Word: mine
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...days of John L. Lewis, when the United Mine Workers called a strike it sometimes seemed that a mighty union was holding the entire nation for ransom. Once again a coal strike looms-but if 165,000 U.M.W. members walk out of the pits on Dec. 7, it will be a sign not of union power but of union weakness. The strike would be the biggest of the year, and would get President Carter's program to increase U.S. coal production (the aim is a 66% hike by 1985) off to a most inauspicious start. But the people hurt...
...payments to pension funds and health programs that were stopped during past wildcat strikes. But the key demand is to make the wildcats legal. For years, U.M.W. contracts have provided grievance and arbitration procedures to settle disputes between union locals and employers. But the union claims that the mine owners cynically drag out the proceedings, knowing that if the miners walk out, it is an easy matter to get an injunction forcing them back to work...
Consequently, Milter insists that he will sign no contract unless it contains a clause granting each U.M.W. local the Bright, by majority vote, to strike over local issues. To the mine owners that sounds like an appeal to recognize, and even give their blessing to, a state of anarchy. Under Miller's leadership, they point out, man-days lost because of the unauthorized strikes have more than quadrupled; the total so far this year is 2.3 million. Most dam aging were a series of brushfire walkouts that spread from West Virginia to Kentucky and Ohio this past summer, idling...
Long before then, the U.M.W. itself would be in trouble. Wildcatting has all but destroyed the union's pension and benefit funds, which get their money from employers on the basis of man-hours worked and tons mined. One of the largest, which provides $20 million monthly in pension checks to 81,500 miners, has used up its cash reserves entirely and now survives month-to-month on a combination of bank loans and new payments from the mine operators. If the whole union walked out, the fund would not be able to meet its obligations, and the other...
Having belatedly realized its difficult bind, the U.M.W. has asked the mine operators to begin continuous daily meetings, rather than the previously planned weekly talks, in order to see if some sort of compromise can be reached before the contract deadline. Convinced that the miners are just now getting their demands straightened out, the employers seem in no hurry to oblige. But the mine owners could overplay their hand. Paradoxically, the U.M.W.'s trump card is that a prolonged strike could destroy the national union, leaving owners to deal entirely with the fractious, wildcatting locals. It is a thought...