Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 13, 1993 TAG: 9307130220
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
About 1,000 union miners at three mines of Consol Energy Inc. in Buchanan County joined the strike at midnight as it grew for the seventh time since it started on May 10.
The Virginia mines affected by the strike, which produce roughly 5 million tons of coal annually, were formerly owned by Island Creek Coal Co. of Lexington, Ky. Consol completed on July 1 its purchase of Island Creek, one of Virginia's largest coal producers.
Monday's action marks the first time the strike has touched Virginia. The union has now struck the mines of six companies in seven states: Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
Ten mines and one coal preparation plant have been added to the strike. The expansion affects 2,044 miners and brings to about 16,000 the total number of union miners on strike.
Lt. J.B. Willis of the Virginia State Police in Wytheville said troopers will be monitoring the strike, which has resulted in reports of picket-line violence in other states. "We're not going to move people in until we see there is a need," he said.
In past strikes, the state police have committed hundreds of troopers to the coal counties to keep peace. "We try to respond to the situation as we know it," Willis said.
Currently no contract talks are under way between the UMW and the operators association.
Jim Grossfeld, a union spokesman, said it's the UMW's position that there have never been active negotiations and that the union does not recognize the association as the bargaining agent for the unionized companies.
The union has been trying to get the parent corporations of the coal companies to the bargaining table and wants coal operators to provide economic information the union requested before the strike on such issues as health-care costs and the ownership of coal lands. The information on coal ownership is essential to the union's job security concerns, Grossfeld said.
The BCOA responds that the union has asked for information to which it is not entitled by law and that the union, itself, has not answered requests from the association for information about other contracts it has negotiated with coal companies.
In announcing the strike's expansion, UMW President Richard Trumka said the central issue of the strike for the union is still "jobs for the future."
BCOA companies have used profits earned from the labor of union miners to open non-union mines, Trumka has charged. He said the practice deprives union miners of job opportunities as their mines play out.
Trumka has accused the association's companies of failing to live up to a clause in the 1988 contract that promises jobs to union miners.
But an association spokesman has said that clause was never intended to apply to subsidiaries and other companies that did not sign the 1988 contract. The association has said it has offered, with some restrictions, to provide jobs to union miners at its member companies' non-union mines.
"What we're not going to do is give them every single job and we're not going to write a contract that aids the union in organizing," BCOA spokesman Tom Hoffman said.
The union is pursuing a media strategy by expanding the strike in stages, Hoffman said. The two sides are not talking because the UMW walked away from the bargaining table, he said.
B.R. "Bobby" Brown, Consol's chief executive and the chief association negotiator, has said any new contract between the association and the UMW depends on the union agreeing to changes in the contract that will make the association companies more competitive. Association mines are now 10 percent to 40 percent less productive than non-union mines, he has said.
Agreements the union has negotiated with companies that are no longer members of the industry association and with a new industry group, the Independent Bituminous Coal Bargaining Association, prove that the union can reach agreements that are good for coal miners, coal companies and coal communities, Trumka said.
In June, the UMW reached agreements with four coal companies - including American Electric Power - that had dropped out of the industry association to negotiate separately with the union.
by CNB