Word: wildcats
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After nine days of intense negotiations, maneuvers and threats, the B.C.O.A. surrendered more or less completely. What the United Mine Workers wanted, they got: a $2.40-an-hour wage increase over three years, company-guaranteed health care, and the right to honor wildcat pickets without retributions. For the mineowners, there was only the minor sop of a presidential commission to examine improved health, safety and productivity. The agreement "will be ratified overwhelmingly," predicted one confident U.M.W. official...
...support from rank and file miners, who barged into U.M.W. headquarters?rejected President Miller's initial agreement with the B.C.O.A. The agreement called for a three-year wage increase, from $8.11 an hour to $10.46. But the pact also allowed mine owners to penalize workers who joined in a wildcat strike by requiring offenders to pay $20 a day to the U.M.W. health fund. The owners were adamant on the wildcat provision because 2.5 million man-days were lost that way in the coal mines last year, ten times the average for all industries. The miners, on the other hand...
When the miners are working, they make about $55 a day. Living is cheap, by urban standards, in Cabin Creek: a three-bedroom house rents for no more than $185 a month. But wildcat strikes are frequent-District 7 walked out for ten weeks last summer over a reduction in health benefits-and miners generally save little of their earnings. "Sometimes you're high on the hog, and sometimes you ain't got nothing," says Jerold Hamrick...
...agreement offers miners pay raises, over three years, that would lift their average hourly wage from $7.80 to $10.15. In all, wages and fringes would increase nearly 37%. But the contract also authorizes stiff penalties for absenteeism and, more important, seeks to do away with wildcat strikes. It allows mineowners to discipline wildcatters by requiring such strikers to pay $20 a day, for up to ten days per month, into the U.M.W. benefit funds. Many miners have grown up deeply suspicious of the owners' reliability in complying with contract provisions and of the industry's grievance procedures. With...
Precisely such wildcat strikes have long hobbled the coal industry and prevented it from attaining higher productivity. Indeed, the White House, looking forward to new heights of output from the miners, said nothing about the settlement's obvious inflationary effects...