Word: miners
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Warmer weather and increased production from non-U.M.W. mines had undercut the strike's effectiveness. Moreover, the financial burden of the walkout was finally grinding down the stubborn miners and their families. "I'm hurtin'," confessed Miner Johnny Elkins, 25, of Hernshaw, W. Va., who voted against the last contract offer. To make ends meet, he had been cutting and selling firewood for $35 a truckload. "Now spring's coming," said Elkins, "and people ain't needing firewood." So he traded in his chain saw for a secondhand trail bike and voted...
...Here we go again," sighed Frank Vahaly, 36, a coal miner in Bentleyville, Pa. His skepticism was echoed throughout the strikebound coal fields last week as negotiators for the miners and operators reached yet another tentative contract agreement-the third in the 14-week coal strike...
TIME Correspondent Robert Wurmstedt visited Oceana last'week, expecting to find a torn community in which neighbor was set against neighbor over the strike issue. Instead, he ran into a spirit of miner camaraderie that may be typical of rank-and-file reaction throughout Appalachia. The town is divided on whether the contract was the best deal at that moment, but it is united in its detestation for Taft-Hartley and its respect for a union picket line. Oceana's miners expect to find roving pickets from other parts of the district along the road to the Eastern...
...work, but if pickets are there, I'll go home," said Claude Profitt, 47. Said Ken Hager: "I drive a long ways every day before daylight. How is the National Guard gonna protect a miner on these West Virginia roads...
...even in Oceana, a relatively conservative union town, compliance with Taft-Hartley is not likely, and violence from outsiders is feared. But there is no sense of outrage or personal enmity. Said Mary Bailey, wife of a miner whose family has dipped deeply into its savings to keep food on the table: "I sure would like the men to go back to work, but you don't always get what you want in this world...