Challenger's Round

For the past year, the once monolithic United Mine Workers union has rumbled with unrest. Dismayed by their leaders' cozy ties with the coal industry and angered by their seeming indifference to health and safety problems, miners in West Virginia walked off their jobs last winter in an unauthorized strike that supported legislation to compensate them for "black lung" ailments. Last week the rebellion moved into a new phase when Joseph A. ("Jock") Yablonski won the first round of his fight to oust W. A. ("Tony") Boyle, 64, from the $50,000-a-year U.M.W. presidency that he has held since 1963.

Obstacle Course. Yablonski, 59, himself a member of the 140,000-member union's ruling elite, is the first serious challenger for the U.M.W. leadership since the late John L. Lewis turned back Insurgent John Brophy's bid in 1926. The raspy-voiced Pennsylvanian has served on the union's international executive board for 27 years. Earlier this year, Boyle named him acting director of the "NonPartisan League,"; the union's powerful political arm. Yablonski's announcement of his candidacy last May cost him that job.

Yablonski's road to nomination has resembled an obstacle course. The union leadership denied him access to its membership lists until a federal district court ordered them opened up. The fortnightly Mine Workers Journal, which carried no fewer than 30 pictures of Boyle in one recent 24-page issue, has ignored his candidacy. Some Yablonski supporters have been threatened with violence or loss of their jobs or pensions.

Yablonski himself required a doctor's care after an unknown assailant nearly disabled him with a karate chop on his neck while he was campaigning last month in Springfield, Ill., a Boyle stronghold. "I was knocked unconscious," says Yablonski. "When I woke up, my arms were paralyzed. My right hand and right foot are still numb."

Despite such harassment, Yablonski managed to win the endorsement of 96 U.M.W. locals, 46 more than he needs to assure himself of a place on the ballot in the union's Dec. 9 election. Boyle was nominated by 1,056 locals. Yablonski plans to push for democratization of what he calls "the most notoriously dictatorial labor union in America." In three detailed complaints filed with the Labor Department, Yablonski has accused the union of "flagrant" and "continuous" violations of federal laws that are intended to assure democratic process in union elections. Among the charges: fraud, trickery, bribery, embezzlement and illegal use of union funds to promote Boyle's candidacy. So far, the Labor Department has taken no action on the complaints.

Costly Misjudgment. The union's members are also challenging their leaders. Two weeks ago, 78 miners and miners' widows filed suit against the U.M.W. in federal court, asking for $75 million in damages. They charged the U.M.W. with conspiring with its welfare fund, with the union-owned National Bank of Washington and with the Bituminous Coal Operators Association to defraud them of their pensions through fiscal mismanagement and the manipulation of union funds for private gain.

Like Yablonski's challenge, the miners' suit demonstrates the depth of the coal miners' discontent with a union that has lost touch with its members. "Tony Boyle and his associates thought they owned the union," said Yablonski after his nomination victory last week. "Now at long last he knows he misjudged the men who belong to this union." Although election odds as of now favor Boyle, dissatisfaction among rank-and-file miners is still growing. The price of Boyle's misjudgment could yet be his job.

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