Nation: Entering the Doomsday Area

Shutdowns and blackouts loom as the coal strike rumbles on

‘It’s fairly clear that we’re already I to some extent in the doomsday area.” So said Phillip Hughes, an Assistant Secretary in the Department of Energy and head of the federal-state task force dealing with the nation’s spreading coal shortage. Hughes was exaggerating, but there was no doubt that the coal strike, now in its third month, had become a major threat to the U.S. economy.

Emphasizing the urgency of the situation, President Carter brought both sides to the White House last week and pressed for a quick settlement—a rare and potentially risky presidential intervention. At week’s end, bargaining talks were jolted by union rejection of the owners’ proffered terms, and Labor Secretary Ray Marshall disclosed that a government takeover of the mines was among the worst-case scenarios being studied by the Administration. Meanwhile, Governors from the twelve Eastern-Central states most deeply hurt by the walkout arrived in Washington to coordinate their plans with the President and his energy advisers.

Big trouble lies just around the corner. When the 165,000 strikers went out on Dec. 6, most commercial customers had three-month stockpiles of coal, which they thought would be ample. Now the utilities and the industries that are dependent on coal are running low in Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee and Pennsylvania. Other states that face imminent shortages are Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Michigan. These states require at least 60,000 megawatts of power constantly, and to get it, they burn 3 million tons of coal each week. Even if the strike were to end immediately, it would take 30 days to ratify the agreement and then restore the mines to working order. Yet the strike, complicated by a fractious union that has repudiated its own leadership, shows no sign of ending. “The power is just draining away,” says an aide to Energy Secretary James Schlesinger.

Ohio, the state most dependent on coal and the hardest hit, is facing a mandatory power cutback of up to 50% for all businesses. That could lead to plant shutdowns and large layoffs. Especially threatened are Chrysler and General Motors, which depend on Ohio plants.

Indiana Governor Otis Bowen became the first to declare a state of emergency. He assigned the National Guard to escort trucks carrying coal. The Indiana public service commission proposed a contingency plan for reducing power when utility coal supplies get down to an emergency level.

Until there is a settlement, not much can be done to relieve the hardship. There is no easy way of distributing power from the states that have it in sufficient quantity to those that do not. The U.S. lacks a heavy-volume interconnection of grids to link utilities across the nation. Coal can be shipped by rail or truck, but not in adequate amounts.

As has been the case with previous energy shortages, states with abundant resources are not eager to share. Why should they jeopardize businesses and jobs, they reason, to bail out less efficient or more profligate neighbors? Nor can the U.S. Government coerce cooperation among the states; it can only cajole. “We’re not czaring this one,” says a Schlesinger aide. “The states have the authority.”

The Federal Government is acting as a clearinghouse for information, however. An energy emergency center in Washington handles calls for assistance on a 24-hour basis. Federal officials in Indiana got a frantic call from the power plant in Logansport, Ind., saying that it would run out of coal in two days. The U.S. Army was enlisted to bring more than 300 tons of coal to the town from nearby Fort Benjamin Harrison.

Just two weeks ago, the strike seemed near settlement. The Bituminous Coal Operators Association and the United Mine Workers team led by President Arnold Miller* had reached an agreement that called for a three-year wage increase, from $8.11 an hour to $10.46. Bat rank-and-file miners were outraged by what they took to be Miller’s capitulation on the matter of wildcat strikes, an intensely emotional issue. The pact would have allowed mineowners to penalize workers who joined a wildcat strike by requiring them to contribute $20 a day to the U.M.W. health fund for up to ten days a month; after ten days of refusing to work, the miners’ benefits would be suspended. (If an arbitrator subsequently decided that the employer was at fault in the dispute, the miners would have to be reimbursed.)

The owners insisted on this provision because wildcat strikes cost the mines 2.5 million man-days of work last year, ten times the average for all industries. Almost as obnoxious to the miners was another contract provision, compelling them to contribute up to $650 a year for family medical expenses; until last year, when the production-based health fund began to run in the red, the companies had paid the full cost.

Once the miners learned the details of the settlement, they wasted no time getting to Washington to protest and indeed intimidate the U.M.W. leadership. The union’s bargaining council voted down the pact, 30 to 6. When miners crowded menacingly into union headquarters, Miller, who carries a revolver, stayed away from the building for fear of his life.

At his Monday morning Cabinet meeting last week, Carter declared that the nation’s No. 1 priority was to get the two sides back to the bargaining table, and the next day he threatened to resort to unnamed “stronger measures” if the talks did not quickly resume. The implication was that he might invoke the Taft-Hartley Act, which theoretically compels the strikers to return to work, but which the U.M.W. defied in three crises during the Truman Administration.

The President invited the contending parties to negotiate at the White House, but, much to his surprise, the operators brusquely turned him down. They were afraid that if they came back to negotiations, the union would reopen all the issues that had been so laboriously resolved over four months of talks. Edward Leisenring Jr., chairman of Westmoreland Coal Co. and chairman of the B.C.O.A., sent Ray Marshall a letter blistering the White House for giving in to “lawlessness.” Wrote Leisenring: “The country should not be held hostage to any group which seizes the energy jugular.”

For a few embarrassed hours, the President was stymied. But the White House soon began getting calls from worried corporation executives, many of them officers in the parent companies that own the coal mines. They told the White House that the operators’ intransigence might cost them public sympathy. “It had become apparent that we were gaining public and private support,” said a top White House official. “All that remained to do was let the operators know that this is not the way you play the game.”

White House Press Secretary Jody Powell drafted a tough statement denouncing the B.C.O.A. for its lack of cooperation and its disregard of the national interest. Before it was issued, however, Carter asked Marshall to put in another call to Leisenring. Ten minutes later, Marshall returned smiling to the Oval Office. “They’ve agreed to come back in,” he reported.

On Wednesday evening the two sides gathered in the Roosevelt Room of the White House to start talking again. The operators were relieved to learn that Miller had expanded his negotiating committee to nine by adding three of the dissenting members of the U.M.W. bargaining council, which had voted down the pact. Carter put in a brief appearance, urging the negotiators to come to an agreement for the benefit of the country.

An agreement was all the harder to reach because of the internal dissension in the U.M.W. Five years ago, Miller came to power as a popular reformer who had become a miner in West Virginia at the age of 16 and was a victim of black-lung disease. Last year he barely survived a hotly disputed election, and today no flint-hearted operator is more hated in coal towns than Miller. Anti-Miller miners, who denounce him for “weakness” and “selling out,” claim that they have already collected the necessary 15,000 signatures for a recall election, which could be held next week. Many predict that the embattled Miller will be ousted, though they have no idea who might replace him.

Miller insists he can survive. “I’ve been handicapped by the lack of an education,” he says. “But I’ve always had determination, which some people think of as stubbornness. I can face adversity. I can tough it out.” His enemies, however, keep spreading rumors that he is cracking. As evidence, they point to his sometimes vacant stare and his distracted manner, his suspicions of even close associates, his fistfights with union dissidents.

Miller has not distinguished himself in the current negotiations. He has been absent too much, and when on hand he has been unpredictable. He likes to launch into lengthy reminiscences about his life in the mines. “There has been no continuity in the talks,” says an observer. “The negotiations have been stymied by the fact that nothing can be done without Miller’s approval and he won’t give his approval.” Adds another Miller confidant: “He’s a very decent guy, but he’s the wrong man in the wrong place.”

If Miller has proved to be an inept administrator with exaggerated forebodings, he nevertheless has some grounds for anxiety. He heads one of the toughest unions on earth, whose members seldom hesitate to use their fists or a weapon to back up an argument. When Miller became president, he had to contend with U.M.W. officials still loyal to Tony Boyle. In such a situation, physical safety can never be taken completely for granted.

Another impediment to a settlement has been the fact that the longer the strike continues the better it looks for the miners. Until recently they had endured all the hardship, but now they see only too clearly that the operators and the rest of the country are beginning to share in their suffering. So hardly a miner seems disposed to give in. The men and women who perform some of life’s grimmest labor under ground are not likely to be pushovers up above. “Some of us saw the strike coming a long way off,” says Lou Kovach, 50, a miner in Masontown, Pa. “And most of us were ready for a long one. I still bowl and go uptown for a few beers every day, and I’m not hurting.” But some miners have been feeling the pinch and have been relying on food stamps for groceries; others consider food stamps beneath their dignity. “I don’t mind welfare benefits from the union,” says a Masontown miner, though no strikers have received any benefits from the depleted funds. “But welfare from Uncle Sam is out. A lot of us would rather keep our pride and go a little hungry. That’s the way we were brought up, proud people in a dirty job.”

The lengthening of the strike increased the chances of violence. Miners have already stopped some coal headed for utilities from non-union mines. Dozens of coal trucks have been forced at gunpoint to dump their loads. Towboats hauling coal barges up Pennsylvania’s Monongahela River had to abandon operations when they were fired on by miners. “I don’t like to see anyone suffer,” says Jim Elias, 50, a miner in Greene County, Pa. “But we’ve got to get a decent contract somehow. I’m not the kind to fire a shot or throw a rock myself. But we’ve got some hotheads in the membership who might. If anybody tries to move coal to power plants around here, there’s going to be hell to pay. We’ve been letting coal go through for private homes and hospitals all along. But we’ve got to draw the line somewhere.” With the National Guard and state police escorting coal trucks, confrontations became riskier. “I’m afraid we may see a move to violence,” said one U.M.W. official in Washington. “We may see the 1930s again. These miners have fought the Army before.”

As a last resort, the President could invoke the Taft-Hartley Act to send the miners back to work for an 80-day cool-ing-off period. But the miners like to quote a dictum from the era of U.M.W. President John L. Lewis: “You can’t dig coal with bayonets.” Said Pete Bizok, 56, a 37-year veteran of the mines in Greene County: “Taft-Hartley is O.K. for wartime. But it’s not going to get me back down there except at gunpoint. Even then, no gun can make me work faster than I want to, and I can work awful slow when I put my mind to it.” David Forms, who used to head a U.M.W. local in West Virginia, made a more ominous point: “You’ve got $250,000 pieces of equipment in each of these mines, and it wouldn’t take much to tear them up. I’m not making any threat. That’s just the way it is.”

*Miller’s predecessor, Tony Boyle, 70, last week was found guilty for the second time on charges that he ordered the deaths of a rival union leader and his wife and daughter in 1969.