Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 11, 1990 TAG: 9007110127
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS BUSINESS WRITER
DATELINE: CASTLEWOOD LENGTH: Medium
Approximately 300 laid-off miners have been getting a $225-a-week strike benefit from the union even though the UMW's bitter feud with Pittston ended in February.
Some of the laid-off Pittston miners and truck drivers were angry because the union had told them it planned to cut off their benefits at the end of the month.
They say the union had promised that at the end of the strike their benefits would continue for a year or until they were called back to work.
A union spokesman at the UMW's Washington headquarters, however, said the laid-off workers never had been promised continued strike benefits for more than 90 days.
For some of the approximately 300 laid-off miners the strike benefits are their sole source of income. Other miners are in better shape because they are also drawing state unemployment benefits or their wives have full-time jobs.
A delegation representing those who are about to lose their benefits went to Washington this week to ask the union's leaders to reconsider their decision to end the benefits.
The group outside the headquarters Tuesday wanted to talk with that delegation in the parking lot, but local union leaders hustled the miners and their wives inside the building and away from a reporter.
When the meeting broke up an hour later, many of the miners declined to talk about what they were told inside, saying they had been instructed not to talk to the press.
The opinions of those who would talk were mixed on whether the union will agree to restore the benefits. Some said they would just wait and see.
One laid-off truck driver at Pittston's Lambert Fork mine was skeptical. "The bottom line is they're just going to shaft us," he said.
"They made us a promise, if one goes back, we all go back," he said, referring to the end of the 10-month strike.
But when the strike ended, not all striking Pittston workers were called back. The company closed some mines and at least one coal cleaning plant during the strike.
The truck driver said that the union members who returned to work will stand behind those who were laid off. "Most of them are relatives of the men out here," he said. "They're not going to go over there and work; they're going to be over here and shut this place down," he said, nodding at the headquarters building.
Haymon Hill, laid-off coal plant worker from Clintwood, agreed that those who were laid off have the support of the workers.
Following the meeting, Hill said some people were satisfied to wait for an answer from Washington and others didn't like what they were told. "The last statement made to my knowledge," Hill said, "is we'd be kept on selective strike [benefits] for a year."
However, Marty Hudson, an executive assistant to UMW Vice President Cecil Roberts, said the Pittston strikers were told when the contract was ratified that those who were laid off would continue to receive benefits for 90 days and then the union would review the situation.
In most strikes of the past, Hudson said, benefits were stopped as soon as the contract was ratified. Because Pittston was an unusual strike and the union realized the company would be slow in getting some miners back to work, the union decided to continue the benefits.
"The selective strike fund was not set up at the convention to subsidize unemployment," Hudson said. "I am sorry that it wasn't."
Hudson said Roberts told members of the Virginia delegation that he would be getting back to them in the future. The union leaders had not made a decision on whether to reconsider stopping the benefits, he said.
"The officers have never made a decision based on being pressured into it," Hudson said. "They make decisions based on what's best for the union and what's best for the people."
The union has been using the laid-off workers to help perform community service work that had been ordered by a Federal District Court judge for union injunction violations during the strike and that was one of the reasons the union has continued paying the selective strike benefits. That community service work has been completed, Hudson said.
by CNB