Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 27, 1993 TAG: 9306270125
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: HUNTINGTON, W.VA. LENGTH: Medium
"It's like a poker game," B.R. "Bobby" Brown, chief negotiator for the Bituminous Coal Operators Association, said in a press briefing last week.
"The UMW is trying to increase the ante."
Unable to reach agreement with the committee headed by Brown, UMW President Richard Trumka is seeking separate settlements with individual members of the association.
To date, three companies that started negotiations with the association have defected to sign interim agreements with the union.
Brown called that illegal, and the association has filed unfair-labor practice charges.
Trumka disagreed and promised more to come. "We're going to see some of those [interim agreements] in the very near future," he said last week.
The dispute began in 1988, after the UMW and the association reached agreement on the contract that expired last Feb. 1.
The UMW came out of those negotiations believing it had won a promise that three of every five new jobs created by employers would go to laid-off union members. But the euphoria was short-lived.
Within weeks, the two sides were squabbling over the meaning of the contract language and just exactly which "employer" was responsible for the new jobs.
To the coal association, the "employer" was the lowest common denominator: the company that signed the contract. To the union, "employer" meant the signatory companies, their affiliates and parent companies.
The result has been very few new jobs for union members and a long-running legal battle, still unresolved, as the UMW has tried to enforce its position.
This time, the operators have made a new offer. Parent companies would sign off on the job-security provisions, assuring the coverage the union has been fighting for. But the union would get its three out of five jobs only after the company has filled the first 40 percent.
"Sixty percent of 60 percent is 36 percent. That's less than we had in the old contract," Trumka said.
Brown disagreed.
"I would characterize the proposal we made to the union as specific, fair [and] clearly more than the 1988 contract," he said.
What's more, "within the context of the entire contract, [the proposal is] open to further negotiation," Brown said.
UMW Vice President Cecil Roberts, also intimately involved in negotiations, is skeptical.
"It's as though they're saying, `Well, over the past five years you've figured out all the problems with this [contract] language, so now we're only going to give you half of what you thought you had before,' " Roberts said.
About 14,000 union members are on strike against six companies in West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio.
by CNB