Word: contraction
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...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...
...Washington (assets: $682 million), real estate in the capital and a Western fuel company, may have to sell some of its holdings. Perhaps most troubling of all, the U.M.W. is in a state of near anarchy, having overwhelmingly rejected its leadership's call to ratify the proposed contract. Says one veteran union staffer: "We've never had a precedent of this kind. There is very grave danger...
...mechanization-300,000 mining jobs disappeared in 15 years-by the recession in the late '50s, and by the growing use of oil. Thousands of miners began working in "dog-holes," small, nonunion mines that were underselling the large 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...
When Arnold Miller, 54, rode the wave of miners' dissent into power, he promised to democratize the union. That he did-the expired contract was the first ever to be voted on by the membership. "In the old days," says a West Virginia district leader, "a contract was sent down and the membership just went back to work. Now you have all this freedom...
...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 to their brothers on the other side of the mountains and endorsed the contract, 409 votes...