cites the company as a likely takeover target...

...You can imagine how difficult it is, with me paralyzed...

...On March 25, the National Labor Relations Board, in a preliminary rulTommy Taylor suffers from black-lung disease, the legacy of sixteen years in the mines...

...The average is more like $32,000," he says...

...Not much of that will filter up to Greenwich...

...He is only one of 1,500 veteran Pittston miners whose health coverage was cut off last year...

...The price is now more than $20 a share...

...Griffith estimates that despite an hourly wage increase in the company's offer, he'd lose $3,600 a year plus his job guarantee if the full package of economic givebacks is accepted...

...Standing next to Griffith is Jackie Stump, president of UMW Local 28, a big bearded man dressed, like many other miners, in camouflage clothes...

...Odom, meanwhile, denies the company is making its profits by exploiting its workers...

...The two sides remain far apart...

...The word among the miners is that they're out-of-towners—from nearby West Virginia and Kentucky...

...She says she contracted COPD—chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—from inhaling the coal The mine at Lambert Fork #2 is operating, but these strikers say production is down: 'They can't run coal like we can.' dust that constantly hung in the air of Dante when the mine was operating...

...On May 10, 400 miners, retirees, family members, and Connecticut supporters walked the sidewalks outside the building in Greenwich where the company's annual stockholders' meeting was being held...

...Chaffin's father worked thirty years for Pittston...

...Since Pittston's contract with the UMW expired on January 31, 1988, it has been saving millions of dollars in unpaid pension funds and retirees' health benefits...

...Moss #3 is not producing much of anything now...

...In a common lament among the miners, Chaffin says Pittston changed when a management team headed by Paul W. Douglas took over in Greenwich in 1984...

...Griffith says he also does commercial art and carpentry, so he'll survive without a job in the mines...

...He worked for Clinchfield for sixteenJim Motavalli is the editor of the Fairfield County Advocate in Connecticut...

...Trumka charges Pittston with "an endless stream of labor-law violations and broken promises...

...Not now...

...I'm also on nitroglycerin and blood-pressure medicine...

...COAL WARS AGAIN BY JIM MOTAVALLI PHOTOGRAPHS BY ELAINE OSOWSKI From the bedroom window of his house in Dante, Virginia, Tommy Taylor, a former coal miner, can see the Clinchfield Coal Company tracks not twenty feet from the front door...

...We were sitting in to show people how dirty Pittston was treating our men," says Linda Addair, who took part in the occupation with her mother...

...They promised him health care for life, and then took away his card...

...Four million tons, 40 per cent of Pittston's output, is sold to Japan, where it is used in steel-making...

...Such generational continuity is not uncommon in mining towns...

...It costs me $45 every time I take one of them to the doctor...

...In early 1988, he and 1,500 other retired or disabled miners lost their company-provided health coverage when the United Mine Workers contract with Pittston ran out...

...Pittston really changed," she says...

...it will bring in its "replacement workers" and accept the consequences of increasing tension on the picket lines and in the meeting halls...

...He points to the smoke curling from the huge Moss #3 plant, which at full capacity can process 25,000 tons of coal a day...

...This turnabout—the company's annual report calls it "dramatic"—comes after 1987, a year in which the company lost $ 133 million...

...I have to be careful . I had a lung collapse during surgery, and the doctors said I had only a 20 per cent chance of survival...

...Miller's son-in-law, Carson Wise, has been in the mines eighteen years...

...Like the company, the UMW is prepared...

...More than a year later, Tommy Taylor is still without company health care...

...A week later, these same women, calling themselves the Daughters of Mother Jones, held a civil-disobedience action, sitting in overnight at Pittston headquarters...

...Pittston's low-sulfur coal will be particularly valuable if more stringent acid-rain legislation is passed...

...But when we can't work any more, we become just like that slate—waste to be thrown away...

...And when I go to the doctor, it takes a bunch of those portables, at $25 each...

...I lost health coverage for myself, my wife, and our three kids, one of whom has asthma...

...They couldn't care less about us...

...The community is behind us, they're with us...