UMWA pickets outside Pittston-owned Clinchfield Coal in McLure, Virginia.

U.S. coal strike grows
as leaders put in jail

Tribune Combined Sources

Miners in two more U.S. states walked
out on wildcat strikes this week against the
multinational Pittston Coal Group, putting
more than 12,000 miners on the picket line
ina strike that has become a battle to defend
unionism in the Appalachian coalfields.

The latest escalation of the strike, which
has now spread to seven states, began June
19 as members of the United Mine Workers
of America responded to the jailing of three
of their leaders, the latest and most punitive
action in the government-employer drive
against the union.

On June 5, a U.S. district judge jailed
three UMWA leaders for an unspecified
period without bail for refusing to promise
that they would halt all civil disobedience
against the coal company. The jailing of the
three — UMWA District 28 president
Jackie Stump, strike co-ordinator Marty
Hudson and international representative
C.A. Phillips — came just days after U.S.
Circuit Court Judge Donald McGlothlin
levied a fine totalling nearly $3 million
against the union for violations of various
injunctions.

But in Charleston, W, Va. June 11,
UMWA president Richard Trumka and
other union leaders vowed to continue the
fight against the coal giant.

“We will continue to resist in the street, in
the hallways and corridors of power,” he
told a rally of 12,000 gathered on the steps
of the West Virginia state capitol building.
“We shall resist until justice comes, until
dignity is restored.

“We will not surrender,” he declared.

William Winpisinger, president of the
International Association of Machinists,
blasted the court rulings, accusing the
“injunction judges” of enforcing “corporate
edict and gag rule.”

These judges, he said, “‘wear their black
robes to the end of their lifetime appoint-
ments and never know the hard discipline,
the damp sweat or the agonizing pain of the
working miner.”

Among those taking part in the Charles-
ton rally were 100 striking miners from two
West Virginia counties who had re-enacted
in reverse a 1921 march that brought the
union into the mines. The original march

.was sparked by the shooting, by company
gun thugs, of the pro-miner sheriff, an inci-

dent later dramatized in the movie Mate-

wan.

As they re-enacted the 1921 march, strik-
ing miners vowed they would “never return
to the days of the company store, the com-
pany house and the company town.”

Some 1,500 Pittston miners launched the
strike April 5 against company demands for

8 © Pacific Tribune, June 26, 1989

concessions on hours to allow introduction
of continuous operation and against
increasing use by Pittston of non-union
“double-breasting.”

Since 1986, Pittston has been buying new
coal reserves through a wholly-owned non-
union subsidiary, Pyxis, and has been shift-
ing more of its coal contracts to the spin-off
company.

The strike came 14 months after the
UMWA contract with Pittston expired.
During those 14 months the company
attempted several times to force a strike,
including cutting off medical benefits to
retirees. The cut-off has been particularly
devastating for victims of Black lung disease
who require daily oxygen.

A month before the walkout, the U.S.

National Labour Relations Board filed 25

unfair labour practice charges against Pitt-
ston, most of them relating to its efforts to
break the union. The charges enabled the
UMWA to take its action as a unfair labour
practice strike under provisions which pro-
tect workers from being permanently
replaced.

Even before the strike, Pittston had
moved its union-busting strategy into gear,
securing extensive loan arrangements with a

_number of banks, including a $100 million
* line of credit with the Manufacturers Han-

over Trust Co.

Since the walkout, the company has
brought scabs into the mines and has hired
a notoriously anti-union security firm,
Vance Securities, to escort strikebreakers.
Vance, owned by former U.S. President
Gerald Ford’s son-in-law, Chuck Vance,
used machine guns and armoured person-
nel carriers in a coal strike against A.T.
Massey Coal Company a few years ago.

“They’re basically a bunch of gun thugs,”
said UMWA District 28 secretary-treasurer
Don McCamey.

Between them, the security guards and
state police officers have put many towns in
the coal-mining region in a virtual state of
siege in a company-sponsored effort to keep
the scab coal moving and break the strike.

But the UMWA, backed by other unions

and groups in the Rainbow Coalition and

local churches have fought back with a
mass civil disobedience campaign, barring
the way to coal trucks in non-violent sit-
down protests.

More than 2,000 people, including a
number of nuns and religious leaders, have
been arrested for blocking roads and high-
ways.

Trumka told the rally in Charleston, W.
Va. June 11 that the campaign would con-
tinue, urging the crowd to “spread the word

.. the civil resistance will continue.”

Second of two articles :

In my last article on the Canadian
Union of Public Employees I took a brief
look at the history of Canada’s largest
union. In the same vein I’d like to con-
tinue to look at what may be in part a
source of some of the problems that
hamper this union.

In the 1963 merger convention of
National Union of Public Employees
(NUPE) and National Union of Public
Service Employees (NUPSE) it seems the
progressive forces lost out to what. was,

forces”.

The struggle at that convention was
over the structure of CUPE. The ques-
tion was whether to retain strong rank
and file control previously utilized in
NUPE, including the hiring of business
agents on a local or regional level, or to
create a centralized power at the national
level which would hire and assign staff as
was traditional in NUPSE.

The result in part’was a structure
which isolated the leadership from the
membership, and at the same time gave
the hired staff a tremendous influence in
the union. That question, along with
finances has plagued practically every
convention ever since.

termed, at the:time, the “‘business union,

CUPE debating future
as union enters 1990s

raised the concern that the leadership
should not come in advocating another
so-called “task force” to look once again
into the structural and financial prob-
lems of the union.

Those same activists advocate that
wherever possible the membership should
be brought in to help overcome the
organizational and financial problems.

Because of the lack of trust and appar-
ent cynicism among many of the
members over issues that the numerous
CUPE conventions have been unable to
resolve, the members are concerned
about. just throwing more money at the
problem.

The membership see the over-worked
service reps at the local level, and the
need for more servicing reps. But at the
same time, they question the allocation
of the financial and human resources.

There is a pre-conceived idea of an

over-staffing at the provincial and

national level of the union. That is com-
plicated by the fact most of the big locals
have had a big increase in dues that
comes out of the last implementation of
the new per-capita formula.

Until these perceptions are corrected
or resolved, it is becoming clear another
round of per-capita hikes will put the

John MacLennan

Current information coming out of
Ottawa is that the leadership of CUPE is
’ preparing a policy paper for the 1990s.
Although it’s not clear at this time what
will be in this paper, according to one
source it will in part deal with CUPE’s
future collective bargaining plans.

Regardless of that, the leadership has
to deal with the union’s structural and
financial problems. Recently, the struc-
tural problem was seen in the inability of
the leadership of CUPE to mobilize the
membership around the fight against
free trade, and the last federal election.

The question now facing CUPE and
other unions is how will the union
respond to the first free trade budget?
Clearly, all municipal governments are
going to feel the impact of the neo-
conservative agenda and pass on the
effects of these policies on to the backs of

| CUPE’s membership.

Added to this:is how CUPE deals with
the on-going, all-out. assault ;.on, the
membership through. all levels .of
governmental policies of privatization
and deregulation that go hand in hand
with free trade and the Tory neo-
conservative agenda.

Some left activists in the union have

LABOUR

IN ACTION

next convention in turmoil. Any per-
capita increase has to have an action plan
that moves the union forward in the best
interests of its members.

The left suggests the leadership call
regional and provincial conferences with
the membership to guarantee their input.
The leadership will be able to use a man-
date from the membership, who along
with the staff, feel the need to change the
structure to fit the union’s needs.

At the same time, the left is advocating

the election of more full-time officers at —

the national level who will be armed with
a mandate to carry out the wishes of the
membership.

That leads to the last question: leader-
ship. There are four declared candidates
for the position of secretary-treasurer.
The left is waiting to see all the programs
on which the candidates will be running

00, before any commitment will be made.
= ~ There, is no doubt that all the candi-

dates will, to one degree or another, sup-
port the progressive policies of CUPE.
The difference will be how they plan to
mobilize the membership to help create
the best organizational and financial
structure to move the union ahead and
meet the challenges of the 1990s.

ag

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