Striking out of Weakness?

Coal walkout would hurt miners most

In the days of John L. Lewis, when the United Mine Workers called a strike it sometimes seemed that a mighty union was holding the entire nation for ransom. Once again a coal strike looms--but if 165,000 U.M.W. members walk out of the pits on Dec. 7, it will be a sign not of union power but of union weakness. The strike would be the biggest of the year, and would get President Carter's program to increase U.S. coal production (the aim is a 66% hike by 1985) off to a most inauspicious start. But the people hurt most would be the miners themselves.

Years of internal feuding by the insurgents who took over the union in 1972 have reduced the U.M.W.'s top leadership to a fractious clique of backbiting squabblers. President Arnold Miller, 54, re-elected by a minority of the members last spring (TIME, June 27), has remained mired in struggles with erstwhile supporters who say that he has not shown effective leadership. Meanwhile, wildcat strikes by U.M.W. locals have mushroomed out of control. As a result, the U.M.W., now negotiating in Washington with the Bituminous Coal Operators Association for a new three-year contract, finds itself unable to do the two things that any labor union must do in contract talks: speak convincingly for its entire membership, and threaten management with a crippling strike if its demands are not met.

The union's negotiating package includes a substantial wage hike from the present level of $65 a day (up to perhaps $100), better safety procedures and a restoration of payments to pension funds and health programs that were stopped during past wildcat strikes. But the key demand is to make the wildcats legal. For years, U.M.W. contracts have provided grievance and arbitration procedures to settle disputes between union locals and employers. But the union claims that the mine owners cynically drag out the proceedings, knowing that if the miners walk out, it is an easy matter to get an injunction forcing them back to work.

Consequently, Milter insists that he will sign no contract unless it contains a clause granting each U.M.W. local the Bright, by majority vote, to strike over local issues. To the mine owners that sounds like an appeal to recognize, and even give their blessing to, a state of anarchy. Under Miller's leadership, they point out, man-days lost because of the unauthorized strikes have more than quadrupled; the total so far this year is 2.3 million. Most dam aging were a series of brushfire walkouts that spread from West Virginia to Kentucky and Ohio this past summer, idling many mines for eight weeks. Though Miller personally appealed to the men to go back, his pleas were ignored. Mine owners--whose negotiating team is headed by Joseph Brennan, 42, a onetime U.M.W. official--contend that buyers are becoming reluctant to purchase U.M.W.-mined coal, because there is no assurance of continued supply.

The employers are in good shape to take a big strike. Since 1970, when some 74% of the nation's coal was mined by U.M.W. members, vast new strip mines in Wyoming and other Western states, where the U.M.W. has been unable to gain a foothold, have come into production. As a result, the union's share of national production has slumped to less than 54%. And industry has ample coal stocks on hand.

Long before then, the U.M.W. itself would be in trouble. Wildcatting has all but destroyed the union's pension and benefit funds, which get their money from employers on the basis of man-hours worked and tons mined. One of the largest, which provides $20 million monthly in pension checks to 81,500 miners, has used up its cash reserves entirely and now survives month-to-month on a combination of bank loans and new payments from the mine operators. If the whole union walked out, the fund would not be able to meet its obligations, and the other funds would also be in grave jeopardy.

Cutbacks in payments by these trusts triggered this summer's West Virginia wildcat strikes, and provoked a march on Washington by 1,000 of the striking miners.

Having belatedly realized its difficult bind, the U.M.W. has asked the mine operators to begin continuous daily meetings, rather than the previously planned weekly talks, in order to see if some sort of compromise can be reached before the contract deadline. Convinced that the miners are just now getting their demands straightened out, the employers seem in no hurry to oblige. But the mine owners could overplay their hand. Paradoxically, the U.M.W.'s trump card is that a prolonged strike could destroy the national union, leaving owners to deal entirely with the fractious, wildcatting locals. It is a thought that must have John L. Lewis spinning rapidly in his grave.

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