Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 28, 1993 TAG: 9312280011
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Greg Edwards
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It's been nearly five years since the contract between the United Mine\ Workers and the Pittston Co. expired. It set in motion events that led to a\ bitter 10-month-long strike by 1,700 miners in the coalfields of Southwest\ Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia.
Although involving only one-tenth as many coal miners as the just-concluded\ UMW strike against members of the Bituminous Coal Operators Association, the\ Pittston strike drew as much and possibly more national and international\ attention.
The big strike was covered in network broadcasts, national news magazines and newspapers as well as by this region's media.
It drew U.S. Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole to a Russell County coal plant, and Jesse Jackson and the late and legendary Farm Workers President Cesar Chavez to rallies for Pittston strikers in Wise County.
The protest resulted in mass arrests of hundreds of striking miners and their supporters - including some Roanoke-area clergy - who sat down to block access roads to Pittston coal plants and mines. Those arrests and several incidents of violence - disclaimed by the UMW leadership - led to $52 million in fines by a state judge against Pittston.
The disposition of those fines, which the union argues were unconstitutional and excessive, now rests with the U.S. Supreme Court.
So with the conclusion of the last chapter of Pittston's sometimes stormy relationship with its labor force not yet written, the next chapter is about to begin.
The contract that ended the Pittston strike in February 1990 expires June 30, and whether it will result in another strike is anybody's guess. The signs are mixed.
The current contract, which left the UMW with millions in potentially treasury-busting fines and Pittston with a strike bill of more than $20 million and millions more in lost sales, had something for each side but didn't give Pittston or the UMW all that they had sought.
Pittston won the right to use more flexible work schedules at its mines. The UMW preserved its near-sacred full health-care coverage for active and retired miners and won some job protections and opportunities. The company had sought to shift some of its spiraling health-care costs to its workers but had to settle for offering financial incentives to workers to hold down medical costs.
A recent issue of The Pittston Spirit, the company's magazine, speaks of the productivity gains the company has enjoyed because the new contract allows it to switch to 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week operations.
But Don McCamey, the UMW's Virginia vice president, says that the relationship between the union and Pittston could have been a lot better than it has been under the agreement. Some of Pittston's schedule shifts have not made a lot of sense and have been trying to older union workers, McCamey said.
The Spirit, on the other hand, carried a glowing account of worker-management cooperation on a planning team at the company's McClure No. 1 mine in Dickenson County. McCamey, though, noted that the company had laid off several workers at McClure just before Christmas.
So it goes.
by CNB