Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 13, 1994 TAG: 9402130007
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ROBINSON CREEK, KY. LENGTH: Medium
Last week, members of United Mine Workers Local 1812 gathered to tear down the two-room, dirt-floored shack at the mouth of Rob Fork Hollow near the Kentucky-Virginia border.
The shack was no longer needed. Their union and several companies agreed on a settlement in the sometimes violent walkout, a spinoff of the epic 1989 Pittston coal strike that left the picketing miners without jobs.
"It's like tearing your fort down," said Lonnie Tackett, the local's financial secretary. "We know we lost the battle."
To Freddie Bowling, dismantling the shack symbolized a tearing down of his faith in the union.
"We were out there four years supporting a union that we loved," said Bowling, president of Local 1812. "We felt they owed us a job and four years' back pay, and that's not what they gave us. . . .
"It was a settlement made in the best behalf of the union, not the men," he said.
The UMW and the companies that mine or mined in the hollow signed an agreement to settle a lawsuit stemming from the dispute. The $2.4 million settlement, filed Jan. 3 in U.S. District Court at Pikeville, gives some compensation to the men for lost wages and benefits.
But the union also dropped any claim to representation in the hollow and other nearby operations run by the defendant companies.
Local 1812 was called out on Oct. 2, 1989, as part of the selective strike against the Pittston Coal Group. The walkout idled 1,700 miners in Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia before it ended in February 1990.
Mine 29 Mining and Processing Inc., a contractor mining in Rob Fork Hollow, was allegedly supplying coal to Pittston and was targeted for pickets. But 11 days after the walkout began, Mine 29 filed bankruptcy and locked out the 52 union members.
Other contractors later reopened the mine but didn't rehire the strikers. The union filed a federal lawsuit in March 1990, claiming violation of a successorship clause of the labor contract signed by the mine's former owner, BethEnergy Mines Inc.
The Rob Fork settlement came about the same time the union ended a seven-month strike against the Bituminous Coal Operators Association, which represents the nation's largest coal companies. That contract guarantees union members more jobs at the non-union mines owned by BCOA members who signed the national contract.
Bowling wants to know why his strike didn't end that way.
Of the 52 men who started the Rob Fork strike, only 29 were still pulling picket duty when the settlement was announced, Bowling said. Some retired and others took different jobs, he said.
A $225 weekly union strike benefit was barely more than most of the men had made in a single shift. Still, many held on to keep the valuable union health card.
But Bowling said the strike benefits were cut off Jan. 28, and medical benefits will cease at the end of this month.
"They left us out in the cold," Bowling said.
"They say we won the case," he said with a laugh. "What we'd like for them to do is come down here and explain to us . . . what we won."
by CNB