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

DATE: THURSDAY, May 10, 1990                   TAG: 9005100489
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PITTSTON HEAD TAKES EXCEPTION TO STRIKE STORY

ON FIRST reading, it seems to me your April 29 special section on the coal strike missed entirely one very important event. That was: Gov. Baliles' formal call for intervention by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service on or about April 28, 1989; Pittston's immediate acceptance; Trumka's acceptance one week later, and the beginning of intense on- and off-the-record discussions between Joe Farrell, our executive vice president, and Cecil Roberts under the FMCS during the balance of May.

(That was highlighted by my own personal last-minute decision on June 2, to fly down to Washington to emphasize personally from the highest level of the company our total commitment to that negotiating process, our confidence in the negotiators, and our plea to move ahead.)

Unfortunately, what we had already feared might be under way turned out to be reality. On the following June 7, the union's international executive board met in Washington all day long, and late that evening, Trumka announced the UMW was withdrawing unilaterally and completely from the federal mediation efforts and from further negotiations.

Our only possible response to this brutal breakoff from talks was to exercise our right to implement our last best offer under federal labor law. The subsequent June 11 march on Charleston and the "wildcat" actions to which you did refer had obviously been planned for some weeks, as had been the walkout from the negotiations and the "wildcat" actions. Whatever the motives behind this saga, its impacts on the duration of the strike should not be so completely overlooked.

In this respect, therefore, I think your chronology is unfair both to Gov. Baliles and to Pittston. Since those events were very widely reported at the time, it does seem to me strange that such a crucial element was missing entirely from your story.

\ PAUL W. DOUGLAS\ Chairman and Chief Executive Officer The Pittston Company\ GREENWICH, CONN.

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