Word: coaling
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...painfully obvious problems, the Communist Party seemed to be doing nothing of substance to improve the situation," he recalls. "Intellectuals and dissidents were warning that the people's patience was about at an end." Last week Kalb was back in Poland, talking with shipyard workers in Gdansk, coal miners in Silesia, government ministers and party officials, as the Polish regime struggled to cope with the two-month-old workers' revolt...
...sent tremors through other vital sectors of the U.S. economy. Akron rubber workers, faced with layoffs like those in the auto industry, are accepting extraordinary reductions in their wage contracts, a development seldom known since the Depression. Even 200 Montana miners have lost their jobs because the low-sulfur coal they were digging is no longer needed to power Detroit's auto plants. Textile workers in North Carolina are out of work because demand has ebbed for the carpeting that they make for car interiors. In all, declining auto sales have cost 650,000 jobs in related businesses. Says...
Even if it could get the coal out of the ground, however, the U.S. lacks the transportation network to move it rapidly and inexpensively. Coal already is piling up, waiting for barges, railroad cars or ships to carry it. Railroads haul 65% of coal, and the Department of Transportation estimates that the industry will have to spend about $12 billion by 1985 to replace ancient equipment and improve track roadbeds. Yet the railroads are reluctant to spend huge sums until they are certain that the demand for coal will remain strong. Says John Fishwick, president of the Norfolk & Western Railway...
Railroaders also argue that if they cannot earn a sufficient profit on a shipment of coal, they will be unable to invest the money needed to keep tracks and cars in good shape. Critics charge, though, that railroads often demand exorbitant rates in areas where there are no good alternatives for moving the bulky product...
Barge and port facilities are also insufficient. The export demand for steam coal in Europe increased by nearly 100% last year, yet buyers are unhappy about the delays in delivery. U.S. piers have little storage capacity, so that railroad cars stocked with the black stuff wait weeks to be unloaded. Port channels are neither large nor deep enough to handle the traffic. Through most of the summer there were about 50 colliers at anchor on any given day at Hampton Roads, Va., the largest coal port on the East Coast...