The Unions-How Much Can a Good Man Do?
Seltzer, Curtis
The UnionsHow Much Can a Good Man Do by Curtis Seltzer Coal miners have often been r) romanticized in literature and journalism. There’s a continuing fascination with miners, something...
...Or Else...
...One bright spot was the prosecution of Consolidation Coal and one of its section foremen for negligence in the death of a UMW member...
...The Next Crisis Friday, December 14, 1973, was a long 60 years from the bloody mine wars of the industry’s early days...
...Few staff people knew what their responsibilities were...
...But hard as it was to build democratic procedures into an organization which had shunned them for most of its history, that task turned out to be easier than others-especially implementing the policy the reformers have advocated...
...John Slack, a lackluster West Virginia Democrat...
...By tying Fund payments to tonnage produced, Lewis boxed himself into a bad corner...
...Mine safety is a good example of the difficulty of translating abstract policy decision statements into reality...
...Constitutional questions-rather than collective bargaining goals-promised to be the most divisive issues, since it was there that organizational power would be won or lost...
...The Fund’s chain of hospitals had been auctioned or shut down...
...and the Anthracite Fund, whose size mirrors the bleak days that have fallen on Pennsylvania’s anthracite mines...
...The SAFETY . . . OR ELSE slogan implied a commitment by the officers to support safety walkouts and disobey companysponsored court orders aimed at stopping safety-related wildcat strikes...
...There was some orchestration...
...In the late 1940s, Consolidation Coal Company finally persuaded Jersey Standard to set up a tiny $300,000 pilot plant at Cresap, West Virginia...
...The MFDs first year was the year of the rank-and-file, the year to democratize, the year to get ready...
...Most observers have been impressed with the self-effacing way he and most of the others have handled the massive changes in status and responsibility that have come their way...
...About 100,000 choke with black lung disease acquired from the dust of the mines...
...One focus in the eastern coalfields is Duke Power Company’s Brookside mines in Harlan County, Kentucky, where the miners voted 2 to 1 last summer to join the UMWA...
...An MFD suit broke this pattern just at the time when the Miller slate took office...
...Miller’s own life had been circumscribed by the coal seams in Cabin Creek from tne start...
...By the time of the 1972 UMW campaign, the MFD candidates and their staff were sufficiently familiar with the mechanics of electioneeringMiller himself had once run unsuccessfully for the West Virginia House of Delegates-that the work of getting elected did not overwhelm them...
...Coping with mechanization became the central problem far Lewis...
...He was persuasive...
...However, the Blankenship victory has not warmed the angry hearts of those who still don’t like living without medical care and pensions...
...Next the resolution allowing the International to appoint certain kinds of district officers was accepted...
...Lewis signed hundreds of “sweet heart’’ contracts with Appalachian operators who, during the recession in the 195Os, were being undercut by the sudden appearance of non-union “dog-hole” mines manned by unemployed union miners...
...It was almost a year before he resigned...
...Miller and his associates discovered at once that the old Boyle bureaucracy did little work and what was done was usually done wrong...
...On leave from his position with the prestigious Washington law firm, Arnold and Porter, Huge was the principal lawyer in the $1 1.5 million Blankenship verdict, which forced the Fund to expand its eligibility rules to include 17,000 additional recipients...
...It was the first successful case prosecuted under the 1969 Mine Safety Act...
...There were times-quite a few of them, as a matter of fact-when 1 had some difficulty remembering why we had struggled so hard for the dubious honor of being reminded every five minutes just how bad things had been...
...But the romantic vision of the UMWA confuses what has happened with what needs to happen...
...The substance of the MFD platform does not appear to have been watered down by victory, bureaucratic snaggles, or internal politics...
...The momentum had shifted and the reforms had been institutionalized...
...There was never any doubt about how he ranked those objectives...
...It didn’t take long for them to realize that Miller’s convention was not going to be a velvet-fisted gravy-train like its predecessors in Denver and Miami Beach...
...The press table skeptics kept asking Miller, “Do you think this is democracy...
...The BLA-DRA connection was an important step in the political education of both the disabled miners and the ex-poverty warriors...
...Much of what the delegates learned was the process of the convention...
...Miller quickly made good on his promise to cut the salaries of officers and staff...
...The campaign promises about union reform had to be kept both as a matter of personal conviction and as a matter of consolidating the reformers’ political base in the districts...
...Miller argued that this authority protected the rights of members from corrupt local and district officials...
...Nepotism ended...
...There is still the stuff of heroes in the UMWA’s reform movement, make no mistake about that...
...Confidence in this world of budgets and memos was slow to develop among men whose leadership models had been the company’s section boss and Tony Boyle...
...The Rise of a Tyrant By the 195Os, the big companies had begun to mechanize their operations...
...The oil industry’s control of coal was formalized during the last ten years as first Gulf Oil and then Continental Oil, Occidental Petroleum, and SOH10 bought out major coal companies...
...The openness of the debates and the obvious protection of the opposition’s rights will influence the way locals and districts operate in the future...
...The real danger for the union is that on June 26, Duke may be allowed to hold a new election among its non-striking employees to see whether they want the union to come in, and it is a foregone conclusion that these “scabs” aren’t going to vote for the UMWA...
...Miners have experienced something called “democracy,” uniquely their own...
...But they were, ironically, humbled by the surprisingly large margin by which they won in December, 1972-15,000 votes...
...It is this cause and effect relationshipbetween the degree of internal democracy and the militant attitude towards the energy operators-plus the fact of democracy itself that makes the MFD’s first year so important...
...Miners’ unions have a particular appeal and have been heralded by writers like Sinclair, Dreiser, and Dos Passos...
...Jersey Standard obtained exclusive U. s. rights to this process from Farben to prevent U. S. coal companies from learning it, and kept the coal genie locked in its oil barrel for 30 years...
...Because of this tradition it is not surprising that Arnold Miller is the latest object of popular fancy...
...And then things began to change...
...Miller’s sense of balance, roots, and self-image continue to be those of a rank-and-file miner...
...Throughout the campaign, there had been a persistent tension between the MFD staff members based in Charleston and those in Washington...
...The UnionsHow Much Can a Good Man Do by Curtis Seltzer Coal miners have often been r) romanticized in literature and journalism...
...Although a few delegates were veterans of as many as seven UMWA conventions, for perhaps a majority, including Arnold Miller, it was their first...
...Bogey Locals - During the 1972 campaign, the MFD had pledged autonomy for the locals and districts...
...The UMWA didn’t start with John L. Lewis, but sometimes it seems that way...
...This broad 9)) language was somewhat unclear...
...As an ironic result, Miller and the MFD had a much more difficult time imposing the changes they had promised to the rank-and-file...
...As Miller said in his President’s Report to the Convention: . . .we underestimated the extent to whch the central administrative machinery of the UMWA had just plain stopped functioning...
...After the Second World War, the boom which had enthroned King Coal went bust...
...In the longer view, it must look toward a new political coalition, some kind of amalgam of labor, environmentalists and consumers, that can demand “power to the people”-clean, cheap, fair, and safe...
...As the months flew by, the troika arrangement persisted, but as one insider observed, “when the chips are down Arnold makes the decisions.’’ Lately, some of the functions delegated to Trbovich have been partially shifted back into Miller’s office...
...Pensions for bituminous miners were only $150 a month while Pennsylvania’s anthracite miners received a pittance of $30 a month...
...The rules also give the rank-and-file the opportunity to make the union into something more than it is today...
...On the other side, the DRA people developed legitimacy and hundreds of contacts with the miners...
...Thus, there is the prospect that this strike will continue at the present level indefinitely...
...Miller had promised the anthracite miners that he would equalize pension benefits by raising them from $30 to $1 50, but the committee’s report failed to make specific recommendations for such equalization...
...the difficulty is in working things out day to day...
...His own plain, straightforward style held up well over the two weeks...
...Miller realizes that if the coal industry does shift to the West, it is essential to the UMWA that the strip miners be organized...
...He reasoned that making the officers accessible to the rank-and-file would ultimately make the union more responsible and probably more militant...
...The coal industry’s move to the West then, derives from short-sighted, shortterm profit-seeking coupled with a desire to undercut the UMWA...
...The day-to-day administration of the union is handled by athe staff under the guidance of the officers...
...The real crisis for coal miners will develop over the next decade as the result of policy decisions taken amidst today’s energy pandemonium...
...Because the rank-and-file had been eliminated from union decisionmaking, Lewis was able to trade 300,000 jobs for good wages and benefits for those members who still had jobs...
...But strong words are not enough and he knows it more than most...
...every year, 3,000 or more die from it...
...The more efficient a mine, the greater were the royalty payments...
...behind rhetoric is politics...
...A second area where policyimplementation lags behind policymaking is organizing...
...Even so, Appalachia has enough coal for our foreseeable needs-80 billion tons of low-sulfur deep mine reserves and two billion tons of low-sulfur strip reserves recoverable with 1974 technology...
...The Safety Division has had three directors since January, 1973, and the absence of a forceful leader has undercut the drive for safety consciousness at the local level...
...The main business of the convention was rewriting the union constitution...
...Staff relationships seem to follow a pattern of molecular anarchy, where on any given issue two or three molecules will form out of the available elements, bump, and unbond, only to form again in different combination the next time...
...The coal seams are thicker, they are closer to the surface, and they are easily and cheaply strip-mined...
...If Boyle had been in office, Miller and his supporters would have fought this resolution to the end...
...Miller replaced all the Boyle-appointed IEB members with his own caretaker appointees until elections could be arranged...
...Currently, about one-fifth of the working ran k-and-file are strippers, who account for almost one-half of all the Fund royalties...
...SecretaryTreasurer Patrick, a working miner straight from the pits, faced the scary prospect of making sense out of the union’s books...
...The combined fines totaled $2,200...
...For the UMWA today, the most difficult task is establishing a measure of control over the huge energy combines which dominate the coal industry...
...tentative...
...No thugs guarded the microphones for the union president...
...Concurrently the Fund was being evicted from its building by the construction of Washington’s subway...
...to 116 million tons from 123 million in 1972...
...But on Wednesday the convention rejected a resolution calling for a Strike Fund ($1-$15 monthly payment) that the IEB could levy on the membership...
...Rather it is the officers themselves who have been sobered by the complexities of doing what they want To win major contract demands this year the UMWA negotiators need a solid rank-and-file behind them...
...the] big business grip on the state legislatures and governors’ mansions and congressional delegations...
...That night, Ed Monborne, chairman of the Constitution Committee and a Miller supporter, was seen chewing out guys from his district for their failure to speak out in the floor debates...
...simply issuing an order would seldom produce any results...
...Miller has increased the safety division staff to 42, and has earmarked about $1.5 million to establish a network of safety monitors...
...Last November, Miller and Huge announced that certain categories of disabled miners and widows would receive benefits, a move that appeared partly to be designed as a way of heading off criticism from MFD supporters at the UMWA‘s convention in December...
...The bi-weekly Journal, the most regular link between the officers and the membership, changed into a model labor magazine overnight...
...It was years before pilot gasification and liquefaction projects were begun again...
...The historic irony is that coal-to-petroleum technology had already been developed by both the Germans and the Czechs during World War 11, and today, South Africa obtains much of its oil and gas from coal...
...The transformation of reform candidates into union leaders required changes in selfperception and behavior from Miller on down...
...Arnold and Porter was awarded about $600,000 in legal fees for its role in the case...
...The conservative opposition made speeches about “the rights of the old-timers who built this Union,” when they were really pleading for their own political necks...
...The promises themselves-leaving internal politics aside-demanded sophisticated managerial skills of the officers...
...The International is divided on the stripping issue...
...Translating policy into fact, however, involves the leadership in arenas where often it has less influence over the outcome of events...
...Back in 1936, when coal and oil were produced by competitors, Standard Oil of New Jersey felt compelled to make a deal with I. G. Farben, the German chemical giant, which had developed a practical way of transforming coal into petroleum...
...Despite the $1-million war chest voted by the convention, the present operation is still slow to get off the ground...
...Miller made a forthright statement on the state of the union and the prospects for the forthcoming negotiations...
...Many pledges involved tearing down the old bureaucracy and assembling a replacement quickly, with no disruption in service...
...That kind of solidarity, in turn, rests on the union’s ability to serve the membership on safety and contract disputes and provide increased Fund benefits for more people...
...Part of the explanation involves traditional market factors...
...But the oil industry has in fact dominated America’s energy policy since the opening of the big Texas and Louisiana fields in the 1920s and 1930s...
...Bitter miners, like Miller, who had been locked out of union jobs in the districts and the UM W A In t er na ti o n a1 Executive Board, found in the BLA an independent power base, which was able to surmount Boyle’s later charge of “dual unionism...
...The second year, 1974, is the year of establishing control, the year of the energy crisis, the year of the contract negotiations...
...The Depression had bankrupted hundreds of operators...
...No one in law is going to sit on their cans in Washington and tell members of the UMWA that they have to work in unsafe conditions while arbitration is going on,” Miller responded...
...If the dues issue had preceded the strike fund, the delegates might have been able to pass both...
...It took the reformers almost a year to set up a new political action arm, the Coal Miners Political Action Committee (COMPAC), whose job is to “break...
...The membership lost their leverage on the operators just as they had lost leverage on their union...
...But in return, Lewis agreed to allow full-scale mechanization, which would cost the membership 300,000 jobs in the next decade...
...For years, the story had been too many operators, too many miners, and too much coal...
...The convention passed a number of resolutions supporting Huge’s efforts to refashion the health care delivery system, increase benefits, expand eligibility, and enable the Fund to use its economic leverage in the coalfields for better health care, housing, and social services...
...The pattern of the first week’s votes suggested a closely divided house...
...Boyle intimidated pensioners into supporting his policies by threatening them with a future without Retirement Fund benefits...
...In the MFD campaign, the candidates (Miller, Mike Trbovich, UMWA vice-president, and Harry Patrick, UMWA secretarytreasurer) tried to make policy decisions on an equal-say basis...
...When times were good, a half-dozen strongbacked men with dynamite, picks, shovels, some lengths of mine track, and a couple of ponies could punch a mine into the side of a hill...
...Policy questions usually involve all three International officers and the IEB when appropriate...
...The power that he had centralized in the 1920s was now available to revitalize the union and lead the organizing of the CIO...
...In 1972 the MFD had made a major issue of the policies of the two Welfare and Retirement Funds: the Fund for bituminous miners, which covers most UMWA members...
...John Newdorp, the Fund’s chief medical administrator, says that Huge is the “best thing that’s happened to the Fund in 25 years...
...The former Boyle people, fearing for their jobs and their political influence, made speeches about autonomy that would have won cheers at MFD conventions in the old days...
...His example is followed by most of the MFD people who have recently won district offices and seats on the IEB...
...At this juncture Miller’s reform movement is a reform movement still, nothing less and not too much more...
...Sometimes the troika worked, and sometimes the press of schedules and events eroded the principle...
...According to data compiled by the Environmental Policy Center in Washington, D. C., the West (including Alaska) has about four times more low-sulfur underground coal reserves than the East and about 12 times more strip coal...
...When that decision was handed down, MESA had bothered to collect only $4.2 million in fines of the roughly $27.2 million nominally levied against the operators...
...According to Gateway, the UMWA will have to present irrefutable proof-not just the miners’ subjective judgme nt-t hat there is an imminent danger before they can circumvent the arbitration machinery...
...Secretaries could neither type nor take shorthand...
...The energy conglomerates and their allies in the Nixon Administration are now advancing three principal new solutions to the “fuel shortage”: oil deposits on the outer continental shelf, oil shale in the West and Alaska, and strip-mined coal in the Rocky Mountain states...
...The 1950 agreement, with its emphasis on mechanization, also laid the groundwork for two other changes: 1) the concentration of production among a handful of giant companies, and 2) the subsequent take-over of these giants by even larger energy conglomerates...
...I Lancing the Boyle The UMWA’s first year culminated in its 46th Constitutional Convention in December, 1973...
...Enter Arnold Miller Yablonski was one center of opposition to Boyle...
...Here democratization was exposed to public scrutiny...
...The most important MFD campaign slogans were “Coal Will Be Mined Safely Or Not At All,” and “Safety...
...There were some secret meetings...
...If gasification and liquefaction technology had been allowed to progress normally, vast new coal markets would have been opened at the expense of the oil industry...
...These deposits represent about 140 years’ supply of coal at our current annual rate of production...
...Lost in the fuss over whether the union is “democratic” is the critical question of whether the union can demystify the energy bamboozle in time to prevent the operators from busting the union under the guise of solving the energy crisis...
...The OR ELSE has not materialized...
...The leadership’s commitment to internal fair play has been remarkably consistent...
...Instead the convention recommended that the International seek special congressional assistance for the anthracite miners...
...Lewis came to power after the bloody organizing battles in the early 20th century, at a time when internal factionalism and over-pro ducti on we re thinning the union’s ranks...
...Most delegates, realizing that a big dues hike was likely, were not about to face their locals after passing both a $6-$8 monthly dues raise and a $15 monthly strike fund levy...
...Mi ller-supported committee reports on bargaining demands, relocation of the International’s headquarters, health and safety, the Fund, COMPAC were debated and passed...
...To date, most of the districts under union trusteeship have had elections of officers and representatives to the IEB, and Miller holds a slim majority on the IEB...
...With the policy-making machinery of the union fixed in his office, there was neither check nor balance on Lewis’ judgment...
...As chairman of the board, Huge has traveled extensively in the coalfields and has weathered some stormy sessions with miners and widows who haven’t yet distinguished him from the parade of nice-talking bureaucrats who made unkept promises in the past...
...Fast judgments had to be made on people and policy...
...The fund was administered by a three-person board of trustees, one appointed by the UMWA, another appointed by the industry, and the third elected by the first two...
...Many of the young liberals who are now on the union’s staff worked with Miller on DRA projects, or came to know him through mutual DRA friends...
...A number of short-run advantages attract the companies to the West...
...The outcome of debates on dues, autonomy, pensioner voting, and bogus locals (those whose members were pensioners rather than active members) would measure the depth and breadth of the reformers’ strength a year after their election...
...Those who dig coal have endured almost every conceivable fit of freeenterprise epilepsy-glut, bust, depression, loss of markets, unemployment, underemployment, and automationbut ultimately none may be as debilitating as the energy companies’ current plans to create a federally sanctioned national energy cartel, free from the check of organized labor and the balance of consumer and governmental accountability...
...this hesitant judgment was typical...
...When debate opened, the chastised Miller delegates jumped for the mikes and lined up four and five deep behind each one...
...otherwise the union will have trouble paying for the increased fund benefits it has promised...
...With the help of a small cadre of bright, young former poverty workers, Miller began to make the BLA into something more than an ad hoc organization...
...Operating with such radical principles as balanced budgets, honest accounts, and open records, he gained control of the cash flow...
...But the New Deal’s Wagner Act, which increased the unions’ legal rights and which Lewis had a clever hand in creating, saved his neck and his union too...
...The MFD could not have won the election or handled the transfer of power without the group of “outside” staff (young, liberal professionals) whose technical competence, flexible minds, contacts, and experience pulled everybody over many rocky stretches...
...The reformers have modeled some of their administrative structures after those of the United Auto Workers, but most seem to have evolved from their own experience...
...The union must try to decelerate western stripping simply to protect its membership and survive as an organiza tion...
...In the courts, the union has won a few skirmishes and suffered one catastrophic defeat...
...It was like trying to turn an ocean liner around in the Ohio River...
...It used to be called “King” for good reason: it gave light, warmth, shelter, and food, as well as pain, misery, and death...
...There are no coal mines in Washington, D. C., and there are no coal miners there...
...There were no official strikes until 1972, as the union’s leaders became addicted to the welfare of the Fund with a single-mindedness that totally ignored the welfare of the UMWA rank-an d-file . The sides of Lewis’ box got higher and the corners darker over the years...
...See “It Takes Energy to Make Energy” in the March, 1974, Washington Monthly...
...Finally, the union has not had much success in getting the companies to make safety a genuine part of their operating et hi c. Safety-oriented mining techniques-me thane removal systems, better means of supporting the roof, alternative mining methods, and more efficient dust control systems-have proven effective in Europe in reducing fatalities, injuries, and disease...
...The MFD had assumed that if the rankandfile could make internal union business more democratic, then the union would automatically be more militant at the bargaining table and politically more potent in the county courthouses and the legislatures of mining states The first step in making internal processes more democratic was to comply with the Lan drum-Gri ffin Act, various court rulings, and the MF D’s plat form which recommended that the union’s 22 districts be given full autonomy...
...Solid to the point of standing firm through a six-month strike...
...Bogey” locals (those with fewer than 10 active miners) had been intimidated by Boyle’s arbitrary use of the Fund’s benefits and had overwhelmingly supported him in 1969...
...Since Miller had clearly taken steps to make good on his word, it was somewhat paradoxical that the new president supported a resolution that permitted the IEB to suspend autonomy for any of the following reasons: 1) to prevent or correct corruption, 2) to assure compliance with collective bargaining agreements, 3) to restore democratic procedures or protect the democratic rights of members, and 4)“to otherwise enforce the UMWA’s Constitution and carry out the legitimate objectives of this Union...
...The UMWA has already spent $750,000 to support the strike that resulted from this union recognition dispute...
...It was as if the old MFD delegates were waiting for the officers to fight the floor debates for them, or impose decisions behind the scenes, or pull off some kind of slick maneuver...
...During today’s “energy crisis” strip mines can quickly capitalize on the rise in coal prices-later, a great deal of today’s 3.2 trillion tons of coal reserves will remain, much of it in deep reserves in the East...
...It had the appearance of functioning, but when we blew the dust off and turned the switch, the whole apparatus fell apart at our feet...
...The absence of a clear UMWA position will mean, in effect, a reluctant acquiescence to the industry’s very definite plans to strip-mine the Rockies in the near future...
...Some staff cut their salaries a second time on their own initiative...
...Huge continues to draw a salary from the firm...
...But more recently, two other reasons have emerged: first, the major energy companies want to keep their vast domestic coal holdings as their long-term ace-in-thehole, and second, the companies are looking for ways to defuse the UMWA’s militancy before it leads to significant alterations in the power relationships in the coal industry...
...The pyramiding confessions have led to Boyle’s conviction for the murder of the three Yablonskis...
...It was a long way from 1969, if time is measured by progress...
...During that period, 300,000 miners lost their jobs...
...This left observers confused, trying to figure out what exactly it was that they had been assured was democracy...
...Coal, which makes up about 87 per cent of these reserves, provided only 17 per cent of our energy in 1972...
...The Welfare and Retirement Fund, which provides pensions for 90,000 and health benefits to 600,000, was a Holy Roman Empire in decline...
...Another, limiting the major offices in the local to working miners, was also defeated...
...One delegate to the @ Constitutional Convention said, “Coal companies can’t read anything except a dollar bill and a court order,” and until it becomes costly or illegal for operators to run unsafe mines, men will continue to be killed needlessly...
...Staff members insist there are no permanent factions or ideological divisions...
...The new democratic ground rules give the membership some clear, dependable ways to shape policy and peacefully change the leadership...
...Efficiency and productivity usually meant fewer miners working...
...Gone was the $100,000 worth of trinkets featuring Boyle’s picture...
...In 1953, while directing the National Petroleum Council (which advised the Interior Department), Hallanan attacked the $2 million budgeted for operating a Missouri pilot plant as extravagant and killed the project...
...His first priority was to consolidate his own power in the organization...
...Probably more than the officers, the core group of staff works collectively on administrative decisions...
...An Imbalanced Troika There was the additional problem of the division of labor, status and power among the officers...
...The Miller staff made a big fuss about the loss of the Strike Fund-it was “their” loss as some of them saw it...
...and kept being told, “Yes...
...The history of presidential dictatorship in the UMWA began with Lewis’ victories over political dissidents in the 1920s...
...He broached the possibility of a six-month strike and was supported...
...What Does ‘Democracy’ Mean...
...The BLA and Miller personally were given extensive organizational and promotional aid from Designs for Rural Action (DRA), an OEO period piece that had assembled a dozen or so liberal lawyers, federal money-hustlers, Antioch College work-study students, and ex-VISTA volunteers to keep the political pots stirred...
...Several other cases concerning discharged International staff are still in the courts...
...The structure of decision-making varies with the issue...
...The leadership used “democracy” as a catch-all slogan that would right a host of inequities-lack of autonomy, unfair election practices, suspension of membership rights, and the budgetary tricks...
...The Boyle appointees sued unsuccessfully for their jobs...
...He brought with him highly developed administrative skills as well as a certain paranoid style that had him finding “leftists” behind every water cooler and conspiracies under every writing blotter...
...to do...
...Strip mines are fast and inexpensive to set up, and the strip operators will have to invest less to comply with the 1969 Coal Mine Health and Safety Act than deep-mine operators do...
...The new president learned the ropes quick-ly, and his unfailing courtesy made a good impression...
...In the past 75 years, the nation’s mines have killed more than 100,000 miners and injured more than one million...
...Huge seems able to listen to his constituen ts’ criticisms without be coming excessively defensive...
...The delegatesdemanded a district-by-district caucus which returned a verdict in favor of the resolution, 821 to 674...
...Perhaps it’s too soon to demystify the heroes...
...On taking office, Miller wisely delegated major functionsresearch, safety, anthracite, and organizingto Trbovich, who still felt some resentment over not having won the MFD’s presidential nomination...
...Miller had been disbanding them from the start under the provisions of the old constitution...
...The dark recital of Boyle’s years in office is by now a familiar testimony to the danger of union autocrats...
...I want it to be where thk membership can find it without using a map or a compass, for we are coal miners, not corporate executives...
...The low point for the officers came that Wednesday, after the convention had defeated the committee’s recommendations supporting a $50 special assessment power for the IEB, and new eligibility requirements for the International and the district office...
...It was equally difficult to figure out which friends-some new and some oldsuited the available jobs...
...The organization’s goals are still unclear and the group subject to factionalization-it split, for example, over the endorsement of a challenger to run against Rep...
...The convention then voted to exclude pensioner voting for important offices in the locals, like president and mine and safety committernen...
...This requires the skills of political administration as well as policy-maker...
...The 1974 contract negotiations are the most visible manifestation of this struggle...
...One position argues that the union should press for responsible strip mining where possible and its prohibition where it’s not...
...The “bogey” locals resolution was brought back from committee unchanged and this time was approved...
...Darkness, not light, can be seen at the end of the Appalachian coal tunnels these days...
...Yet, the fact of rejection alone was almost unprecedented...
...He almost wrecked the Welfare and Retirement Fund: the Fund’s royalties-up to $100 million over the years-were deposited in n o n - i n t erest-bearing checking accounts...
...It was to Miller’s advantage that, as a rank-and-file miner, he had learned that leadership required common sense and flexibility as well as authority...
...Lewis’ eventual successor, W. A. (Tony) Boyle, kept his grip as long as the money rolled out and his thugs hung around, and not very much longer...
...It was challenged by the Communist National Miners Union in West Virginia and Kentucky and the Progressive Miners Union in Illinois...
...The UMWA must stop the conglomerates from using the “crisis” as a winch to pull the locus of domestic coal production out of the Appalachian coalfields-where the coal is abundant but more costly to extract - t o the bargain-basement fields in the West...
...Supreme Court held that mine workers cannot stop work over safety issues, but must instead submit these disputes to binding arbitration...
...Revolutionaries Become Bureaucrats During the new administration’s first year the pressure to perform was strong...
...At present, Miller is moving erratically, sometimes pushing for strong regulation by Congress, other times not doing much at all...
...He was forced to quit the mines in the 1960s because of black lung and work-related arthritis...
...Implicit in this position is a trust in the operators’ and regulators’judgment which, by the evidence of Appalachia, is hardly justified...
...And fittingly, it came from miners, by miners, for miners...
...In sum, the MFD’s first year measured the limits of individuals and of the organization...
...If “coal will be mined safely or not at all,” the Gateway decision or the 1973 fatality count provides justification for an industry-wide shutdown (which Miller may be planning for November, 1974, when the current contract ends...
...DRA provided legal assistance, subsidies, office space, and counsel to the fledgling BLA...
...The effect of Gateway is to allow the operators to punish the UMWA’s treasury and legal staff with injunctions brought against “wildcat” safety strikes, and in so doing further discourage rank-and-file efforts to improve safety in their work places...
...His second was to stop the drop in membership...
...Of these three new sources of fuel, it is western strip coal which promises to become the fastest, cheapest, and most profitable option...
...Miller, who defeated the dread Tony Boyle for the presidency of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) in 1972, and his Miners for Democracy (MFD) have been lauded as revolutionaries by journals like The Washington Post and The Atlantic...
...The UMWA Journal ran a cover picture of SecretaryTreasurer Harry Patrick auctioning off Boyle’s luxurious Cadillac limousines...
...In the summer of 1973, Miller appointed Harry Huge to the UMWA‘s seat on the board...
...Jersey Standard’s policy of i mpe ding gasi ficati on-lique fa c ti on technology was aided by West Virginia’s Walter Hallanan, president of Plymouth Oil...
...There never has been any rationale for the headquarters being in Washington, D. C. except to get it out of the coalfields...
...Since the operators pay only perfunctory attention to what they call “MESA’S harassment,” close monitoring of the agency is not likely to have much effect...
...Officials in the West Virginia Coal Association say privately that a national ban on strip mining will directly improve both the short- and long-term employment prospects for Eastern coal miners...
...George Love, then head of Consol, had high hopes, but Jersey Standard’s reluctance and the gush of cheap oil from Texas and the Middle East discouraged him...
...One lawyer on the International’s staff (who is not disposed to praise fellow lawyers) described Huge’s work on the case as a “fabulous litigating job...
...Yet in some ways, you could see how the decisions made in the Pittsburgh Hilton would bring those experiences closer together...
...The strike and the confusion of moving meant that the Fund stopped functioning for two summer months...
...The decisions made about the 1974 negotiations, health and safety, and the Fund, however, were policy guidelines rather than binding directives...
...Mine safety, organizing, and political action are three areas where the Miller administration’s ideas are clearly enlightened...
...Before the vote, he spoke plainly and eloquently about why he supported the move: . . . I want to see the headquarters where the membership can come to it when they desire service, and they don’t get it somewhere else...
...Why, then, are the companies so eager to tear up the western deposits, which may consume nearly as much energy as it would vield...
...The MFD reformers had several tasks before them when they assumed office in December, 1972, First, there was the job of imposing democratic procedures on the internal workings of the organization...
...All would shift domestic energy production away from the massive deposits of low-sulfur, deep-mine coal in the Appalachian mountains and away from the power base of the UMWA...
...In 1973, 132 men were killed in the mines, just 24 less than in 1972...
...The Eastern mines are already in trouble: coal production in Wesl Virginia actually declined last year...
...good administration less so...
...The staff was trimmed...
...In the face of their expectations, inexperience, differences, and opposition, the Miller administration realized that visible change was necessary right from the start...
...He also seems to do what he says he will do...
...Coal production has been out of balance and impeded for several reasons...
...Under Lewis and Boyle there had been much to criticize: the union’s one-man Safety Division, the horrendous toll of death and disability, the industry’s manipulation of the U. S. Bureau of Mines, the absence of strict federal regulations (until 1969), the weak and erratic enforcement of the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act thereafter, and the lack of union advocacy for compensation programs for accident victims...
...Miners and Energy More than three-quarters of our total energy consumption is oil and natural gas, which represent about eight per cent of our total reserves of fossil fuels...
...Some of the same insecurities and personality differences that plagued the officers surfaced among the staff...
...The first minority report in anyone’s memory was delivered, and defeated...
...He secretly financed Cyrus Eaton’s takeover of West Kentucky Coal Company, which cost the UMWA $25 million in loans and resulted in a loss of $8 million when the company was sold...
...The other explanation for its defeat lay in the agenda order...
...The work of democratizing the internal management of the union is still in process, and the Miller reforms simply represent the lowest common denominator of trade union democracy...
...Democratizing the union also took time...
...A third area where action lags 4...
...Under Boyle it had lost $100 million between 1968 and 1972...
...Still others may finally find themselves the casualties of internal politics or the feeling that miners should fill staff positions wherever possible, and then some may simply burn out from their 1 5-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week work schedules...
...the other was the West Virginia Black Lung Association (B LA)-a loose confederation of individuals and locals which came together to lobby for a 1969 law to compensate black lung victims, and which found fresh impetus in the summer of 1970 when a former miner, Arnold Miller, assumed the presidency of the group...
...Some of his opponents felt an obligation to confuse the proceedings with fancy points of order and privilege, mostly to embarrass Miller...
...The delegates themselves couldn’t quite believe it when Miller called a number of close votesaguinst the committees...
...Some will probably leave after the contract negotiations are completed in late 1974 or early 1975...
...Huge is a fair-haired lawyer who describes himself somewhat disingenuously as “just an old country boy...
...The Wall Street Journal’s Bob Arnold titled his December analysis, “The UMW Tries a Little Bit of Democracy...
...But the U.S...
...Of course, there was no comparable rank-and-file check on the officers...
...Hundreds of thousands fewer...
...A working definition of “democracy” might be hard to fashion, but Miller followed his instincts and liis platform...
...Good policy comes easily to the new UMWA...
...On the day Huge assumed his position, the Fund’s employees struck for a better contract...
...And it was service that would consolidate the MFDs base...
...When demand fell or a glut developed, these small operators folded first and hardest...
...On Tuesday, the first committee resolutions were sent back for revision...
...The Department of the Interior-first represented by the Bureau and then by MESA-had been issuing about 100,000 annual notices of violations of the 1969 Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act until last month, when a U. S. District Court ruled that these civil procedures violated the act’s requirements...
...Despite a four-year grace period, the operators leaned on MESA, and the agency buckled...
...The vague, ill-defined projects will take longer...
...There’s a continuing fascination with miners, something about the spectre of black pits and grimy faces, of digging coal in dark dungeons “where the rain never falls and the sun never shines,” of the “stooped wretches” who face the daily prospect of being cut, crippled, crushed, or blown apart...
...Following the 1952 contract, the UMWA gradually ended its adversary relationship with the operators...
...A single band provided the flourishes in contrast to Boyle’s four, which had cost $200,000...
...Serfs of King Coal To appreciate the scope and meaning of Miller’s reforms, it is necessary to know something of the Appalachian coalfields and the union that organized there...
...If you haven’t spent time in the Appalachian coalfields, it’s hard to understand the historic grip of coal over the people there...
...There is still significant opposition in Kentucky, Alabama, southern West Virginia, and Ohio, where conservatives, former Boyle loyalists, and those with political ambitions are intent on building strong power bases to wage war against the International’s reform policies...
...Others may not want to move from Washington back to the coalfields when the headquarters finally is relocated there...
...In recent months there has been some gentle criticism by liberal writers, very cautious, very Curtis Seltzer is editor of Appalachian Newsletter...
...Gateway to Disaster It’s too early to judge the effectiveness of the UMWA’s safety program, but there are some disappointing signs...
...The miners of the UMWA were the “shock troops of American labor,” the most vigorous union representatives, from the early 1930s to 1950...
...This domination of the coal industry prevented development of commercial methods of synthesizing gas and gasoline from coal...
...Policy-making, like democratizing a union, is a process where the boundaries are known and events subject to some centralized control...
...The UMWA opposed what Davitt McAteer, a lawyer in the Safety Division, termed, “MESA’s waffling,” but was unable to prevent it...
...Given the change in leadership the vote on autonomy boiled down to a matter of trust in the fairness of Miller and the IEB...
...The massive, readily recoverable, lowsulfur strip deposits in Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Montana are being developed rapidly, in part to fuel power plants and gasification projects, in part to undercut the UMWA’s strength-in the East and thereby its bargaining position in the 1974 negotiations...
...In the first few months he had to institute totally different management and accounting procedures in the International Executive Board headquarters, reshape the Welfare and Retirement Fund (which by law and court-order is now completely separate from the union and thus less accessible to Miller’s broom-sweeping), establish an internal system of democratic procedures, and finally, make visible progress on basic issues, such as safety, organizing (20 per cent of all coal mined last year was not under UMWA contract), and political action in the coalfields...
...Then the loss of two major markets for coal (railroads and home heating) threatened to cave in even the larger companies...
...But the overwhelming feeling was that things had been above-board and that Miller could be trusted...
...And in January, 1974 alone, 19 miners were killed, and, as the UMWA admits, “today the rate at which men are hurt in accidents is higher than before the passage of the Federal Safety Act in 1969...
...From 1969 to 1972, Miller and other BLA activists learned volumes of practical information on organizing, drafting legislation, lobbying, fund-raising, public relations and mau-mauing federal bureaucrats...
...The real headknocking will come over a new national energy policy-who determines it, who benefits from it, and which set of assumptions underpin it...
...On the whole these were specific things that could be done right away...
...By the 1930s the UMWA had withered...
...Nor was the floor stuffed with “porkchoppers” whose ycas on voice votes--and all votes were voice votes under Lewis and Boyle -always swamped the handful of rebels...
...industry’s concern for profitable production-by any means necessary-means the operator “talks safety in the bath house and ‘Cut Coal’ underground” as one miner put it...
...Offsetting this advance was the recent decision in the Gateway case where the U.S...
...The UMWA’s immediate goal is to make coal mining safe and win substantial contract benefits...
...Duke Power, the nation’s sixth largest utility, refused to recognize the union at Brookside (which produces about one-seventeenth of its Kentucky production) because it feaKed that the UMWA would move into Duke’s other operations too...
...The MFD people had to face the demoralizing job of making themselves into deft bureaucrats...
...The officers and The UMWA Journal have directed a stream of pointed criticism at the Department of the Interior’s new safety agency, the Mining Enforcement Safety Administration (MESA), which relieved the U. S. Bureau of Mines of its embarrassing job of apologizing for carnage underground...
...At first glance there is a contradiction between the energy companies, ace-in-the-hole strategy for their coal holdings and the pell-mell rush to expand strip mines in the Rockies...
...The other argument is that stripping should be abolished entirely to ensure the UMWA’s survival...
...The work of administering the union had the effect of shaking out factional tendencies...
...That evening, the officers requested a meeting with the delegates that was closed to staff and the press...
...Both processes require the leaders’ commitments to certain principles, and their ability to persuade or maneuver dissidents into accepting re forms without creating a backlash...
...The UMWA lacks a strong following in the Rocky Mountain states...
...At first there were draining months of internal bickering when egos became repeatedly bruised in squabbles that arose out of a mixture of ideology and inexperience...
...It may turn out that the labor unity needed to take on the major energy giants will grow from Miller’s efforts to return control of the union to the rank-and-file, and that without this past year of democratization, no political base would exist for the upcoming fracas...
...The relocation of the International’s headquarters back to the coalfields was one of Miller’s major objectives...
...The delegates shared thc press’ wonder at what was going on, although they seemed to be more willing to reach conclusions about what it all meant...
...Initially, the deliberations were made more difficult by a rule that limited the delegates to concurrence or rejection (returning it to committee for further work) on first consideration...
...Files, if they were kept at all, were scattered about in cardboard boxes...
...About 500 mines should have been shut down recently for failing to comply with a provision in the 1969 Mine Safety Law that out la wed spark-producing motors underground...
...What makes matters ironic is that the UMWA became committed to support the Brookside strikers through the actions of William Turnblazer, a district official, who has since been convicted of participating in the conspiracy to murder Yablonski...
...Not surprisingly, those journalists who had most enthusiastically heralded the revolution were those who asked no tough questions...
...The debate was one-sided and the move to return the headquarters to the coalfields was supported by more than a 2-to-1 margin...
...Under Lewis and Boyle this third “neutral” trustee was always a personal appointment who guaranteed that the Fund’s policies reflected the wishes of the UMWA’s leadership...
...They have been the target of sustained attacks by Miller’s opponents who, as much as anyone, recognize their value to the reform movement...
...On the heels of this emotional victory, the COMPAC resolution, which authorized a $1-million political fund, passed overwhelmingly...
...The switch from men to machines meant that the bigger operators could produce coal more efficiently and more profitably than the smaller independents, who lacked the capital to pay for the new machinery...
...Miller’s willingness to abide by majority rule seemed to demoralize his followers...
...As these wounds have bled, multimillion dollar coal fortunes have been made by men with household names like Rockefeller, Morgan, and Mellon, and with less familiar names like Hammer (Occidental Petroleum), Routh (Pittston Coal), and Schuer (Eastern Gas and Fuel...
...Maybe it’s unfair to judge the reformers against their self-imposed, publicly expressed standards, which far exceed those of most American trade unions...
...The Miller leadership is best at articulating progressive policies...
...Although Arnold Miller has failed to take an unequivocal stand against strip mining, last January he said that the energy companies are using money and “vast political power” to develop the high-profit Western strip mines while allowing “the vitally important underground mines in the East to stagnate...
...Miller was smart enough to realize that he lacked Lewis’ supercilious majesty, and that, in any event, he couldn’t carry off that part even if tempted...
...Coal was the term by which the quality of life was defined...
...It was hard to deny patronage jobs to buddies from back home when they had worked with you in the pits or backed Yablonski and the MFD, but it was done...
...This made floor amendments automatically out of order at this stage and created some ill feeling and confusion...
...Most delegates felt that the fund wouldn’t have been much benefit this year since even if the $1 5 maximum were imposed it would have given the miners only a 1 @week, $16.50-weekly strike benefit...
...The union-owned National Bank of Washington loaned large sums to coal companies needing capital to automate...
...For the first time in years, the UMWA has undertaken a serious campaign to expand its base...
...The vote against the strike fund, however, was not a vote against the six-month strike...
...Its loss will be felt in the contract after this one, by which time a sizable strike fund would have accumulated...
...Mistakes were made...
...At the end of this Wednesday session Miller’s allies felt humiliated...
...The other focus of the organizing effort is in the West, where the industry is gunning its big strip dozers...
...When Joseph Yablonski challenged Boyle for the union presidency in 1969, Yablonski was ostracized and denied even elementary campaign rights, but he still didn’t lose too badly-for which he was murdered...
...As odd as it first appears, the “energy crisis” directly threatens the welfare of underground miners...
...After the miners spent the winter of 1949-50 out on a strike, he announced that his first industry-wide negotiations had resulted in a substantial wage hike and a royalty of 30 cents a ton to the Welfare and Retirement Fund, enough to provide major medical facilities and solid” pensions...
...The staff had grown old with a good rdea gone sour...
...As was the case in 1950 when Lewis traded jobs for benefits, if the union accedes to western stripping the result will be fewer underground miners in the East...
...He had to support the industry’s automation of underground mines and expansion of strip mining, since only through increased production would the Fund grow...
...It also had the effect of sending proposals back to committee without a clear sense of what changes should be made...
...On Monday, December 5, Miller got his first lessons in parliamentary procedure during the opening debate on the Rules Committee report...
...The resolution, providing for disbandment, was rejected...
...The apparent contradiction is understandable when one considers the historic quick-profit orientation of ?he big operators...
...A core group of staff uses a committee arrangement to work out their ideas...
...When he was 16 he went to work in the mines, hand-loading for 77 cents a ton...
...A cranky veteran of the Steel Workers Union was hired to provide managerial experience during the transition...
Vol. 6 • June 1974 • No. 4
