Word: coal
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...worst threats hanging over the economy has been the prospect that 120,000 members of the United Mine Workers would stop digging coal next week, when their union contracts expire. A mine strike would reduce U.S. energy supplies more than the Arab oil embargo last winter did; it would cause factory shutdowns and layoffs in industries far beyond the coal fields, and it would seriously worsen the gathering recession. For a while, a strike had seemed almost inevitable. But late last week the outlook brightened a bit, and the chance improved for the nation to avoid a long, damaging coal...
...pact really is signed and ratified, the nation can only heave a sigh of relief. Peace seems to have been won essentially by the coal operators caving in to the union's insistence on wage and benefit increases roughly equal to the 39% over three years that 1.4 million steelworkers won last April, plus a long list of costly noneconomic demands. Even so, those demands are better met without a strike than after a walkout that could have crippled the economy...
...union in early September handed the coal companies a 54-page list of demands. They covered improved training and grievance procedures, greater participation in determining work schedules, and a number of safety provisions, including the right of a miner to leave his place at work if he feels that he is in imminent danger. The U.M.W. also demanded a big increase in pensions, which now provide retired miners with a maximum of $150 a month (v. $625 for auto workers), plus a cost-of-living escalator. All that in addition to a basic wage increase at least...
...then employed me and the romance started," explained Michael Wilson, 29. In fact, Wilson's performance as a butler and chauffeur so impressed Rachel Fitler, 77, that the Pennsylvania heiress and aunt of Happy Rockefeller has accepted her former employee's proposal of marriage. The Welsh coal miner's son denies any attachment to his fiancée's fortune, unofficially estimated at $2.5 million. "I must say it crossed my mind once in a while," he says, "but that isn't why I am marrying her." He does confess to borrowing $120 from Miss...
...show their strength, the anti-book forces urged a new boycott at the start of the week, and persuaded 28% of the county's 45,200 pupils to stay out of school; it was the most effective boycott since early September, when striking coal miners joined in the anti-book demonstrations. Ezra Graley, a fundamentalist minister who has already spent eleven days in jail for his book-banning activities, promised more. "The protests will definitely continue until the books are out for good...