Word: contraction
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...rank and file, however, remained skeptical. They assembled at their locals to hear the pact explained and to ask questions. Each miner was handed a copy of the contract in a 36-page booklet. No literary scholar is better at reading between the lines than a miner, who treats a contract as reverently as the Bible and even takes it underground in case there is a grievance. The more the miners read, the angrier many of them became...
...front. As the debate wore on, miners from time to time slipped out into the raw morning air to spit out tobacco juice-a habit they acquire to get rid of the coal dust they inhale in the mines. The gesture may also have expressed their feelings about the contract. "If Carter says this contract's a fair shake," said one miner, "they can take that peanut farmer back to Georgia and bury him." Terry Stay, 23, a former social worker who became a miner to earn more money, agreed: "We aren't a bunch of shanty tramps...
While disappointed with the contract, other miners admitted that they would vote for it as the best they could probably get. "If the younger folks want to fight it out, let them," said Frank Washburn, 61, at the end of the Vestaburg meeting. "I wonder if a turndown now would get us anything in the future...
They are supported by miners still on the job in a customary display of solidarity. "We're not forsaking our fathers." Says Jerold Hamrick, 35: "Blood is thicker than a contract and thicker than coal." Adds another young miner: "The way we treat these old miners is going to have a lot to do with how we get treated when we're old. We're all brothers...
...would be useful if we had more options in the Taft-Hartley Act. I would like to get the miners back to work under conditions other than an old contract, especially if it's a three-year contract and prices have been rising substantially. In the current strike, the union's welfare and pension funds have also been depleted. If the miners are ordered back to work, they are likely to consider it to be unfair, and we have to worry about their response. That's the reason we developed the idea of federal seizure...