To Work
Carter invokes Taft-Hartley, but the miners vow they won't obey it
"I pray for peace and justice and victory for the miners. Their struggle has been an extraordinary one that shows the rank and file's wisdom and strength. They have resisted all industry pressures. Miners know what they want and what they need. I'm sure they won't go back until they get what they need and deserve. God bless them."
That earnest prayer for the 165,000 striking coal miners was offered by Monsignor Charles Rice at a labor rally in Pittsburgh last week. His words perfectly reflected the miners' own mood in this long, three-month walkout: religious fervor, intense solidarity, a degree of self-righteousness, and a hint of violent passions as deep and often as murky as the mines themselves.
Opposing them, in a classic confrontation that marked his first major domestic crisis, stood President Jimmy Carter and the forces of authority at his command. "My responsibility," Carter declared on national television as he invoked the Taft-Hartley Act, "is to protect the health and safety of the American public ... The law will be enforced."
The Taft-Hartley Act, last used in 1971 against the International Longshoremen's Association, requires the United Mine Workers to return to work by this Monday for an 80-day cooling-off period. To enforce the law, Carter has an array of weapons, ranging from White House oratory to U.S. marshals and federal troops. But though the President said that the miners were "patriotic citizens [who] will comply with the law," hardly a miner in the hills of Appalachia or the flatlands of the Midwest would admit a willingness to bow to Taft-Hartley, which the union has defied twice before.
Although the strike has not yet caused the devastating power shortages and mass layoffs that were once feared, those dangers cannot be delayed indefinitely. It is now a contest of wills, and experience has shown that the miners' staying power is not to be underestimated. Over the weekend the pressure of events brought union and management together again for further talks and some progress was made.
There was at least a faint light at the end of the darkened coal tunnel.
Once Carter got word that the miners had solidly voted down the contract, which he himself had endorsed just six days before, confrontation was inevitable. On Monday, Carter met with 14 congressional leaders in the Cabinet Room of the White House and told them that he wanted to invoke Taft-Hartley for a "reasonable period of time." After that, he would be willing to "look at the alternatives."
New York's Republican Senator, Jacob Javits, said he thought the President was making a mistake in not calling for both Taft-Hartley and a Government seizure of the mines. The miners had said they would return to work immediately if the Government took over, but Carter apparently regarded such a move as a capitulation, encouraging other unions to seek White House intervention.
To try to make Taft-Hartley more palatable to the union, Carter asked the coal operators to give the miners the wage increase that is called for in the new contract--a whopping and inflationary 12.8% in the first year (and 30.7% over the three years of the contract) if they returned to work. Normally, under Taft-Hartley the strikers go back to work under the old pay rates. The operators turned the President down, though they agreed to pay the increase retroactively if a settlement was reached during the cooling-off period. The consensus among the congressional leaders was that Carter would have to move beyond Taft-Hartley to a request for seizure of the mines in ten to twelve days.
Right after his meeting, Carter proclaimed that the strike had endangered the "national health and safety." Then, as prescribed by law, he appointed a three-member board of inquiry to examine the facts of the strike and make a report. Setting a Thurs day deadline, he picked three attorneys with experience in labor disputes. The chairman was John N. Gentry, 47, a manpower expert who served in key positions in the U.S. Labor Department for a dozen years, and is now a partner in a Washington management consulting firm run by former Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz. He was joined by Carl A. Warns, 62, a professor of law and collective bargaining at the University of Louisville, and by Eva Robins, 67, who has worked as a mediator in strikes in New York City.
At a six-hour meeting on Wednesday, the board heard 50 witnesses. The top brass of both the union and management spoke, but so did rank-and-file union members. The board had its eleven-page report completed by 3 a.m., well in advance of the Thursday-morning deadline. It contained no surprises; it recapitulated the events of the strike and concluded that a national emergency existed.
At 12:15 p.m. Thursday, a Justice Department attorney headed for the judge's chamber in the Federal Court building on Constitution Avenue. He carried two bulky manila envelopes containing the Government's suit. To support its case, the Government included eleven affidavits from top Administration officials. Charles Schultze, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, estimated that if coal was not flowing by mid-April, unemployment in states with shortages could eventually exceed 3.5 million people. John P. White, an Assistant Secretary of Defense, deposed that electric power would be cut off in the plants of Pentagon suppliers if the walkout continued.
When U.S. District Judge Aubrey Robinson convened his court at 3:30 p.m., U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell argued the case for the Government. The only significant opposition came from Harrison Combs, the U.M.W.'s veteran general counsel. Reminding the court that this was his third defense of the union in a Taft-Hartley proceeding, Combs pointed out that coal is still being exported, that substantial stockpiles exist and that negotiations between union and management had resumed. (Later he admitted that the talks were only preliminary. "We were just cussing each other as usual.") Combs said the union leadership would do whatever the court ordered. "But I can't speak for 20-some districts and more than 700 locals." Replied Judge Robinson: "You've put your finger right on it." After the hearing adjourned, the judge, as expected, granted the restraining order. With that, U.S. marshals started fanning out through the coal fields to serve a copy of the order, along with the Government's complaint, on each of the 1,450 defendants--including 616 coal operators and 789 U.M.W. locals.
Once the papers are served, a task expected to be completed over the weekend, Taft-Hartley will be put to the test. Like Carter, Bell stressed that he thought the miners would obey the law and added that those who did should be protected by state and local authorities. When he was asked if his expectations might be overoptimistic in view of miner defiance in the past, he replied heatedly: "I'm really not interested as Attorney General in speculating about people not abiding by the law. They're patriotic people. I think it disparages the mine workers to say they might violate the law."
Yet obedience to Washington's decrees ranks low in the miners' scale of values. The U.M.W.'s redoubtable President John L. Lewis once thundered: "The public does not know that a man who works in a coal mine is not afraid of anything except his God, that he is not afraid of injunctions or politicians or threats or denunciations or verbal castigations or slander, that he does not fear death." With due allowance for rhetoric, the autocratic ruler of one of the world's unruliest unions was not exaggerating. Flouting Taft-Hartley is about on the order of brushing a speck of coal dust out of the eye. "We may be harassed, fined, put in jail," says Jim Nuccetelli of Cokeburg, Pa., "some of us might even die. But we'd rather die on the surface than in the mines under that contract."
Such fighting words echoed through the snow-covered hills and hollows of coal country last week. Increasingly the miners were taking aim at Carter; they had voted for him, and now they felt betrayed. In a bar by the deserted railroad tracks in West Frankfort, Ill., a group of miners listened to Carter's midweek press conference. Groans, snorts, scoffing. Said Rocky Morris, president of Local 1591: "Come 1980, Carter's going to be picking peanuts again in Georgia."
If the miners are not afraid of Presidents, they have good reason to be anxious about one another. Miners are traditionally quick to resort to violence, and last week it was in the air, in gestures, in inferences and sometimes in plain speech. "I don't know where you're from," warned Joe Phipps, president of District 19 in southeastern Kentucky and Tennessee. "But I'm from Harlan County, and if they try to enforce Taft-Hartley here, someone's gonna get hurt. And they don't play the game to hurt you just a little."
At a U.M.W. subdistrict office outside West Frankfort, miners smiled silently at the mention of violence. They know all too well where it can lead. In one of the most notorious episodes in the U.M.W.'s strife-torn history, a group of miners in nearby Herrin corralled some strikebreakers and operators during a 1922 walkout and marched them into a thicket. There, 20 men were systematically slaughtered, and some of their bodies were left on trees as a warning. The incident casts a long shadow over the mines. "I'll admit I'm intimidated," says a member of Local 6330 in Clarksville, Pa. "I want to go back to work because this damn thing has gone on too long, and I'm flat-ass broke. But I'm not about to get my head bashed in for trying. Even if we have protection at the mine, my own brothers in the local would get me sooner or later."
What is it that makes the miner a defiant breed apart, as if the whole modern labor movement, with its techniques of accommodation, has somehow passed him by? The miner's psychology is shaped by the harsh nature of his occupation. He burrows underground amid dust and grime with danger always at hand. He is proud of his stoicism under pressure. "Our tradition is just like the military," says Rocky Morris. "It's dangerous, but we accept it." Adds a former U.M.W. officer: "It's awfully hard for anybody to understand the miners' philosophy. Those guys go through hell down there."
Yet the miners also insist on greater safety. Nothing outraged them more in the two contracts they voted down than the attempts to penalize them for wildcat strikes. These unauthorized walkouts are often caused by petty grievances, and they deprive the mines of some 2.5 million man-hours each year and more than 20 million tons of coal. But most of the strikes are over safety. Miners worry if emergency evacuation equipment is not on hand or if a roof is not properly reinforced or if a foreman appears to be drunk on the job. When miners bring a grievance over one of these conditions, they often feel that management takes too hard a line and then wins in arbitration.
It is true that over the years, the mines have become much safer. In 1948 there were 999 fatalities; last year 139 miners died on the job. The frequency of nonfatal accidents has dropped from 49.3 per million man-hours in 1948 to 36.07 in 1976. But mining still remains one of the most dangerous industrial occupations in the U.S. Says Barney Beard, president of Local 9111 in Waltonville, Ill.: "When I kiss my wife goodbye every day, she doesn't know if I'm going to get back home that night." Safety is also a consideration in the miners' objections to any changes in their cherished health benefits, which have long been completely free. The operators insist that the workers pay up to $700 a year in deductibles and agree to some other cost-cutting shifts, such as limits on payments to widows. "I don't expect to live long enough to retire," says Illinois Miner Bob Colyer. "So I want my family taken care of. If I die and my wife makes more than $200 a month, she'll lose all medical benefits after 30 days. Now that's just not right."
These demands are now backed up by a more belligerent, self-confident kind of miner. The average age in the mines has dropped from 49 in 1968 to around 31 today. Many of the younger miners either fought in the Viet Nam War or protested it. They are independent, outspoken and not addicted to regular work. The new contract provides for five days of work a week for 50 weeks a year, a two-week paid vacation and ten extra days of paid holidays. A miner can work six or even seven days a week if he wants to, but he generally doesn't. Many miners take three-day weekends, especially during hunting and fishing season. It does not cost much to live in the hollows, and miners do not have a passion for accumulating money, except in preparation for a strike. They feel that generations of miners have purchased their rural amenities with sweat and blood.
For all their stubbornness and steadfastness, the miners have been hurt by the lengthy strike. TIME'S Chicago bureau chief, Benjamin Gate, describes conditions in West Frankfort (pop. 9,400): "With most people eating at home, the Country Fried Chicken Shack and the Pancake House close early. By late afternoon, the streets are deserted and the supermarket parking lots empty. Down the side streets, the small, neat clapboard houses are dimly lit, if at all, with porch lights extinguished. Outside of town, along the bleak and muddy roads, stand the idled mines, their gantries tall and silent. The mines are deserted, the clanking equipment is silent, the railroad cars standing empty and forlorn in the rain."
The miners are not totally on their own; there has been substantial sympathy for their cause. Last week about 150 Missouri farmers brought trucks filled with food to striking miners in Central City, Ky. In southern Illinois banks have generally waived miners' monthly payments for houses and automobiles as long as the strike lasts. Sears, Roebuck has suspended monthly payments on its revolving charge accounts, and finance companies are lending money to miners with no payments due until they go back to work. Grocery stores and other local businesses are extending credit.
Some unions are also pitching in. The United Auto Workers contributed $2 million to a relief fund for miners and their families, and has organized food caravans into the coal fields. The United Steelworkers donated $1 million to retired miners who are not receiving their pension checks. A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany announced a "massive, nationwide effort" to collect food for the miners and their families.
The companies claim that they are ready to start digging coal as soon as the miners return to work. A spokesman for the Consolidation Coal Division of Continental Oil says that its nine mines in western Pennsylvania could be opened early this week with plenty of work for as many as show up. Other big mining outfits, including U.S. Steel and Jones & Laughlin, report that they have been maintaining the mines during the strike with supervisory personnel.
Many companies, however, are wary of reopening without sufficient protection. Quin Morton III, executive secretary of the Kanawha Coal Operators Association, thinks a majority of miners would return "to work if the pickets could be kept away. But he will not hire extra guards to do the job. He recalls the strikebreaking tactics of his grandfather, Quin Morton I, whose private army was once accused of machine-gunning a mining camp inhabited by sleeping wives and children. Says Morton: "History shows us that one of the biggest mistakes coal operators can make is to bring in outside guards."
That leaves the matter in the hands of state and local authorities, who are equally reluctant to do anything that would trigger violence. Virginia's Republican Governor John Dalton has been the most militant to date, merely by putting the National Guard on a stand-by basis. Pennsylvania's Milton Shapp refuses to call out the Guard on his own initiative. Illinois' Republican Governor Jim Thompson has ordered state police accompanying federal marshals not to participate in the enforcement of federal labor laws, as in the case of a peaceful picket defying the Taft-Hartley injunction.
When West Virginia Governor Jay Rockefeller entered the state capitol one morning last week, he was besieged by a group of miners who had come to demonstrate. "What about the National Guard, Governor?" one of them shouted. Rockefeller, whose grandfather ran a mine where the National Guard killed 40 strikers in 1914, yelled back over the din: "I have nothing to say about that. There isn't going to be a problem, is there?"
Economists' estimates and politicians' warnings of the potential damage of the strike have varied dramatically in recent weeks. One reason is that threatened utilities in eleven states have proved to be skilled improvisers. About 15% of the East-Central region's electrical power is now being "wheeled in," that is, imported from other grids that have plenty of coal or rely on other fuels. But the borrowing has now reached a maximum. Some grids are showing signs of strain from switching their transmission and generation patterns, and a massive blackout is always possible.
Coal reserves in the region have dwindled from 82.6 million tons at the beginning of the strike to 43.3 million tons today. Nevertheless, an impressive 39% of the utilities' need is being supplied by non-U.M.W. mines, mostly in the West.
Because of these additional supplies, power cutbacks have been kept to a minimum, at least to date. Maryland has ordered a 20% reduction in power for commercial customers and a 30% reduction for industries served by Potomac Edison in the western part of the state. Indiana has required curtailments of 15% for residential use, 25% for commerce and industry, 40% for education, sports and recreation, and 100% for outdoor advertising and decoration. Pennsylvania's Duquesne Light Co., which supplies power to the Pittsburgh area, has cut back 25% for large industrial users, and West Penn Power enforced a reduction of 10% for commercial and industrial customers. None of these cutbacks have seriously interfered with production, but layoffs have begun to mount. The picture could turn bleaker quickly.
After the breakdown in negotiations and the rebellion in the coal fields, what, then, are the possibilities of a fair settlement? Labor experts feel that the second contract that the miners rejected was basically a good one. Certainly the pay increase--a threeyear, 37% hike in wages and benefits--was well above a reasonable guideline for noninflationary settlements. Indeed, it is justifiable, if at all, only because of the special burdens and hazards of mining.
Determined to crack down on wildcat strikes, the companies offered a generous wage boost. They figured the contract would cost them $35,000 per miner in the third year, but they considered that a bargain if it would end the wildcatting. The miners were just as determined to maintain the right to strike when they please because of their dissatisfaction with the grievance procedure. For the first two months of talks, progress was almost too slow to be measured. Neither side budged and both expected a strike.
There were other issues that involved emotions as much as money. The health-insurance deductibles, in particular, amount to only about 20-c- per man-hour, but the miners who have had free benefits for a generation regard the change as an intolerable loss of their hard-won gains. The companies may find it sensible to give way. On the other hand, the equalizing of pensions, nearly doubling the payments to retired oldtimers ($525 a month instead of $275) would cost the companies about $2 billion, far more than they can afford. Whether a fair settlement is what the final outcome will be, nobody can tell. At this point, it is still a test of strength between two antagonists who are deeply divided among themselves and deeply suspicious of each other.
From the outset, members of the Bituminous Coal Operators' Association, under the presidency of Joseph Brennan, differed on the approach to take toward the union. The companies producing metallurgical coal were under no great pressure to reach an agreement since steel manufacturers' sales are down. Some Midwestern operators do not suffer much from wildcat strikes and so were not overly concerned about controlling them. U.S. Steel insisted on changing the contract provision requiring the operators to contribute to the U.M.W. health fund on the basis of tonnage mined. Other owners correctly warned that the miners would not tolerate any tampering with their cherished health benefits.
While Carter may be praised for his desire to let collective bargaining proceed on its own as long as possible, it also seems the White House did not pay enough attention to the impending dangers and did not sufficiently plan ahead. Says a top labor mediator: "Skillful people could have seen this coming a mile away. It just had to be handled better."
Rather than hang together, the operators may now try to survive separately. There were reports that Peabody Coal, the biggest member of B.C.O.A., Amax Coal Co. and Island Creek Coal Co. might break away from the other operators and negotiate individual contracts with the U.M.W. That could set a precedent for regional settlements, and the 2,500 smaller coal companies would fall into line. But this sort of balkanization could take the power of decision away from both the U.M.W. and the B.C.O.A. and lead to a kind of splintering that neither would find tolerable. The threat of such a development helped bring the two sides back to the bargaining table and gave the talks a greater degree of urgency.
Any new contract depends on countering the distrust that has flared like coal gas among the miners. The Labor Department and the Mediation and Conciliation Service are engaged in delicate diplomacy with various U.M.W. factions to get them to take the lead in working out a settlement. But they are dealing with an independent, rebellious union that may see its individualism as its greatest strength. At a time when most labor disputes are fairly quickly accommodated and resolved, the coal strike is a stark reminder of the amount of damage that one embattled union, toughened by tradition and fired by indignation, can inflict on modern society.
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