"But Life Can Be Cruel"

For 165,000 miners, it will be a black Christmas

Brash and boisterous as ever, the barons of Big Labor convened in Los Angeles last week and confidently put forward their Christmas list. While 3,000 AFL-CIO leaders cheered, President George Meany, 83, declared that the Government should spend billions to create millions of jobs; should refuse to cut taxes on business; and should limit imports. "Free trade," he declared, is "a joke and a myth." But the familiar bravado had a hollow ring, for organized labor is in trouble. Its leadership is out of step with a nation that is increasingly worried about inflation and annoyed over Government controls. Beyond that, labor confronts a U. S. President who is not all that friendly and a rank and file that is disputatious and declining.

Labor's weakness is glaringly apparent in its biggest confrontation of the year --the coal miners' strike. Meany has told associates that the leadership of the United Mine Workers is inept. He also figures that the two-to three-month inventory of coal that has been stockpiled by utilities and steel companies will enable the operators to hold out until the union eventually knuckles under, a sentiment shared by the coal companies. The 165,000 striking union members, mostly in Appalachia, account for only half the nation's coal production. There are growing numbers of nonunion miners, largely in the West, and most will keep right on working.

The strike is not so much over money --the miners earn up to $63 a day plus benefits--as over an issue that seems more emotional than rational. The union is demanding that each of its 1,200 locals have the right to strike whenever a majority of its members vote for a walkout. For the operators, this would defeat the whole purpose of a contract. The result might be a condition of anarchy, as compared with the disarray that already prevails in the mines. All this year, one wildcat strike after another has been called by rebellious locals over issues that ranged all the way down to who is responsible for carrying into the mines the pots that serve as toilets.

In addition, it is U.M.W. policy that when just one picket from a struck mine appears at another mine, the workers there also must walk off the job. Even some union members have doubts about this tactic. Complains Fred Voithofer, 49, a miner in Greene County, Pa.: "Guys from out of state showed up and shut us down three times last summer. One had a gun. No way I'm going to argue with that kind of thing, but it's dead wrong. The company treats us well, and we shouldn't be penalized when some other company has trouble. We lose good money on somebody else's say-so." A younger miner puts it more bluntly: "If the company gave us protection against wildcat strikes, I'd be willing to cross the picket line. There wouldn't be all this wildcat crap if John L. Lewis [the thunderous U.M.W. leader from 1920 to 1960] were still around. The union has lost control."

After the contract expired at 12:01 a.m. Dec. 6, it did seem as if the workers were going to suffer more than the companies. Health benefits were cut off because employers are no longer contributing to the insurance fund for the 901,000 miners, retirees and dependents. Contributions to the fund, which had already been depleted by all the wildcat strikes, are based on production and hours worked. Many miners and their families have stopped going to a doctor because they cannot afford to pay.

Because of lack of employer contributions, pension payments will also be cut off for most of the 86,000 retired union members if the strike continues beyond Jan. 1. Some retirees take grim satisfaction in the fact that they contracted black lung, a generally incurable disease caused by inhaling coal dust. That ailment guarantees them lifelong disability payments. "If we lost our pension, I could survive," says Ashland ("Hawk") Howard, 62, a retiree in David, Ky. "But if I did not collect for black lung, I'd really be in trouble." Howard gets a pension of $225 a month and a disability payment of $219.

In Pond Gap, W.Va., a miner's wife walked into the general store, passed the potbellied, coal-burning stove and went to the back, where she opened a nervous conversation with Proprietor Virgil Huddleston. Finally, she got to the point. Her mother-in-law was coughing up blood and needed to go to the hospital, but the family could not afford to send her. Would Huddleston advance her a loan? He dug $50 out of his pocket. "As long as I've got it," he said, "I'm happy to help."

The stamina of U.S. coal miners should not be underestimated. Suffering is nothing new for them; it is often a matter of pride. They are demonstrating their resourcefulness in adversity. Outfitted in quilted parkas, they can be seen roaming the snow-covered hills and hollows of Appalachia in search of game to keep down meat bills. Their wives have canned fruit and vegetables to be stored in the cellar. If the utilities have stockpiled coal, so have the miners--to keep their homes warm during the cruel winter ahead.

Merchants try to be generous with credit. "We've carried good customers up to $600 before in strike times," says David Howard, a grocer in Masontown, Pa., "and we'll do it again, just as long as we possibly can." Bars are doing brisker business than before. Remarks Tilly Bohan, manager of the Trocadero in Masontown: "They say miners come into this world poor and go out poor, but I never saw the day that, strike or no strike, a miner couldn't come up with money for a beer."

Many miners seem determined not to skimp on Christmas. Karen Perrine, 23, is one of about 50 women who work in the mines in Greene County, Pa. Since her husband Linn lost his job as a truck driver several months ago, she has been the family breadwinner, and now she is out of work. It took considerable agonizing, she admits, before she and Linn decided to spend $35 for a toy truck coveted by their son Craig. "If you've ever seen a little boy's eyes light up like they did when he saw it in the store window," says Karen, "you'd suffer a lot yourself before denying it to him. The rest of Christmas is going to have to be love and kisses, but that's easy."

Solidarity is essential to the miner's mystique. Only another miner, he feels, can understand his tribulations. He is sure he is engaged in as tough a job as exists on earth--or under it. That is the source of his strength. "It's never dull when you're down below," says Jerold Hamrick of Kelley's Creek Hollow, W.Va. "You're some place where man has never been before. Fifty years' experience won't hold the top up. The rock has no respect for anyone. But it's in my blood. It's a challenge. People like to make out that life is all fun. But life can be cruel --ain't that right?"

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