Menacing Instability

John L. Lewis, whose prose style moves in the empurpled outer reaches of the language, is no man to call a strike simply a strike. He prefers to call it a "memorial holiday" or a "spontaneous" walkout. Last week, Lewis rumbled out a new and fancy phrase for it. The heavy supply of coal on hand, said the chief, had produced "menacing instability" in the industry, threatening the national economy, and even the United Mine Workers. To correct this situation, Lewis proclaimed "a brief stabilizing period of inaction."

Actually, what worried big John L. was the depressing spectacle of 70 million tons of coal above ground (enough to last the U.S. at least 55 days) in the midst of contract negotiations. This cozy backlog was nothing to inspire sweet reasonableness in the operators. In three weeks of negotiations, the hard-jawed Southern Coal Producers Association had insisted on unthinkable changes in the contract. The operators wanted the miners to give up their paid half-hour lunch periods. They even wanted to kill the clause which requires the miners to work only when "willing and able."* To the operators' demands, the U.M.W. snorted: "Grotesque, medieval and a shame."

This week John L. began talks with a group of operators traditionally more hospitable than the Southerners--U.S. Steel, biggest of the so-called captive operators. He wanted Big Steel to boost miners' pensions, and to give them shorter hours (perhaps a 30-hour week) without cutting pay. Otherwise, another long coal strike seemed certain. For shortly after his newly proclaimed "period of inaction" ends, the miners will take their annual ten-day vacation. And by the time the vacation is over, the miners' contract will have run out. If there is no agreement by then John Lewis has an old standby handy: "No contract, no work."

*Since there are ample coal stocks, Lewis and his miners presumably could not be enjoined as they were last year under the "national health or safety" provision of the Taft-Hartley Act.

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