A Costly Coal Showdown

One of the worst threats hanging over the economy has been the prospect that 120,000 members of the United Mine Workers would stop digging coal next week, when their union contracts expire. A mine strike would reduce U.S. energy supplies more than the Arab oil embargo last winter did; it would cause factory shutdowns and layoffs in industries far beyond the coal fields, and it would seriously worsen the gathering recession. For a while, a strike had seemed almost inevitable. But late last week the outlook brightened a bit, and the chance improved for the nation to avoid a long, damaging coal strike after all--though at the heavy price of a settlement that will add to inflationary pressures.

Feisty Mood. As the week ended, union and management negotiators made some encouraging progress. They had been racing a kind of deadline within a deadline: a new contract had to be on the table early this week if rank-and-file miners were to be able to ratify it in a union-wide vote by the Nov. 12 expiration of the old agreement. At week's end there was still a chance that they could succeed--and it would then be up to the miners themselves to decide whether the pits could be kept open.

If a pact really is signed and ratified, the nation can only heave a sigh of relief. Peace seems to have been won essentially by the coal operators caving in to the union's insistence on wage and benefit increases roughly equal to the 39% over three years that 1.4 million steelworkers won last April, plus a long list of costly noneconomic demands. Even so, those demands are better met without a strike than after a walkout that could have crippled the economy.

Going into the negotiations, the rank and file were in a feisty mood and fully aware of their new power in an era of scarcer, costlier energy. Expressing the attitude of the majority, West Virginia Miner Jim ("Catfish") Barlow, 27, said: "This time we are going to get something or we're going to shut down everything--everything. I feel we got to get it now or it's gonna be too late."

The union in early September handed the coal companies a 54-page list of demands. They covered improved training and grievance procedures, greater participation in determining work schedules, and a number of safety provisions, including the right of a miner to leave his place at work if he feels that he is in imminent danger. The U.M.W. also demanded a big increase in pensions, which now provide retired miners with a maximum of $150 a month (v. $625 for auto workers), plus a cost-of-living escalator. All that in addition to a basic wage increase at least as fat as the one in steel. A steel-type settlement would theoretically raise the average hourly wage in the mines by 20% in the first year, to $7.40; that would put the miners ahead of both the steelworkers (average hourly wage: $7.13) and the auto workers ($5.63). The miners argue that their pay has risen much less than the price of coal, which has jumped from $7.07 a ton in 1971 to $12 or $15 today, with spot prices (for immediate delivery) leaping as high as $120 a ton. They also point to coal companies' profits: at some large firms, earnings have tripled and even quadrupled this year.

Old-line coal companies initially rejected most of the demands out of hand, arguing that giving in on the noneconomic items especially would mean knuckling under to worker interference with management prerogatives. Eventually, the impasse was broken by the so-called "captive mines" owned by steel companies. Their representatives apparently brought industry colleagues around with the argument that big concessions in fringe benefits and working conditions might actually improve mine productivity, which has been slipping steadily.

The steel companies also were less than adamant against granting the coal miners the same wage terms that they had already agreed on with the steelworkers' union. And they had another compelling reason to want a settlement: they would be hurt more quickly than any other industry by a coal strike.

Crucial Test. Soft coal now provides 20% of U.S. energy; a U.M.W. strike would slash production of it by 75%. Coal is used to generate 50% of the nation's electric power, and utilities would have to begin cutting power generation anywhere from two to twelve weeks after a coal strike began, depending on the size of their stockpiles. Yet long before most utilities began running short of coal, the nation's steel mills would be crippled. The mills have about a 30-day stockpile of coking coal on hand, but in the event of a strike they would have to cut production immediately in order to stretch out these stocks. After two weeks, output would be down 50%. With steel already in short supply, the effects would show up rapidly in layoffs by companies that turn out autos, machinery, appliances and ships. After four to six weeks, havoc in production and employment would begin to snowball throughout the economy.

It is still possible that the miners will reject the contract that their new leader, Arnold R. Miller, is negotiating. The bargaining has been a crucial test for the U.M.W.'s softspoken, austerely serious reform president. Miller, 51, is a former miner who was forced to retire in 1970 (without a pension) because of the black-lung disease he had picked up in 22 years in the pits. Two years later he handily won a special election that ousted the corrupt, high-living regime that had been headed for ten years by W.A. ("Tony") Boyle. Boyle, who was later convicted of conspiracy in the 1970 murder of a rival for power, Joseph A. Yablonski, had run the U.M.W. in the tradition of autocracy and cronyism begun by John L. Lewis.

Miller has tried to make the union more democratic. One of his innovations is rank-and-file ratification of new contracts--a notion that John L. would never have tolerated. Yet Miller has still to win the trust of many of the union's 794 locals. The mine workers' increasing fondness for illegal wildcat strikes--some West Virginia miners walked out recently to support a protest against the use of "dirty" books in local schools--has earned the U.M.W. a reputation in some corporate quarters as the nation's least disciplined union. Miller is on the edge of success in his first dealings with the mine owners; he must still demonstrate that he has the muscle to sell an agreement to his own members.

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