Pittston Coal Miners Ratify New Contract : Labor: After a bitter strike, the union wins job-security and benefit concessions. The company gets an around-the-clock work schedule.
Striking Pittston Co. coal miners in three Southeast states ratified a contract that combines employer concessions on job security and health benefits with more flexible work rules for around-the-clock coal production, United Mine Workers Union President Richard L. Trumka announced Tuesday.
The 1,900 striking miners, who voted Monday in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky, gave 63% approval to a tentative settlement reached last Dec. 31. They will be back at work by early next week, Trumka told a press conference here at the annual winter meeting of the AFL-CIO’s executive council.
The terms of the contract indicated that both sides made substantial concessions to settle the bitter 10 1/2-month strike, which became a cause celebre to organized labor.
Under the contract, Pittston’s workers are the first unionized miners in the nation to grant their bosses a system of continuous production. Traditionally, miners have not worked on Sundays.
In exchange, the company modified its decision to stop paying into the union’s national retirement trusts, which it had claimed were too costly. The funds cover 130,000 workers and retirees.
Pittston agreed to resume payment to one fund at 1988 levels and to contribute about half the amount it has been paying to the other. Labor Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole, who intervened in the strike last fall, will appoint a commission next week to recommend a restructuring of the coal-mining trusts, created by Congress half a century ago.
Pittston also agreed to job-security guarantees that go beyond those made to other union miners in the 1988 contract between the union and the Bituminous Coal Operators Assn., a group of 14 companies that includes some of the country’s largest coal producers.
In hiring for its non-union subsidiaries, Pittston must fill 80% of the slots with union members who had been laid off from other mines. Other unionized companies assure only 60% of such jobs to union workers. Pittston also reluctantly agreed to retain a “successorship” provision, which requires that if the company sells any of its 12 unionized coal companies, the new owner must honor the union contract.
The job-security provisions are significant in an era in which corporations in many industries routinely try to cut the work force at unionized subsidiaries and transfer jobs to cheaper, non-union divisions.
While the ratification vote indicated substantial disenchantment among miners over some of the union’s concessions, the news became the highlight of organized labor’s gathering here.
The solidarity of the miners, who engaged in massive civil disobedience that produced 3,000 arrests and led to $63 million in fines for violating Virginia court orders limiting picketing, “has been an inspiration to the entire trade union movement. . . . It’s given us all a lift,” AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland said.
“It’s a joyous day for everyone,” added Dole, who joined Kirkland and Trumka at the press conference along with former Labor Secretary William T. Usery, whom Dole appointed as a “supermediator” in October after talks between Pittston and the miners had broken off.
Pittston officials had praised the new contract even before miners began voting. “We look forward to going back to work,” Pittston President Michael Odom said last week.
Wages were not an issue in the strike. Miners will receive a cumulative $1.20-an-hour raise at the end of three years. Top-scale hourly pay will be $17.52.
Pressure for the strike began building in early 1988 after Pittston refused to sign the union’s national contract with the coal operators association. Union members subsequently worked 14 months without a contract before striking last April 5.
Trumka said he was pleased with the contract, which he characterized as a “pragmatic” agreement, but said the amount of time needed to reach it illustrates how America’s collective-bargaining system is tilted against workers.
“The labor laws in this country are designed for working people to lose,” said Trumka, one of many labor leaders who has become increasingly vocal in demanding laws requiring employers to rehire strikers after a labor dispute ends.
HIGHLIGHTS OF MINERS CONTRACT
Here are key provisions of the contract approved by members of the United Mine Workers in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky:
Term: 4 years.
Wages: Top scale of $17.52 an hour in selected positions, a raise of $1.20 an hour.
Health benefits: 100% medical coverage for employees, pensioners and their families.
Retirement: Pittston modified its decision to stop paying into the union’s national retirement trusts, which it had claimed were too costly. Pittston will resume payment to one fund at 1988 levels and contribute about half the amount it has been paying to the other.
Job security: Pittston can hire contract workers for transportation and equipment repair and maintenance if no union miners are laid off. Laid-off union miners must be hired for the first four of every five job openings at Pittston’s non-union mines and providers of contract workers must agree to offer the first 19 of every 20 jobs to laid-off union miners.
Working hours: Flexible schedules, including four-day weeks of 10 hours each and 28-day shift rotations, which would allow almost around-the-clock operation of mines.
Source: Associated Press
