case but since then inflation has shot up past 12 per cent and the price of food has gone up by 20 per cent. This year miners have suffered a cut of five per cent in their living standards.
Up to six months ago a miner was allowed to buy coal for $ 10 a too - the cost price. Now he las to pay 521. Coal prices have gone up Sl per cent and profits are up by 181 percent.
SAFETY Safety is of tremendous concern to the miners. In the 39 days whilst negotiations were taking place between the coal owners and the United Mineworkers" Union, 39 miners were Walled.
Since 1900 100,000 miners have died PROFITABLE as a result of accidents or diseases like the notorious "black lung'. At present miners get so disablement pension anless they have an accident when they are over 51 years old and have been working in the mines for 16 The UMW has called on the Dep artment of Interior's Mining Enforcement and Safety Administration to come down on unsafe conditions but MESA has failed to deliver the goods.
Although MESA has the power so fine coal owners who fail to meet safety requirements it just never gets ered death and destruction along Buffale Creek, West Virginia in 1972: Obviously they think MESA should ask God for the fines.
Consolidation Coal, owned by Continental Oil - after tax profit for first six months of 1974 S209,601,000 - has paid 5800,000 out of 52.9 million Rockeleller and his family now own 300,000 shares in Consolidation. In 1968, 78 of their miners were buried alive in a fall. This public-spirited servant offered no help or compensation to the miners' families.
Island Creek Coal, owned by Senator Gore of Tennessee, forked out only $ 249,000 of the $2.3 million assessed by MESA.
For some, black lung and accidents are profitable, Coal-country lawyers are scooping in fortunes in black-lung fees from the state compensation programme, which is kindly underwritten by the Treasucy and which ultimately cuts into the claiming miners' compensation. In 1972 and 1973, lawyer Kelsey Friend Sr. of Pikeville, Kentucky, collected a cool S2.2million in fees.
For years the UMW was ruled by a gangster-like burcaucracy which plundered the funds, physically smashed up its opponents and even sold out the UMW hospitals in the for himself and his henchmen. In hallot, kept Yablonski out. Three his wite and daughter murdered.
he had been a Boyle man assassination triggered off a revolt in the ranks. Miners for Democracy:
Bed Boyle men, AWAKENED from a long torpor of apathy and demoralisation. They saw the electMiller as the go-ahead to start a serious light for better wages and improved safety.
swelling living costs and the increases in world oil prices have given that mood a further shot in the arm.
13 bloody months, one of the most coal mining history came to an end. The 400 miners of Harlan County, Kentucky won the right to union pay scales and conditions. The Dule company in the world which owns three mines in Harlan was brought to heel. The miner now feel that they have the strength to take on the coal bosses.
no compulsory overtime, more effective safety committees with one full-time safety officer on cach shift to be elected by the miners and paid for by the coal companies.
sectors of the American economynegotiating cable to offer the UMW bureaucrats a few more concessions in return for a new contract. Instead the bureaucrats have agreed to a compromise wilich will be put to a 1969 the Boyle regime was challenged by Joseph Yablonski but in the 1972 elections Boyle, by fiddling the weeks later Boyle had Yablonski and Yablonski's revelations - for years an opposition group inside the union won a new ballot against the discredThe rank and file were awakened ion of the new regime led by Arnold The cconomic crisis leading to In the summer of this year, after bitter and violent strikes in American Power Company, sixth largest utility try.
The miners are demanding a sixhour day, 30 paid sick days per year, The coal owners" fear of a long strike-which would rapidly hit other has already been shown in the speed with which they have returned to the 11 September.
of taking advuntage of this weakness to preas their full demands, however, In the Wake of the big xictory of warker" novement; the aconamic over the right and the tasks of the