Pittston Coal Strike a Changes in Working Conditions

Brisbin's detailed study of the claim cites leasebreakers' "blue paramilitary uniforms similar to airborne troopers' jumpsuits" (Brisbin 2002:151). Local mess saw them as "pure thugs" and "skinheads" (Brisbin 2002:151).

Despite delaying its strike for 14 months, the junction organized commonplaceity-seeking actions of civil disobedience, including mass picketing and sit-downs meant to check transport of coal to market. Pittston obtained court injunctions, enforced by western Virginia troopers, against these and other pith activities, and hundreds of miners and supporters were jailed and fined. Local courts ruled that union actions restraining Pittston's business operation were illegal; when such(prenominal) actions continued, union personnel were fined for contempt of court (Brisbin 2002:244-246). Meanwhile, the union filed unfair- crunch-practices complaints, telling the U.S. National application Relations Board (NLRB) that Pittston's unilateral alteration of employment name had precipitated the strike. After the strike was settled in 1990--mediated in decompose by U.S. Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole (Brisbin 2002:241)--the fines and injunctions were withdrawn. The NLRB's investigation sided with the union on the issue of Pittston's unfair labor practices ("NLRB" 1989).

No racial or gender-based groups were excluded from

"NLRB complaint seen bluster to Pittston." 1989. Coal Outlook, July 17, pp. 4-6.

Despite evidence that the union proved its fibre to regulatory authorities and shaped public opinion such that Pittston had to bargain in good faith, the overarching narrative of union fix since 1990 has been a decline in union power and options, a dynamic that has been traced to Ronald Reagan's decertification of the air-traffic controllers' union in 1981 (Yates 1990; Birecree 1996). Birecree analyzes the effectiveness of the ladies' auxiliary in the dispute as an exception to the further-reaching dynamic.

participation in the labor dispute by the UMW. It was, indeed, Pittston's abandonment of the BCOA that initiated the dispute. More interesting was the instrumentation of families of Pittston's union miners in leveraging the union's bargaining power, via mobilization of public opinion, sit-ins, and boycotts of local businesses hostile to union behavior (Birecree 1996).

Birecree, Adrienne M. 1996. "The Importance and Implications of Women's exponentiation in the 1989-90 Pittston Coal Strike." Journal of Economic Issues 30:187.

Yates, Michael D. 1990. "From the coal wars to the Pittston strike." Monthly Review, June, Pp. 25-39.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Enge
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