(2 of 2)
Executives of the large coal companies deny that they mishandled the negotiations, or were trying to damage the union. Said Harry Washburn, senior vice president of Cleveland-based North American Coal Corp.: "The operators do not want to tear the union apart. They want a strong union, one that can deliver a work force every morning." Many executives of the big companies are upset about the latest contract proposal and blame Jimmy Carter for it. Said a steel company official: "There's no doubt we were the losers, dragged into defeat by Government intervention."
Because of the divisions within the B.C.O.A., some operators predict that the industry will eventually adopt a two-tier approach to bargaining: one for issues on which all members agree, the other for issues on which they are split. For instance, the operators are equally concerned with increasing productivity. Said Madison, W. Va., Mine-owner Herbert Kinder: "Give the operators a stable work force, and the miners could have anything they want." But the owners are divided over the proposed contract's requirement that miners pay up to $200 in deductibles for medical care. Said a small Pennsylvania operator: "The deductibles are tiny, but the miners have had free health care for years, and this is a step back to them, no matter how small.
Hell, for my small work force, I'd be willing to pay those deductibles out of my own pocket. It's the big guys like Bethlehem, U.S. Steel and Consolidation who can't afford them because their labor force is so big.
They are the ones that made an issue of the deductibles."
Whatever their disagreements, the Eastern operators face a common threat: that the strike will promote the highly productive, non-U.M.W. strip mines in the West at the expense of the high-cost, mostly U.M.W. mines of the East.