Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 29, 1990 TAG: 9004300433
SECTION: THUNDER IN THE COALFIELDS PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Dwayne Yancey
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Finally, there was the Eastern Airlines strike, which overshadowed other labor disputes for much of the spring of 1989.
But on Thursday, April 27, nine days after the women had taken over Pittston's offices and three days after the first mass arrests at McClure, the strike hit The New York Times.
In many ways, it was a routine story on an inside page. Still, it called the fight "one of the most serious coal strikes in more than a decade." And the mere fact that the Times, perhaps the nation's most influential newspaper, saw fit to cover the strike made it a must story for other media.
"I think Pittston probably could have won if they could have confined the conflict to the coalfields," one of the union's media advisers says. But in the weeks and months to come, newspaper and network reporters from throughout the United States - and even some from Europe - trooped to the Virginia coalfields. Most filed sympathetic, even romantic, stories about the miners and the mountains.
Come Sunday, the UMW had further confirmation that it was turning the strike into a national cause - Jesse Jackson came to town.
More than 10,000 people jammed the Wise County Fairgrounds. It was an amazing sight, to see this nearly all-white crowd hang on every word from the civil rights leader and two-time presidential candidate. "We look around today, we see the tradition of John L. Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr. have come together," Jackson said, "and we will not go back!"
"The first day is what helped us in this strike," says former Dickenson County Supervisor Bill Patton. "That was the day the public came around on our side. Nobody ever thought we were going to be beat up like we were. When the county papers come out, the state police went around and tried to buy up every paper, because they knew they had fouled up."
\ THE NEW YORK ANALYSTS WERE WRONG. This would not be a short strike. Union members weren't crossing the picket line, as Pittston had led the analysts to believe. In fact, neither side showed any intention of giving in anytime soon.
By early May, all sides started digging in for a long strike - the union, the company, the state police, even the communities.
In Richmond, Gov. Baliles assembled a group of top advisers to monitor the strike. State police brought in videotapes of the mass arrests. "He just sat there in silence and watched them in dismay," former aide G.C. Morse says.
Baliles' staff was split on how he should respond. "There was considerable debate in the office that he needed to do something positive," Morse says. "But he would say, `A governor can't do anything.' He wanted to take a very legalistic approach." If Baliles didn't want to get involved in a labor-management dispute, he could at least express his concern for the people and communities involved, Morse contends.
But Baliles wouldn't do it. "He saw the downside of being perceived as soft," Morse says. "He had to demonstrate his resolve in the face of being criticized in the Richmond newspapers, especially the editorial pages." And they are perhaps the most anti-union editorial pages in the state.
The most Baliles did was urge police to maintain caution and restraint and let the strike run its course.
It was a decision that may have won Baliles praise from Richmond editorialists. But as the weeks and months wore on, the strike gnawed on Baliles' reputation in Southwest Virginia. "Governor Baliles, this is Southwest Virginia, not South Africa," proclaimed one sign atop a picket shack at Moss 3.
Throughout the coalfields, UMW signs sprouted everywhere. The Clintwood Garment Factory ordered camouflage material and donated it to the union's cause; soon strips of camouflage cloth fluttered from almost every doorknob and radio antenna in Clintwood. No country store was complete without a stock of camouflage T-shirts emblazoned with union slogans.
Strikers in their camouflage became like soldiers in uniform; businesses couldn't do enough for them. "You go to a store, they give you something to eat," said Eddie Calo of Lick Creek. "I went to a gas station and they fixed my flat tire." St. Paul Coca-Cola started sending soda to strikers on the picket line, sometimes 30 cases at a time. Buck's Motel in Clintwood kept the pickets at the nearby Red Onion mine supplied with ice.
But the closeness that bound a community together also bred suspicion. When troopers frequented the deli at the Exxon station in Cleveland, strikers began bad-mouthing the owner. Soon afterward, the store's front window was shot out.
As far as strikers were concerned, if you weren't for them, you were against them.
For the union, this was a dangerous time.
The union leaders could talk peace all they wanted; there was still meanness in the air. To the strikers on the picket line, all the nice stories in The New York Times, and all the talk about executive vice presidents and federal mediators getting involved, didn't mean a thing. All they could see was that this newfangled civil disobedience still hadn't stopped the scab coal trucks from running.
The leaders knew they couldn't win the strike with a single, knock-out punch. "You've got to think long term," Hudson says. "That's what the Massey strike taught me. It's not where you are today in a strike, it's where you think you'll be six months from now."
\ THE COMPANY WAS DIGGING IN, TOO.
Company supervisors are always in a tough position in a strike, trying to balance their relationship between their bosses and the men on the picket line they have to work with underground when it's over. Pittston's supervisors expected the strike's first three to four months to be peaceful. They figured the strikers would turn to rocks and jackrocks only if the strike went longer and frustration set in. Instead, the rocks and jackrocks began almost on day one, says Ed Rudder, a safety inspector and foreman at McClure No. 1. His wife started receiving threatening phone calls.
He and other supervisors were shocked. Soon, though, he and other supervisors became experts at dealing with jackrocks. If the jackrock stayed in the tire, they knew they could keep driving a while before the air would seep out. If the tire rolled over the jackrock and tossed it aside, the tire would flatten immediately. One man he rode to work with carried a garage jack that could lift two tons. They also carried plugging kits, a tank of compressed air and "three or four spare tires. We got pretty good."
The supervisors had another tough job: train the replacement workers Pittston was hiring. "The quality of the replacements, in the beginning, wasn't that good," Rudder says. "We needed experienced people and we didn't really have it at the beginning."
That was especially true at McClure No. 1. It's Pittston's biggest mine, and the company runs a longwall machine there - a terrifyingly complicated piece of machinery that chews up an entire wall of coal at a time. It's also one of Appalachia's gassiest mines - which makes it one of the deadliest. In 1983, seven miners were killed in McClure in one of Virginia's worst mine explosions.
"We didn't need anyone getting hurt, and definitely didn't need anyone getting killed," Rudder says.
In time, as the men became familiar with the peculiarities of McClure No. 1, they became solid miners. A few clung to hope of staying on with Pittston when the strike was over. But most understood that they were short-timers - strike-breakers.
Production suffered: In Dickenson County, home to most of Pittston's mines, the company's coal production dropped 60 percent in the strike's first month. That, in turn, meant less severance tax money going into the county treasury, which would soon push the coal-dependent county into a fiscal crisis.
\ ON TUESDAY, MAY 16, CIRCUIT JUDGE DONALD MCGLOTHLIN FINED THE UMW $616,000 for violating his order banning mass picketing.
And he set a price for further strike activities - $20,000 for each day the union violated his order; $100,000 for throwing a rock or any other act of violence.
The union shrugged.
The courts had broken up the UMW's civil disobedience at Massey; that wouldn't happen here.
The picket line at Moss 3 remained crammed with strikers, their wives, often their children. When it rained, the coal dust in the road turned to thick black goo. Some women took delight in rolling around in the awful syrup, just to make sure the troopers would dirty their uniforms when they carried the picketers to the bus.
by CNB