Word: coal
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...Stocks. The big settlement comes at a time when the Ford Administration is struggling with raging inflation, rising unemployment and a steadily declining economy. Even a three-week strike will hurt. Coal-hauling railroads-including the Penn Central, Norfolk & Western and Chesapeake & Ohio-have laid off more than 2,500 workers. Thousands more have been let go by U.S. Steel and Republic Steel, which need coal to produce. Most electric utilities, which burn about two-thirds of the nation's coal, have adequate stockpiles for a relatively short strike. But the Government-owned Tennessee Valley Authority...
...John L. Lewis, the union's legendary leader from 1920 to 1960, whose autocratic legacy still burdens the U.M.W. In his early days, however, Lewis was a mighty force for progress. Only a decade or so before he took over the union, much of the nation's coal was dug by youngsters, some barely into their teens, who labored in appallingly dirty, unsafe conditions for only a pittance. Lewis was the Paul Bunyan of unionism, standing up to companies, courts and even Presidents with fiery bombast. When Franklin Roosevelt threatened to bring out the U.S. Army to break...
...U.M.W. the battering ram of organized labor, the strongest union in the nation. But he ran the organization like a feudal fief, stripping the membership of all elective power, making all decisions himself and swatting down any opposition. He bought a bank for his union, loaned money to troubled coal companies, and acted as the final arbiter for the entire industry, labor and management alike...
...wife and daughter were brutally gunned to death in their beds on New Year's morning 1970 -on the orders, it later came out, of Tony Boyle, who was eventually convicted of murder and is now in prison. The murders sent shock waves of indignation across the coal fields. Shortly afterward, Miller, who had risen to prominence in West Virginia as president of the insurgent Black Lung Association, was chosen at a meeting of anti-Boyle factions to succeed Yablonski and lead the reform movement...
...Enforcement and Safety Administration estimates that three out of every five miners who have been in the pits for 20 years or more have lost a finger in a conveyor belt or some other machinery. In addition, 215,000 miners are disabled by black-lung disease, caused by breathing coal dust. Says Miller: "A miner who gets black lung gives up ten or 15 years of his life. And it's a helluva way to go. It took my stepfather five years to die of it, and in all that time he couldn't breathe when...