Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 16, 1993 TAG: 9302160177
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B4 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
COAL SHIPPED DESPITE STRIKE
Peabody Holding Co. shipped stockpiled coal from an idled Indiana mine Monday as United Mine Workers President Richard Trumka looked to other labor leaders for support in a 2-week-old strike."We believe that we have to continue to supply coal to protect our present and future market share," Peabody Coal Co. spokesman Joe Klingl said in Henderson, Ky.
"A direct result of that is to protect the jobs of United Mine Workers employees," he said.
The UMW was in the 14th day of a strike against subsidiaries of Peabody Holding Co., including Peabody Coal Co. of Henderson, Ky., and Eastern Associated Coal Corp. of Charleston, W.Va.
The strike has idled up to 7,500 miners in four states: West Virginia, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky.
Peabody's Hawthorn processing plant in Indiana shipped a 100-car train load of coal on Sunday, and the company followed that with a shipment from its Squaw Creek mine on Monday.
At Hawthorn, UMW pickets watched while management workers moved the train across their picket line and off company property, stopping a few feet away for unionized railroad workers to take over.
"It was a difficult situation, emotionally," said J.D. Smith, president of UMW Local 1410 at Hawthorn.
"They're trying to force us into something that could be a confrontation."
However, Klingl said the company shipped the coal, which was stockpiled before the strike began Feb. 2, because of increasing pressure from its customers.
"They expressed an immediate and serious concern about not having adequate fuel supplies, and they intend to buy coal from other sources if we can't provide it," Klingl said.
Trumka was in Bal Harbour, Fla., on Monday for the winter meeting of the AFL-CIO executive council.
He said he would brief AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland and other labor leaders on the prospects of an expanded strike.
He also said he won a pledge of support from the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers union, among others.
"Every working family has a stake in the battle being fought today by our brothers and sisters of the UMWA," said Jack Sheinkman, president of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers union.
The UMW has said that the major issue in its strike is over the practice known as "double breasting," in which unionized companies establish non-union subsidiaries.
The companies have accused the union of trying to circumvent the usual method for organizing a workplace.
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.