Pittston Coal Strike of 1989-1990

The purpose of this research is to examine the Pittston coal strike of 1989-1990, with a view toward showing how the groups organized to demand changes in working conditions. The origin of the strike was the Pittston Coal Company's 1988 withdrawal from the industrywide contract between the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) and the Bituminous Coal Operators Association (BCOA) and demands for significant union concessions at its Virginia and West Virginia mines. Union employees continued to work without a contract for about a year, over the course of which Pittston instituted major work-rule and policy changes--defunding health-care insurance for about 1,400 retired miners and widows and abandoning payments into BCOA's multiple-employer health trust, in addition to significantly restructuring wages and work rules, specifically refusing to acknowledge worker grievances, and restricting workers' union activities. The union's proposal of a no-strike clause for Pittston's promise to engage in labor-dispute arbitration yielded Pittston's "last final offer" of expanded company control of wages and working conditions, plus an essentially open-shop employment structure (Yates 1990:25).

In April 1989 the union called a strike, and Pittston's next swift action suggested that it was well prepared. Pittston started flying in "special strikebreakers . . . many of whom were armed mercenaries, the kind of people who answer ads in Soldier of Fortune magazine" (Yates 1990:26). Some scab lab

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