Word: coal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Rather than hang together, the operators may now try to survive separately. There were reports that Peabody Coal, the biggest member of B.C.O.A., Amax Coal Co. and Island Creek Coal Co. might break away from the other operators and negotiate individual contracts with the U.M.W. That could set a precedent for regional settlements, and the 2,500 smaller coal companies would fall into line. But this sort of balkanization could take the power of decision away from both the U.M.W. and the B.C.O.A. and lead to a kind of splintering that neither would find tolerable. The threat of such...
...contract depends on countering the distrust that has flared like coal gas among the miners. The Labor Department and the Mediation and Conciliation Service are engaged in delicate diplomacy with various U.M.W. factions to get them to take the lead in working out a settlement. But they are dealing with an independent, rebellious union that may see its individualism as its greatest strength. At a time when most labor disputes are fairly quickly accommodated and resolved, the coal strike is a stark reminder of the amount of damage that one embattled union, toughened by tradition and fired by indignation...
...years coal miners never had to ask that question. With the autocratic John L. Lewis in command, the United Mine Workers of America stood in the vanguard of American labor. Lewis staged epic brawls with Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, and the strikes he called paralyzed the economy, but his union grew strong. The greatest Lewis victory occurred in 1947 when he got the operators to pay 100 on every ton of coal mined to miners' retirement funds and lifelong free medical benefits...
...operators. The U.M.W. permitted a series of "sweetheart" contracts under which management and locals ignored sections of the national contract to keep mines in business and save jobs. But the sweethearts did not stop the growth of non-U.M.W. mines, which now account for about 50% of extracted coal; they only added to rank-and-file resentment...
...coal-mining town seemed ripe for violence, it was Oceana, W. Va., a scraggly strip of forlorn-looking buildings lining a potholed main street and set between two brown mountains in the Appalachian foothills. Once a brawling town that sprouted no fewer than 37 bars during a mining and railroad boom in the early 1940s, Oceana (pop. 1,580) is one of the few communities in which the miners voted to accept the latest proposed contract and go back to work. Although they are members of U.M.W. District 17, one of the union's most militant, they voted contrary...