UMWA, Yes!

WHY should you support the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) in its strike against the Pittston Corporation by attending the the rally today at noon in front of the Harvard Corporation? After all, it's no longer rational to automatically side with organized labor against management. Excessive wage demands, counter-productive work rules, featherbedded benefits and union corruption are not just figments of the right-wing imagination. But the Pittston strike is different.

Although there have been reports of violence on both sides of the UMWA-Pittston dispute, the moral highground clearly belongs to the union. Rarely since the Bad Old Days when companies broke up strikes with armed thugs has there been a case where the two sides of a labor dispute were so clearly good and evil.

ON one side is the UMWA, the union that represents the practitioners of the single most dangerous occupation in the country. In its early days, the UMWA led miners against the unrestrained vigor of the fiercest union-busting efforts that American industry has ever attempted. Before the days of a powerful UMWA, miners suffered working conditions and company oppression that make Frank Lorenzo's Eastern seem a socialist utopia.

Against long odds, the UMWA prevailed. And despite some setbacks, it has remained true to its purpose of protecting workers. When the union's leadership became infected with corruption in the 1960s, the rank-and-file membership ousted the corrupt administration of Tony Boyle in a democratic election.

On the other side is the Pittston Coal Company, a near parody of the worst excesses of corporate irresponsibility. Why should you support the miners against Pittston? It's not just that Pittston is an unabashed union buster. It's not just that it has a record of safety and environmental violations that is exceptional even by the standards of the coal industry. It's not just that Pittston was criminally negligent in the 1972 flash flood that destroyed sixteen West Virginia towns along Buffalo Creek, along with 125 of their residents. It's not just that Pittston got off the hook for the Buffalo Creek catastrophe with a miniscule $13.5 million settlement by allegedly using its influence with the corrupt administration of former West Virginia Gov. Arch A. Moore, Jr. It's not just that Pittston has been cited for 45 violations of labor relations laws in the last seven months.

THE UMWA deserves your support because they are right. Dead right. This strike isn't about demands for outlandish salaries or featherbedded work rules. The miners on the pickets of Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky are struggling over the basic dignities that American workers can reasonably expect--the right to bargain collectively in good faith, the right to a contract and the right to health benefits for retirees, disabled workers and surviving spouses.

After the last contract expired in January, 1988, Pittston stopped paying such medical benefits. For 17 months, the UMWA postponed a strike and continued to work without a contract, while Pittston ceased paying into its benefit plan. This January, governors of three states intervened in the dispute, asking Pittston and the union to negotiate face to face. The miners agreed; Pittston refused.

SITTING on the sidelines of the conflict is Robert G. Stone '45, a member of the Harvard Corporation, the University's governing body, who has been a director of Pittston since 1984. Pittston was no corporate saint when Stone came on board, and it hasn't improved much since. Whether Stone is unwilling or unable to influence his fellow directors, we don't know. Regardless, Stone's day of reckoning has arrived.

As we see it, Stone has three alternatives. First, he should persuade the other Pittston directors to return to the table and negotiate a new contract with the UMWA in good faith. If he is unable to do so, he should resign from the board in protest. His continued presence there would only demonstrate complicity with Pittston's union busting. If Stone is unwilling to resign from Pittston, he does not belong on the Harvard Corporation and should resign.

In any case, Harvard, the 19th-largest stockholder in the Pittston Corporation, should divest itself of the 311,800 shares it holds.

Because of Stone's membership on the Pittston board and of Harvard's ownership of Pittston stock, Harvard is a silent accomplice to Pittston's efforts to break the United Mine Workers. As members of the University, it is our responsibility to express our disapproval with Harvard's complicity. We urge everyone to join the rally today.