Word: coal
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Hobie McNatt, the protagonist of John Sayies good and sometimes brilliant second novel, is a runner. Literally, he is a flanker on the football team of his small high school in southern West Virginia coal country. Hobie has speed to burn. Folks remember him as not as strong and bullish as his brother Darwin McNatt, whose fatigue jacket he always wears--Darwin, the boy who hung up his pads to join the army, and came back from Nam a little wacky. But when Hobie is cutting and stepping on the gridiron people scratch their heads and wonder when...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...