Surprise Strike

The U.M.W. digs itself a hole It was nice while it lasted. For exactly one week it looked as if the nation's $21 billion coal industry would be able to avoid yet another of the lengthy and disruptive strikes that since 1966 have repeatedly marred contract talks with miners. Yet after United Mine Workers President Sam Church Jr. finished hammering out a new three-year contract with mineowners belonging to the Bituminous Coal Operators' Association and submitted the pact for ratification to the union's feisty rank and file, the U.M.W.'s 160,000 soft-coal miners overwhelmingly rejected it. Workers and employers then began digging in for what suddenly promised to be a prolonged strike. The longest on record: the U.M.W.'s 111-day walkout in 1977 and early 1978.

The most surprised miner of all was the hulking, tobacco-chomping Church, 44, who became president of the 91-year-old union in 1979. Determined to negotiate a contract that would cement his support within the U.M.W., Church emerged from two months of wage and benefit talks in possession of a package that seemed overflowing with concessions to the miners. Included in the deal: a 36% pay and benefits increase over three years, boosts in pension payments for retired miners and surviving spouses, and a ban on mandatory Sunday work, which mineowners had been demanding but workers had vehemently opposed.

Though Church stumped the pit heads from Springfield, Ill., to Pittsburgh to push the pact, the union rebuffed it by a vote of more than 2 to 1. Many members argued that provisions in the contract gave mine operators power to lease coal property to nonunion companies as well as skimp on contributions to pension funds. On the other hand, industry officials seemed to feel that the rejection simply reflected the union's weakening grasp its members. Said one: "Facts had nothing to do with it. Rationality went out the window. What developed was emotion, suspicion and misinformation. It just gathered." Conceded Kentucky Miner Tommy Gaston, a member of the union's negotiating team: "I think the biggest problem was that the contract was not properly explained to the members fit had been, I think the pact would have passed by 80%."

Because big coal users like public utilities and heavy industry have stockpiles that should last nearly four months, the U.S. is in good shape to weather a fairly long strike. The U.M.W. itself is another matter. Union membership has grown slightly, while nonunion mines have proliferated in the East and Midwest, along with the sprawling strip-mining operations of the Rocky Mountain states. As a result, mines covered by the U.M.W. agreement currently account for only 44% of overall U.S. coal production and the strike will probably reduce this figure further. Said Doug Heape, 23, a Tamaroa, Ill., miner with three years' experience underground: "The longer we're out, the more it's going to hurt." With no new contract talks now scheduled, the hurting may go on for a longtime.

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