
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 7, 1990                   TAG: 9003071827
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: southwest bureau
DATELINE: LEBANON                                 LENGTH: Short

UMW OFFERS DEAL ON FINES

In an effort to persuade a circuit judge to reduce $64.3 million in fines, the United Mine Workers offered Tuesday to triple the hours of community service it previously had offered to perform.

Judge Donald A. McGlothlin Jr. gave Pittston Coal until Monday afternoon to respond to the UMW brief.

Pittston has joined the union in asking McGlothlin to end all injunctions and drop all fines generated during the strike. The UMW was found to have violated state and federal court injunctions limiting strike activities.

In a Feb. 12 hearing, the union offered to perform 10,000 hours of community service and promised to abide by the law in future labor disputes. McGlothlin said the offer was insufficient and gave the union 10 days - a deadline later extended through Tuesday - to come up with another.

The union's latest offer is to perform 20,000 hours of community service in addition to the 10,000 already required by a federal judge.

A Springfield-based legal foundation, meanwhile, is urging the judge to let the fines stand.

The Center on Labor Policy Inc., a conservative non-profit legal foundation, criticized Pittston for joining the request to drop the fines, which arose from charges made by the company.

"If the UMWA is permitted to walk away from the year of terror it unleashed on southwestern Virginia without substantial penalty, the court's jurisdiction will be subject to the same impotence as all other courts who caved in to the UMWA over the years," the friend-of-the-court brief argues. "The losers will be the citizenry, who can only expect further terrorism from the UMWA, well knowing the court cannot protect them."

by CNB