Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 6, 1993 TAG: 9403170009
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD L. TRUMKA
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Our nation is at a crossroads. We can continue the same adversarial labor-management relations that have created a workplace where the boss and workers are enemies, where increased productivity adds up to lost jobs.
Or we can follow the example of the successful economies of our industrial rivals and the handful of American companies that recognize workers as assets, as partners in workplace problem-solving and as a keystone in the building of a productive, efficient and competitive industry.
Unless there is a sea change in the relationship between business and workers, America will not be able to compete successfully. The coal industry is a prime example.
Since the early '80s, coal miners have increased productivity 200 percent and cut costs by close to 50 percent. With productivity up, efficiency up, even exports up, the coal miner should be an American success story.
But instead of reaping the rewards of their increased productivity, coal miners are being laid off. Instead of being given the opportunity to use their experience and expertise to help mine the millions of tons of coal left underground, these workers are standing in unemployment lines.
American coal miners literally have dug themselves out of a job. Increased productivity has become their enemy. The faster and better they do their jobs - the faster a mine's coal reserves are exhausted - the faster they are out of work. This is not the message American industry wants to or can afford to send to American workers. But that is exactly the message being sent by some of America's coal operators.
There are jobs to be had mining coal. Jobs have been created in new mines the companies opened with profits generated by the sweat and hard work of union members. But more often, these new mines are operated by subsidiaries created by the coal operators for the sole purpose of escaping their obligation to offer job opportunities to union workers. This legal shell game of hiding true mine-ownership fuels the culture of suspicion and mistrust that characterizes the coalfields.
The coal companies' refusal to provide union coal miners with a fair share of the jobs they helped create is the reason why, since May 10, United Mine Workers of America members in seven states have gone on strike against Peabody Coal Holding Co. and Consol Energy Inc. and other member companies of the Bituminous Coal Operators Association.
Tragically, the coal operators, like much of American business, still adhere to theories of workplace organization designed for a nation and a world that haven't existed for two generations.
In the coal industry, as in so many other American industries, management continues to believe that workers should be hired from the neck down, not from the neck up. They share an almost religious conviction that an empowered, unionized work force impedes competitiveness and can never enhance it, a belief that flies in the face of overwhelming evidence. They have refused to recognize that competitiveness is determined by productivity and that workers who have job security, who know that their added efficiency won't ultimately cost them their jobs, are the most productive employees.
There are some enlightened American coal operators who understand that the future of our industry depends on a new compact between labor and management. The UMWA recently reached a pioneering agreement with the Independent Bituminous Coal Bargaining Alliance that not only provides for job security, but also protects health-care benefits for workers while guaranteeing cost savings for management. Most importantly, this new agreement forges a different kind of coal-industry labor-management relationship based on trust and cooperation - a workplace of the future here and now.
This agreement didn't result from an impulse to test new academic theories of labor-management relations. This bargain was struck because it was good business.
Two years ago, U.S. Steel Mining's Maple Creek mine in southwest Pennsylvania was an unsafe money-loser slated to be closed. Faced with few alternatives, labor and management decided to put aside their differences and work together to save the mine. It meant rising above old expectations, overcoming generations of mistrust. For the company, it meant opening the books and sharing previously confidential numbers and projections. For the miners, it meant assuming more responsibility for the success of the business; it meant making suggestions and then having to act on them.
As a result of these changes, 10 years have been added to Maple Creek's estimated life, safety has improved dramatically and 128 laid-off coal miners are back on the job. Maple Creek has gone from being a $10 million-a-year loser in 1991 to a $7.2 million profit-maker in just one year.
What American business must come to understand is that profitable, cooperative new relationships - like the one between the UMWA and U.S. Steel Mining at Maple Creek - can't be achieved in spite of, but only because of, strong unions. The workplaces that function best, that can change with the changing economy, are those where workers have a strong voice, where employee and employer both operate from positions of strength, where fear and intimidation have been eliminated. Collective bargaining is the means for achieving this new relationship between employers and employees that our country so clearly needs.
Back in the '30s, it was a different world and we had a different economy. With the passage of the National Labor Relations Act, collective bargaining became the engine of prosperity for millions of working Americans. It lifted millions into the middle class.
Sixty years later, we face new challenges. And it's not just business that must change. Unions must change too. Both must leave behind the adversarial, "us vs. them" mentality of the past and work actively to change the culture of the workplace.
Will America be able to compete economically in the global marketplace? Yes - if we create a new American workplace built on trust and fairness, a workplace where we join together, where we plan together, where we profit together, where increased productivity benefits both business and worker, where we share accountability and authority.
Richard L. Trumka is president of the United Mine Workers of America.
by CNB