Once Again, a Coal Agreement

But union leaders were unsure whether miners would accept it

"Here we go again," sighed Frank Vahaly, 36, a coal miner in Bentleyville, Pa. His skepticism was echoed throughout the strikebound coal fields last week as negotiators for the miners and operators reached yet another tentative contract agreement--the third in the 14-week coal strike.

The question was: Go where? Once again the strike had turned into a cliffhanger, with the nation waiting to learn whether the 165,000 members of the United Mine Workers of America would vote this Friday to ratify the pact, which contains more generous provisions for health care and pension benefits, or send their negotiators back to the bargaining table.

Union and management negotiators did their best to give the proposed contract an optimistic send-off at a press conference in Washington's Capital Hilton Hotel. Said Nicholas Camicia, chief negotiator for the Bituminous Coal Operators' Association: "We think we have a package that will be very good for the union, very good for the country and [will] get our mines back to work." Added U.M.W. President Arnold Miller: "It's a pretty good contract."

Next day, the U.M.W.'s bargaining council voted for the pact by 22 to 17. The vote was closer than expected, but not close enough to dash union leaders' hopes that the contract would be ratified by the U.M.W. rank and file. In fact, although many miners were wary of the new agreement at first, at week's end they seemed to regard it as better than its two predeces sors. (The first was rejected by the bargaining council on Feb. 10; the second was voted down 2 to 1 by the miners on March 5.) Still, many local leaders cautiously gave the latest contract proposal only a fifty-fifty chance of being approved.

Negotiators for the U.M.W. and coal operators initialed the new contract only eight days after the Carter Administration had obtained a temporary restraining order under the Taft-Hartley Act to get the striking miners back to work. As expected, nearly all of the miners ignored the order and stayed home. Of the 900 union mines closed by the strike, only a handful reopened. The Administration actually made little effort to enforce the order. Explained a Justice Department official: "We're trying not to rock the boat." Behind the scenes, however, mediators from the Department of Labor were pressuring operators and union representatives to shift the deadlocked national negotiations down to the local level. Both sides reacted angrily to the idea. Said a U.M.W. leader: "We resented it deeply. They were going to destroy national collective bargaining."

The operators were equally upset. After meeting with the mediators, Camicia and Stonie Barker Jr., president of the Island Creek Coal Co., were driving back to their office when Barker suddenly suggested: "Why don't we go over and talk to those fellows ourselves?" Soon, they were at the gray stone U.M.W. headquarters. Camicia and Barker first demanded a new union negotiating team. The union bargainers refused. Unfazed, Camicia and Barker shifted the conversation to how negotiators for both sides should deal with the issues that still divided them. The conversation went so well that they decided to resume formal bargaining the next morning.

At that session, in Room W-933 of the Capital Hilton, Camicia seemed intent on finding a package that union negotiators thought would be accepted by the miners. Said a U.M.W. representative: "He was talking with us instead of to us." After 24 hours of talking, Camicia had his deal. It did not change the previous agreement on wages; the miners were quite happy with the operators' last--and inflationary--offer of a 31% hike over three years, to $11.40 an hour. But on key nonwage issues, the operators:

P: Gave up their demand that the contract specify they could punish or even fire wildcat strike leaders. Instead, the company negotiators agreed to leave the question of punishment in the hands of an arbitration board. The operators lost 2.5 million man-days of work to wildcatters last year and had initially been adamant about imposing penalties.

P: Agreed to increase immediately the maximum pension for most retired miners from $250 to $275 a month, instead of spreading that increase over three years. The union negotiators in turn abandoned their demand that pensions for all miners be made equal at $500 a month.

P: Settled on $200 as the maximum amount that miners would have to pay for their families' medical bills, a cut of $500 from the figure in the contract that miners rejected. The operators refused the miners' demand that they return to the tradition of free medical care. The chief reason: some miners and their families abused the system by visiting doctors too often for minor ills.

In all, the proposed contract would cost the operators about 250 per man-hour more than the contract that the miners turned down. It remained to be seen whether U.M.W. leaders could sell the new pact to the miners. After endorsing it, members of the bargaining council went home to brief local officers on the contract. To improve its chances for ratification, the U.M.W. scheduled all balloting for one day: Good Friday. Last time, the voting was spread over three days, and union leaders believe that reports of the negative early results influenced other miners to vote against the contract.

Many miners are still going to require a lot of convincing on the new contract. Homer Grounds, 51, president of Local 6243 in Sanderson, W. Va., is one of many who have decided to vote against it. For him, as for many other miners, the chief sticking point is still free health care. Others also want higher pensions for retired miners, many of whom are the fathers or other relatives of the strikers. Said

Grounds: "The contract don't look good to me. I couldn't vote for it." Added Gary Bostich, 22, of Ellsworth, Pa.: "I bet the operators still have a better contract up their sleeves."

But pressure on the miners from some local townspeople is building. Said Jody Brown, 30, of Bentleyville: "Money is tight and business is bad. In the stores, at the tavern and even in church, I can feel some hostility now." Many local leaders who opposed the previous contracts will urge their members to support this one. Said Rocky Morris, president of U.M.W. Local 1591 in Waltonville, Ill.: "It's not everything we wanted, but there's no doubt that there's an improvement." Nonetheless, Morris was not certain that his members would agree. "It's up for grabs."

If the miners ratified the agreement, many coal mines could be in business by next week, and coal shipments would be back to normal a week later. Last week, industries and utilities in the eight Eastern-Central states most heavily affected by the strike were still managing to cope with the coal shortage. Some power companies' stockpiles of coal are still sufficient for weeks. Ohio Edison, for example, has managed to keep a 35-day stockpile on hand, chiefly by buying power from other states and encouraging conservation. Thus the widely predicted economic catastrophe has been largely avoided so far.

A rejection of the coal contract inevitably will lead to more layoffs (now estimated at more than 23,000) and more power cutbacks, as well as big political troubles. Most important of all will be the question of how to get the miners back to work. At week's end, Federal Judge Aubrey Robinson Jr. refused to extend the temporary back-to-work order under the Taft-Hartley Act. He reasoned that the miners were "not paying any attention" to it and that, in any event, the Administration had not proved that the strike had induced a bona fide national emergency. But he scheduled a hearing on the main Taft-Hartley injunction for March 28.

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