A New Coal Pact

Voting again in the pits

Strikes are nothing new to the 160,000 members of the United Mine Workers of America--and neither are contract settlements that come unstuck at the last moment. Such was the fate two months ago of U.M.W. Leader Sam Church Jr.'s first effort to win a new three-year work contract. Soon after negotiators initialed the proposed pact, workers voted thumbs down on ratification by a 2-to-1 majority.

Last week the prospects for an end to the 64-day strike suddenly brightened. Exhausted from ten hours of bargaining, Church emerged from a suite in Washington's Capital Hilton Hotel and announced that a new deal had been reached with the Bituminous Coal Operators Association, which represents 130 leading soft-coal mineowners. Said Church: "I finally made it; we have a contract." Asked if the U.M.W.'s membership would ratify the proposed pact, the union boss gamely ventured, "I think so."

Later in the day the U.M.W.'s 39-member bargaining council gave its unanimous approval to the contract, a necessary prerequisite to submitting the deal to the union's rank and file. That step is expected to take place later this week.

Wages were never much of an issue in the initial walkout in March, although the new contract sweetens the deal to 38% over three years and four months, as compared with 36% for a flat three years in the first contract. The most important question was a proposed change in the longstanding policy that required the coal companies to make royalty payments into union health and retirement funds when they bought nonunion coal. The union leadership's decision to drop that provision in the first contract had been the basis for the rank and file's rejection of the deal. The B.C.O.A. has now agreed to resume and even Increase the payments. Mineowners also retreated on another point of contention in the March pact: refusing to limit the use of nonunion workers at the mines by company subcontractors. Having reached agreement with the operators, Church set out to talk with his workers. Said he: "Like Willie Nelson, I'm going on the road again." First stop: Birmingham.

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