And from rank and file miners...

EDITOR'S NOTE: Eagle reporter James Branscome recently interviewed several Westmoreland Coal Company miners about the issues in the current coal strike.  All of them work in Wise County, Virginia.  Here are some typical comments.  Thursday, November 28, 1974

    Harold Harsock, president of UMW Local No. 1405 at Westmoreland's Wentz Mine, is a veterans of 23 years of coal mining.  He operates a continuous miner that claws the coal from the mine face.  A victim of black lung from mine dust, he worries that his four children will be without a providing father if he becomes disabled.  Hartsock makes $47.25 per shift.  The Wentz Mine employs 512 men.

     We're hurting in several ways in benefits.  The high cost of living has done passed us over in term of income.

    We need a longer vacation so a man can get out in the fresh air.  We need at least six weeks vacation instead of the two weeks that we now et.

    Above all, though, we need ways to enforce safety in the mines.  If a man gets injured, he's had it.  Our retirement and disability payments should be at least $450 a month.  At present the $150 is not very good benefits.

    I had my foot broke in '61.  I broke my back in a slate fall in '63.  I stayed in the hospital for 31 days and off from work 6 or 7 months.  All I got was $37 a week from state workmen's compensation.  I didn't get anything from the UMW or Westmoreland.

    We've also got to equalize miner's pay so there won't be such a gap--anybody who works in the same dangerous job at the face ought to get the same pay.  You see, the way it is now, the higher pay keeps a guy working in the most dangerous job where all the dust is.  That policy was in our last contract, and we ought to change it now.  It benefits the company.  

    I have two sons in the mines.  I've told them many times not to mine.  I even refused to help them find jobs, but they went ahed anyway.  One works at Wentz.  I didn't want them to mine because it's dangerous and I know from experience that it's bad for your health.

    I still worry every day when I go down that I won't come back.  Everybody who works in the imines feels that way.  My wife suggested two years ago--when she found out that I had black lung--she tried to get me to quit and do something else.

    These younger guys in the mines are pretty aggressive, but I don't think they realize what we went through to get the union we've got now.

    Right now we are trying to stop this scab coal that is going by.  I'd say if these scabs keep trying to haul coal while we strike, that times is going to get rough before this strike is over.  It's stripped coal, you know.  I'm against tearing up the environment.   It'd be better if them strippers was union, but I'd rather see all the coal deep-mined by us.  That way we'd be a stronger union.

    I can survive a two or three month strike if it takes that to get what we want.  I raised a garden last summer and I have a deep freeze and potatoes in the basement.  Most of the guys have laid back as much as they could, but this inflation has kept a lot of them from putting back enough.

    Carl Cobb, 39, is a shuttle care operator at Wetmoreland's Bullitt Mine.  A former truck driver and construction worker, he turned to coal mining en years ago so that he could work close to him in East Stone Gap, Va.  He is married and has three children.  His dailly wage is $43.25.

    On the day of he interview Cobb had narrowly missed being shot by a coal company executive who was upset that the Bullitt miners had established a picket line in front of his non-union stripmine.  Two shots from the 9mm pistol missed Cobb by inches.  One shot took out the rear window of the executive's Mercedes-Benz.   Cobb has given the coal companies plenty of trouble in ten years--"not enough to get shot for though," he says.

    My purpose for being on strike at this time is simply to gain a new contract.  We want money.  I guess we're the lowest paid organized labor force now going.  We got the most hazardous job going, but nobody wants to pay us for it.

    Wages I guess are the first thing miners would talk about.  Safety would be the first point, then wages and benefits.  We re far behind any other organization in benefits .  We have less vacation, less holidays, our old retired miners...we need a decent royalty to give them a decent retirement --royalty enough to take care of widows and their families.  We've got next to nothing on widows and dependent's benefits.

    Any fringe benefit would be a gain for us because we have very few.  We got the holidays, eight paid holidays, two weeks vacation and a Christmas bonus if you work every day.  A fringe benefit with a hangman's noose on it is no good.  If you get a fringe benefit, it shouldn't be under no threatening, restraining order, you might say.