Coal Peace

Coal strikes come when work-&-wage contracts between operators and miners expire. The present contract for the all-important anthracite fields* lapses Aug. 31. For three hot weeks in Manhattan a Union committee of six led by John Llewellyn Lewis, president of United Mine Workers of America struggled in secret session with an operators' committee of six led by William W. Inglis of Glen Alden Coal Co. to negotiate a new agreement. Last week the two committees emerged in friendly fellowship with a new contract for hard-coal mining which each acclaimed as a guarantee of long industrial peace. The new agreement, to run until April 1, 1936, was a miners' victory. Mr. Lewis had won on two fundamental points: 1) no wage reductions; 2) the checkoff.

Wages. Operators had spoken darkly of the economic necessity of reducing the cost of producing anthracite to meet the competition of fuel oil. They implied that cost reduction could be accomplished only by a lower wage scale. Miners had stoutly maintained that they would never agree to lower wages. The new contract continues the present wage scale where- under hard-coal diggers receive from $5 to $8 per day.

Check-Off. For 28 years union miners have been asking the operators to agree to a device whereby the employer deducts ("checks-off") from the employe's wages whatever dues or assessments the Union claims from its member, and hands them over directly to the Union treasury. The Mine Workers wanted the "checkoff" because it would keep their treasury full and save them some $200,000 per year now lost in nonpayment of dues or spent on collectors to round up delinquent mem- bers after payday. Operators had refused this demand because they did not wish to help strengthen financially an organization which overnight might become their bitter foe in a labor war.

Under the new contract, as an "accommodation" to the Union, the operators "upon the request of any employe will receive from [him] on payday, at a point convenient to the pay office and transmit to the district [union] treasurer, an amount not in excess of $1 per month." The operators decline to "solicit or compel contributions."

Operators' Winning. In return for the "checkoff" and no wage cuts, Col. Inglis, for the operators, got into the new-contract union promises to "take active and affirmative steps to eliminate strikes and shutdowns in violation of this agreement; to eliminate group action designed to restrict output ... to cooperate with the operators for the promotion of efficiency and the production of an improved car of coal." An arbitration committee, composed of the twelve men who negotiated the new contract, was set up to deal with all work and wage disputes under the agreement, to gather facts by experts.

P: Last week in Washington Secretary of Labor Davis suggested that President Hoover may shortly call a conference of bituminous coal operators and miners to stabilize their tottering industry. Declared Secretary Davis: "Something ought to be done in the bituminous coal fields immediately. It is a great overdeveloped industry in which not only the workers and their families are suffering because of slack work and poor earnings but many operators are facing bankruptcy and business men in these localities are going out of business."

*Pennsylvania produces 90% of U. S. authorized cite coal, mined by 150,000 men.

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