Both Sides in Coal Miners’ Strike to Meet, Dole Says

Labor Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole met with striking Pittston Co. coal miners Friday and announced that the company chairman and the union president had agreed to meet with her today.

Face-to-face negotiations are the only way to settle the 6-month-old walkout, Dole said.

“I feel frustration with the impasse,” she said. “We’re talking about communities being torn apart and, in some cases, families torn apart as I’ve heard talking with miners this morning.”

The two sides have held bargaining sessions since the strike began on April 5 but in separate rooms with federal mediators shuttling messages back and forth. Dole said that Pittston Co. Chairman Paul Douglas and United Mine Workers President Richard L. Trumka had agreed to meet with her in a Labor Department office.

About 1,700 miners in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky are on strike against Pittston Coal Group Inc., a subsidiary of Pittston Co.

Dole, who visited picket lines to listen to miners’ concerns about health benefits and job security, was careful to point out that she was not taking sides in the strike and planned to meet with Pittston officials later in Lebanon, Va.

“I’m not a mediator,” she said. “I’m not here to say I have the answer to this complex problem, but I do feel now it is time to see if we can facilitate the bargaining process.”

Dole spoke with some of the 280 picketers at the entrance to a coal preparation plant that 98 striking miners invaded and occupied for four days in September.

UMW strike captain Fred Wallace of Lebanon said it “gives us a shot in the arm to know that the secretary of labor is interested enough to come for a firsthand view.”

Miners told Dole that the contract Pittston is proposing would reduce their health benefits, threaten the stability of the UMW pension fund and eventually break the union.

“They are trying to destroy our union,” said Joel Phillips, a picket captain from Castlewood.

The company repeatedly has denied that it is trying to break the union.

Heather Hamilton, the 3-year-old daughter of a striking miner, gave Dole a bouquet of flowers and told her: “Get a contract for my daddy.”