Word: pittston
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...other side is the Pittston Coal Company, a near parody of the worst excesses of corporate irresponsibility. Why should you support the miners against Pittston? It's not just that Pittston is an unabashed union buster. It's not just that it has a record of safety and environmental violations that is exceptional even by the standards of the coal industry. It's not just that Pittston was criminally negligent in the 1972 flash flood that destroyed sixteen West Virginia towns along Buffalo Creek, along with 125 of their residents. It's not just that Pittston got off the hook...
...should you support the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) in its strike against the Pittston Corporation by attending the the rally today at noon in front of the Harvard Corporation? After all, it's no longer rational to automatically side with organized labor against management. Excessive wage demands, counter-productive work rules, featherbedded benefits and union corruption are not just figments of the right-wing imagination. But the Pittston strike is different...
Although there have been reports of violence on both sides of the UMWA-Pittston dispute, the moral highground clearly belongs to the union. Rarely since the Bad Old Days when companies broke up strikes with armed thugs has there been a case where the two sides of a labor dispute were so clearly good and evil...
After the last contract expired in January, 1988, Pittston stopped paying such medical benefits. For 17 months, the UMWA postponed a strike and continued to work without a contract, while Pittston ceased paying into its benefit plan. This January, governors of three states intervened in the dispute, asking Pittston and the union to negotiate face to face. The miners agreed; Pittston refused...
...Harvard will not use its leverage to influence the company directly, Kenneth S. Zinn, a spokesperson for the United Mine Workers (UMW), said UMW would prefer that Harvard at least make a public statement by divesting of its 311,000 shares of Pittston...