A Close Horse Race in the Mines

When the United Mine Workers elected Arnold Miller president five years ago, ousting autocratic Boss Tony Boyle, the rank and file thought they had inaugurated an era of reform and tranquillity for their battered union. They could not have been more mistaken. After a brief period of harmony, hostilities resumed. They have not ceased. Now they threaten to topple Miller and ignite a potentially crippling nationwide coal strike next winter.

The cause of this latest rumble is the U.M.W.'s presidential election, which is scheduled for June. In a three-way campaign that is already getting heated, Miller is running for re-election against Union Secretary-Treasurer Harry Patrick and U.M.W. International Board Member Lee Roy Patterson. Patrick, 46, a voluble, fiery fourth-generation miner from Monongah, W. Va., ran with Miller on the reform ticket in 1972 and represents the progressive wing of the union. Though he came to office without bookkeeping experience or a high school education, he is credited with putting the U.M.W.'s ledgers in order after years of abuse under Boyle. Patterson, 43, is a graying, stocky union in-fighter from Madisonville, Ky., who campaigned for Boyle in the last election and continues to praise his administration. Boyle, who has been serving out a life sentence for conspiring to murder U.M.W. Reformer Joseph ("Jock") Yablonski, last week was granted a new trial by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on the grounds that crucial defense testimony was not allowed during his 1974 trial. No one knows yet just how this development will affect the election, but it can hardly hurt the Boyle partisans, who, along with U.M.W. conservatives, are backing Patterson.

Despite their ideological differences, Patrick and Patterson share one sentiment: contempt for the way Miller has run the 250,000-member union. Miller is the issue in the election.

Office Door. "The man is incapable of administering the affairs of the U.M.W.," says Patterson. Patrick calls his former ally "a disaster as president." For evidence, they point to his inability to control disorderly meetings of the U.M.W.'s 21-member international board, Miller's habit of spending long weekends in Charleston, W. Va., near his home, and his failure to check the rash of wildcat coal strikes that have plagued the industry during his tenure, including last summer's prolonged walkout that idled more than 90,000 miners.

Patrick also accuses Miller of a more unpardonable sin. "Arnold has betrayed the movement for democracy in the union," says Patrick. "He's behaving like a dictator." Miller has recently shown a draconian side, abruptly dismissing several top aides, beefing up security at the union's Washington headquarters and insisting that everyone, including Patrick, clear all travel with him. When one of Miller's secretaries was suspected of political plotting with Patrick, the door to her office was removed. (It has since been restored.)

Miller offers a spirited defense. "Julius Caesar had his Brutus," he says, "but I've got about a hundred Brutuses. The problems I have are not with the membership, it's with the elected officials and the staff." Miller explains, with some justice, that almost from the day he was elected, opponents have tried to undermine his administration. First, he says, it was the obstructionist international board, then the opposition of U.M.W. Vice President Mike Trbovich, who has been forced out of the fray by his own overheated charges about Communists in the Miller administration. Miller, 53, who has lungs ravaged by black-lung disease and a face scarred from World War II wounds, insists that he delivered on U.M.W. democracy with a new union constitution, rank-and-file veto power over contracts and a fat, three-year 54% wage-and-benefit increase negotiated in the last contract.

Miller is the favorite in the race, though not by a wide margin. Patrick is a charismatic speaker who will attract a large number of young miners disenchanted with Miller's leadership. Patterson will pick up the sizable bloc (better than 40% of the vote in 1972) that supported Boyle. What worries union progressives is the possibility of a split vote between Miller and Patrick that would give the election to Patterson. "That will return us to the dark ages," says one Patrick supporter.

The winner's first job will be to negotiate a new contract with the coal industry. The present one expires in December, and no one is sanguine about the prospects for a peaceful settlement. Campaign rhetoric will inflate demands in a union already talking up a 25% wage increase for the first year alone. "We've never gotten anything without a strike," says Patrick. "I don't see any way to avoid one this year." If that is so, the nation will get an unpleasant Christmas present from the coal fields.

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