September 25, 1978
THE UMW CONTRACT: CAN LABOR SURVIVE THE 1980'S?
By Ann Louise Bardach
"God made the coal and then he hid it," says a Logan County miner. "That's when all the trouble began. We find it and dig it out but we don't get the rewards like gold diggers. Folks out of town get the coal. We get the coal dust."
At the 1935 annual convention of the American Federation of Labor, the iconoclastic John L. Lewis lectured the delegates on the transient nature of power: "The strength of a man is a prideful thing, - but the unfortunate thing in life is that the strong do not always remain strong."
Lewis' admonishment now stands as an apt epitaph for his life work, the United Mine Workers of America, once considered the most powerful labor union in the country. In the wake of the 1977 UMW strike and its protracted contract negotiations with coal operators, the union's role as a force both within the coal industry and American labor has been diminished.
The old labor maxim that "what happens to labor, first happens to the UMW," may prove prophetic as contracts throughout American industry are renegotiated this year and next. In fact, if the UMW contract talks were a proving ground for how labor will fare in the future, the 1980s may prove to be the decade of the "take away benefit contract."
Many years ago, Saul Alinsky warned industry and management never to take away a benefit from a worker once it had been given or promised. Now, reduced health and pension benefits in the new UMW contract have aroused enough ill feeling that the reelection of union president Arnold Miller in 1982 seems unlikely. Indeed, a recall movement is already afoot to replace Miller even before his term expires.
On March 26, 1978, after 112 days, the longest contract strike in the history of American labor was resolved when the UMW rank-and-file ratified a contract offer from the BCOA (Bituminous Coal Operators of America). Ratification of the third contract offer squeaked by with a 56% majority, with less than half of its members voting. (The first two contract offers, agreed to by the Miller leadership, were soundly rejected.) The results were a $2.40 an hour wage increase over the next three years, some safety and educational improvements, but a reduction in the miners coveted health benefits. President Carter congratulated industry and labor, but Miller returned to a rank-and-file more hostile and determined to unseat him than ever before.
Bill Bryant, a West Virginia miner who serves as chairman of the recall movement, claims that almost 30,000 signatures accompanied a petition demanding Miller's resigntion formally acknowledged by the UMW on June 25. A month later, the International Executive Board of the UMW voted down the recall, fourteen to five with four abstentions. The recall supporters have since taken their case to court, challenging the Board's authority to vote on the matter at all. Bryant claims that "the Board killed the recall to save their own jobs," adding that "there is nothing in the UMW constitution that necessitates their approval." According to the constitution, a recall now requires 13,000 signatures and gives the president the right "to interpret" the petition. In other words, Miller could conceivably challenge every signature, which would take longer than a ruling from the court. Already, Miller aide Frank Powers claims there are "only around 16,500 names," and suggests that many signatures "were written by the same hand."
The stakes at the UMW contract talks were more than higher wages and an improved standard of living. The Arab oil boycott of 1974, coupled with President Carter's commitment to limit American dependency on Mideast oil by "increasing our coal production by about two thirds to more than one billion tons a year," seemed to guarantee job security and a better life for American coal miners.
With its enormous resources of coal, the U.S. is the world's leading exporter of coal; moreover, with new cleaning technologies, coal, the messy fuel of yesteryear, can now
be converted into gasoline.
These advances, together with our uncomfortable dependence on foreign oil, catapulted the UMW miner into the best strategic bargaining position he had ever enjoyed. But
when the miners returned to work on March 27, they spoke bitterly about "the worst
deal we ever got," in the words of Barry Smithburg, a West Virginia miner, "from a leadership that sold us down the river with a yellow dog contract."
The miners blame Miller, who was briefly heralded for restoring democracy to the union following the abuses of the Tony Boyle reign. Behind Miller, they see the coal operations, the steel companies, and finally the oil conglomerates and the federal government. Bill Lowe, a miner from Rum Creek, West Virginia, states the case for his local: "The only people who supported Miller were the coal operators."
From John L. Lewis' glory days in the 1940s, miners have enjoyed free health benefits from the coal companies based upon a per ton coal ratio. But in last winter's talks, the operators claimed a decrease in productivity and begged off from paying full health benefits. The miners, in response, blamed wildcat strikes and absenteeism on inadequate safety conditions and dismissed the operators' losses as "rubbish." Under the new contract, active miners pay up to $200 medical deductible annually.
Equally acrimonious is the paltry $275 a month pension for miners who retired before 1974. Lee Roy Patterson of Madisonville, Kentucky, who ran against Miller in 1977 and lost by less than 6000 votes, calls the contract discriminatory; "That's some way to treat the old timers. They were the guys who built this union." There are 90,000 retired miners in the UMW, - almost a third of the total membership.
Indeed, medical and pension benefits are more coveted by many miners than higher wages. Now, miners fret over the possibility of losing more health benefits at the next contract talks in 1981.
The profile of the rank-and-file U.S. coal miner has changed greatly in the last 20 years. The average age has dropped from 45 to 28; many are Vietnam veterans and some have had at least a partial college education. The new UMW ranks include approximately 8000 black and about 1000 women miners.
But while mining is called "the most dangerous job in America," the pay is among the
lowest of skilled laborers in the country. Under the contract delivered to the union from
the Miller leadership, the highest paid worker in the UMW coal mines will be receiving less than $400 a week in 1981, while the lowest paid will be making about $332, before taxes.
In the last nine months, President Arnold Miller has survived two strokes and one heart attack, leaving him with partial paralysis of his left side. Poor health is nothing new to Miller, who was seriously wounded in the face and neck during World War II at Normandy, requiring two years of postwar hospitalization. His recent misfortunes, which necessitate him using a walking cane, are added woes to a man already suffering from progressed black lung and arthritis. Miller is of, course, another victim of the mines and its gnarly politics, - but there is little sympathy for him in the Appalachian hollers.
The man really running the UMW is vice president Sam Church, but who insists otherwise. "President Miller makes the major decisions, he says "while I and Bill Esselstyn [UMW's secretary treasurer] run the day to day operations." Church maintains that they all meet once a week, presumably at Miller's West Virginia home, or at the office when Miller's health permits travel. When asked if it is possible to chat with Miller, Church is adamant. "Absolutely not. I will do nothing that could further aggravate that man's situation."
Miller's isolation is suspicious to some of the rank-and-file who says he is known to frequent Charleston's Heart o' Town Motel, where he uses "a fictitious name and travels with five bodyguards," according to one miner. Some miners deride Miller's reclusiveness as "sort of a Howard Hughes act."
Church grimaces at the Hughes analogy, and claims that Miller only travels with one bodyguard, who also serves as an assistant. "He's not paranoid," Church adds, "he trusts me completely." Asked whether Miller will resign, Church leans forward over his desk, his hands clasped, and says softly, "He said he won't resign. Consistently he has said he won't resign." Regarding the 1982 elections, Church claims, "We haven't discussed that," but if Miller were not to run, Church says he would most "certainly consider the opportunity" himself.
Sam Church is the kind of man who if he sported a stiffer moustache would be a dead ringer for Teddy Roosevelt. He has the small town sheriff wardrobe down pat, replete with a pin striped waistcoat, polka dot tie, and a mound of diamonds on his wedding finger. He has a round, pleasant face, and hawk blue eyes that are partial to squinting.
Responding to rumors that he worked as a bodyguard to both Boyle and Miller, he says that "I only met Boyle once, when I was field rep in District 28. I voted for him in '72, not Miller." He pauses and smiles. "Now I'm not saying I couldn't be capable as someone's bodyguard, but the truth is I never was anybody's bodyguard." Clarifying the matter, he adds, "I first worked for Miller as sort of a troubleshooter."
He leaves his office to xerox some articles about the presence of "communist dissidents stirring up trouble in the union," whom Church blames for the membership's hostility toward the International leadership. "Who paid for those $600 ads in the Charleston newspapers during the strike, agitating wildcats and all the rest?" he asks. "I want to know where they got that money from." And he has the answer. "I think from the communists."
Church blames the three and a half month strike on the obstinacy of the industry. "Look, the coal companies went in to break us. They had a 100 day supply of coal. But they underestimated the rank-and-file." The miners in Logan County, West Virginia, on the other hand, feel it was their "own leadership that underestimated the rank-and-file." Manuel Ojeda, a Logan miner, arouses nods of assent from listening miners in Spottie's Restaurant when he exclaims, "We held this country at bay for 110 days without a union."
It was common knowledge that steel executives, particularly Bill Martin and Bruce Johnson of U.S. Steel, were stalling the BCOA talks by insisting on demands such as "payback" penalty action for wildcatting and absenteeism. Also, they were in no great rush, as they are not in the fuel or energy business. American steel companies use roughly 35% of UMW coal. "U.S. Steel couldn't care less about Carter's energy program," said Church. " I knew, and everybody else knew, that Johnson was just stalling."
Other observers of the negotiations regarded U.S. Steel's reluctance to compromise as part of a planned strategy of initiating "takeaway benefit contracts" with all their labor forces. They had to contend with "upcoming contracts for their steelworkers, and they needed a precedent of hard line negotiating." Things worked out differently, however, and, after the first contract offer was defeated, the steel companies were forced to take a back seat as the BCOA gave the reins to its top coal producing companies—Peabody, Consolidated, Pittston, and Island Creek.
After the first 60 days of the strike, steam plants that rely on coal, felt the pinch. This included Peabody, the nation's largest coal company. The oil companies, which own many of the larger coal companies, stepped in and eventually settled on the contract that was accepted by the UMW, six months after negotiations first began.
Meanwhile, the miners grew increasingly impatient and mistrustful, especially of their own leadership. Miner Jim Nuccatelli remembers, "Church came out of that session and told us that the companies are tough.' Can you believe it? What else is new?" Miners from Kentucky's District 19 came up to Washington and tore up the furniture at the hotel where the leadership was staying, and in Logan County there was talk of blowing up the railroad tracks bringing in non-union coal.
Events went from bad to worse after the UMW bargaining council rejected the first contract, 32 to 7, and Miller went on record to call the council, all elected representatives of the rank-and-file, "a bunch of granite heads." Kenneth Dawes, president of Illinois’s District 12, says, “That was about the limit—he handed us a contract that was an insult to anyone's intelligence and then knocks us to the press. If I had been Miller, I would have told the coal companies, If that’s the best you have to offer, I can only pass the news on to the rank-and-file and let them come on down and lay siege to the BCOA headquarters.'"
UMW leadership believed that the operators wanted to provoke a showdown that would bring on Taft- Hartley in the hope of generating bad publicity for the miners. But they did not want government seizure of the mines, says Patterson, "because then they [the government] would have seen all the hidden profits these companies make."
Indeed, Taft-Hartley did more to discourage the BCOA than it did the miners. In fact, Taft-Hartley seemed to give a second wind to the miners, strengthening their resolve and unity. Miners have always thumbed their noses at Taft-Hartley, ever since it was first invoked in 1947 as a curb on miners. In fact, the UMW is the only labor union to have consistently ignored Taft-Hartley injunctions. Last year, its application came off as a charade, - an exercise in governmental muscle gone flaccid.
Dawes saw their troubles at the bargaining table as a David and Goliath struggle. "We weren't fighting Big Coal alone but Big Steel, Big Oil, and Big Utilities. They arrived at the table with two-thirds of the world's money behind them; I'm just a layman with none of their formal education and what we needed was research." But the UMW's research department disbanded shortly after Miller's reelection. It was a respectable, solid department, at one time headed by Joseph Brennan, now president of the BCOA. Dawes draws the analogy of "going to war, and the enemy gives you a cornstalk to fight with. Well, it's just hard to win."
Some miners lay blames for their contract on what is now referred to as the "great purges," when a large majority of the leadership was fired or resigned. Bernard Aronson, former head of UMW public relations, was fired for being "subversive." (He now works for Vice President Mondale.) During Miller's first term, he was ably assisted by Tom Bethell as head of the research department. A disenchanted Bethell resigned in 1975. Resignations were also handed in by Don Stillman, editor of the Journal, who is now a public relations person for the UAW, Dick Bank, former UMW staff director, now working for the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee, and Karen Fizer, Miller's secretary, who is now a White House secretary. Maxine Walker took over the research department from Bethell, but that ended last March during Miller's reelection bid, said Walker, when "everyone in the research department resigned, and I asked to be transferred to the comptroller's department."
For the 1977 election slate, Mike Trbovich, vice president, and Harry Patrick, secretary treasurer, resigned to be replaced by Church and Esselstyn. Trbovich was recently in a Canadian hospital for his diabetes and Patrick went to work for Inc VISTA program. Lee Roy Patterson lost his seat as an International Board Member for District 23 and returned to the mines in Madisonville, Kentucky.
Patterson is still "mad as hell" and had plenty to say in a telephone interview. "When Miller took office in 1972, he had an incredibly capable staff—Tom Bethell, Mike Trbovich, Bernie Aronson, Cris Valeri.—But he purged everybody who was capable and replaced them with dumb flunkies. The people around him now are incredible. If it's possible, they're even dumber than he is."
Patterson, who served as district president of District 23 for four years, cited his own case as a "classic example" of Miller policies against dissidents. "Because I voiced my opposition to his policies, he tried to send me to Alaska—'and not to return until further orders'—for disagreeing with him. He said he wanted me to smooth out some problems in the Ussebela mines in Alaska. I called the district president there and he told me, 'There are no problems here.' I told Miller that in Russia they send you to Siberia." On the other hand, Miller finally went to Ussebela himself. Church nods: "We did lose the mines to the Teamsters," adding that "Lee Roy Patterson is more destructive than Tony Boyle was to the UMW."
Patterson lays the blame for "that lousy contract" on the International leadership. "Look what we have for leadership a paranoid president, a vice president who is a bodyguard, and our secretary treasurer is Willard Esselstyn, who, I'm told, was a used car salesman. Look, Miller prospered from Yablonski's misfortunes. Every time during the contract negotiations when I went to say something, Miller would yell back, 'Politics, just politics!' "
Norman Wilson-Smith is vice president of the Neris Corporation, which exports coal for the smaller coal companies. (Companies with massive tonnage and profits like Pittston, Consolidated, and Exxon do their own exporting, but smaller companies rely on exporters like Neris to get their coal to Japan, South America, and Europe.) The U.S. exports more than 50 million tons of coal each year.
Wilson-Smith agrees that the $200 medical deductible was the worst part of the contract. "I think the operators and the government would have shown a great deal more intelligence in giving benefits instead of cash. It would have been cheaper for them in the long run, and more appreciated by the miners." He also believes that when the miners voted down the first two contracts, they weren't doing it as much against the contract "as they were against Miller," he says. "The union has got to have top management of a quality that gets to the companies. And here is Arnold Miller, who lacks, well he lacks just about everything, talking to the chairmen of the boards of giant corporations. It's an uneven contest."
It is now several months since the UMW contract was signed and there are soothsayers in the fields predicting what the future holds. Many are still just as angry as they were during the strike, and many, like Len Golden of Cumberland, Kentucky, feel “we better get the union together again or we won't have any future."
Kenneth Dawes feels, like many UMW district leaders, that "the contract is okay or all right," and sees the men's rancor as a reaction to how they were "misrepresented"
during the strike.
Joe Phipps, president of Kentucky's District 19, says "We should have had that third contract offer right away and not after 110 days of waiting." Terri Bailey, a wife and daughter of coal miners in Buffalo Creek, West Virginia, complains, "It just wasn't fair having to fight for that. It broke us—put us back at least $4000. Some people got it even worse and lost their cars. Some folks lost everything." Terri's husband, Chuck, is a young miner, a Vietnam vet who plays with a rock hand on weekends. The Baileys plan to leave Buffalo Creek eventually, "after the bills are paid. Maybe go to California." Terri talks of the loneliness of the area, a source of depression for many wives. "It's depressing here—snow in the winter, rain in the summer, and mud in between."
Dawes admits he signed a recall petition, but fears that a recall, being a cumbersome process, "could destroy just about as much as you could gain. By the time Miller challenges all the signatures, it will probably be 1982 and time for the new election anyway.” Another problem is the dearth of contenders on the par that miners expect: someone like John L. Lewis.
Tony De Raimo, a boyhood friend of Miller's, also feels "it's time to mend our fences. We're just losing ground. I don't believe they'll ever get Miller out now unless he resigns. Personally, I think he should go ahead and resign. I didn't think giving democratic voice to the miners would work, and it's not working."
Former Philadelphia prosecutor Richard Sprague, who successfully indicted Boyle for masterminding the murders of the Yablonski family, questioned the ability of the union to achieve the transition from a Lewis fiefdom to a democracy. "I know," says Sprague, "that Miller articulated a very strong belief in allowing full expression and having the union determine what ought to be." But many miners, like Chuck Parker of Lynch, Kentucky, feel that, aside from the election of district officials, Miller has not instituted significant democratic reform. "He never gave us democracy," says Parker. "He just promised it. He's like Carter that way." Parker's voice rises in anger. "Did it ever occur to anybody that after some 40 odd years of autocracy, we're just anxious for a chance, to have a real democracy."
***
Should the UMW not mend its fences and solidify its bargaining approach, matters can only worsen at the 1981 contract talks. Next time, the coal companies will have stockpiled not a 100 day supply, but more likely a six month reserve. It is also conceivable that the BCOA will lose some of its 130 member companies, who will choose to go off and negotiate contracts on their own. There will also be other energy resources as many coal companies, already owned by oil and utility companies, shop around for nuclear and solar energy companies to buy. And western non-UMW coal will again be ready and eager to provide necessary services and show their growing strength.
At the next International Convention of the UMW, scheduled for September 1979, the membership can force the leadership to resign (either through recall or by proving malfeasance), or simply create enough dissension and tumult to destroy the union, or reunify and make the compromises necessary to resurrect the UMW as a union of authority.
But, after last winter's contract talks, many are increasingly gloomy about the industry now insisting on "takeaway" contracts. Also, there is increasing mistrust, both on the part of the UMW and the BCOA, of the federal government's ability to negotiate labor disputes. Chip Yablonski refers to the Labor Department's assistance as "a bunch of Mickey Mouse people who came in and wanted to Balkanize the industry."
Al Zack, a spokesman for the AFL-CIO, sees the UMW's problem as a nationwide union problem. "We simply need National Health Insurance. The federal government has got to see that the cost of not having it is going to be more expensive than having it." Undoubtedly, both labor and industry would he delighted to have the health benefits removed from the collective bargaining tables.
Notwithstanding all its travails, the UMW remains one of the most resilient organizations in American labor history. They have seen other bleak days—in the struggle to make their union a force in the '30s and '40s, and coping with mechanization and massive layoffs in the '50s.
Meanwhile, the bickering continues with even the date and location of the next convention being items of contention. Some miners claim that September 1979 was picked by the International as a date far enough away to dampen down the anger of the disgruntled members. Bill Bryant also points out that the convention site of Miami Beach will make it difficult for many representatives to attend. "It should he held in the coalfields," he says irritably. "It's going to cost around $2000 for each of the two people each local is supposed to send. Well, that's about $4000 that no local has." On the other hand, Frank Powers, Miller's aide, contends there are no motels in Appalachia that could house the 2000 member convention.
Both sides realize that a compromise between the leadership and the recallers is crucial to the union's survival. Both know that their foes are exploiting their disunity to maximum advantage. Safety precations are still grossly inadequate and poorly enforced, while grievance arbitration boards are slow and laborious and are seen by many miners as a company vehicle to keep them in line.
It is one of the great, sad paradoxes that the very workers who carry much of the energy burden for the country should be so neglected. But it would be foolhardy to underestimate the miners, as the country did during the strike. As a Beckley miner says: "We know the score. We know that 2 and 2 makes four faster than 1 plus 1 plus 1 plus 1. We won't be giving up any fight to save ourselves."
***
Safety conditions in the mines have always been the prime source of anxiety for miners and their families. There were 139 miner fatalities last year, compared with 999 in 1948. But the UMW work force was then 600,000, whereas now there are only 177,000 active miners. Thus, safety conditions have improved only 50 per cent in the last 30 years. Miner Manuel Ojeda says, "I have only one thing to say about safety—if they can get to the moon, why can't they make it safe to work in a mine?”
Since 1901, there have been 110,908 fatalities and approximately two million disabling injuries in American mines. Already this year, there have been 75 fatalities - with only non-UMW miners working the first three months of the year. (The UMW claims that non-union statistics are difficult to interpret as many of their companies only list fatalities that occur underground. Also, some companies have been known to use discretion in deciding if an accident was the fault of the miner or a mechanical failure.)
Dr. Richard Naeye, chairman of Pathology at Penn State, sees the situation as an economic dilemma. "If the prime considerations were dust levels, it wouldn't be economic to mine coal. My god, those health laws—well, they are very poorly written."
According to trainer Jim Nuccatelli of Cokeburg, Pennsylvania, "95 % of all wildcat strikes are prompted by safety considerations, and the statistics bear us out."
Aside from fatalities and accidents, a miner will most likely contract black lung, known to the medical profession as coal workers' pneumoconiosis. According to Dr. Irving Sellikof, a specialist in occupational and environmental diseases, black lung is an umbrella term for "dust decomposition in the lungs with resulting emphysema, bronchitis, and fibrosis of the lungs" Once the disease is contracted by continuous exposure to fine dust particles, it is no longer reversible. Dr. Sellikof says that the disease can be discouraged by providing "ventilation at the coal face and total mine ventilation. One has to reduce the level of coal dust, particularly the fine particles of coal dust." The use of wet drilling and of wetting coal to he transported is also helpful, but once the disease progresses, "you either remove the man from the environment or make the job safer."
The records of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health show that 148,623 retired miners receive black lung benefits. In addition, the institute estimates that 15 per cent of all working miners have the disease. The latter figure is vigorously disputed by the UMW and black lung clinics in coal mining areas, who maintain that the figure is much closer to 50 percent.
***
Buddy Yates is 51 years old and works at the Clinchfield mines (a subsidiary of Pittston). He has worked "some 27 years for just about all the mines around here, including the scab mines during the '50s, when there was no work in a union mine."
"We worked where we could find work," he says slowly, his head resting on his guitar which he strums lightly throughout the conversation. He admits he has little education but believes he knows how to play the game. "I'm no fool. I don't use the company store; the prices are too high, the terms too easy. They take it out of your paycheck. It's close by, but it costs more than any other store."
Benny breathes heavily, in the familiar black lung resonances of the region, "You don't have to work in the mines down here to get black lung." He points to the children playing on the muddy banks of the creek. "The kids get it from playing outside with the coal trucks passing by and flying the dust all around."
Neighbors with drawn, silent, faces gather around Benny. "This here is the backbone of this country," says Benny nodding to the group. "They should take care of us better."