US miners force back coal bosses

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Iranian hunger strikers protest against conditions Reports on President Carter's attempt to force US coal miners back to work through use of the strikebreaking Taft-Hartley laws indicate that only about 100 of the 160,000 who have been on strike for over 100 days have heeded court injunctions and returned to the pits.

This disastrous failure to coerce the United Mine Workers union back to work has undoubtedly played a major role in forcing further concessions from the coal bosses-some of the most hard bitten wealthy and reactionary employers in the USA.

The new proposed contract submitted last week by the bosses abandons earlier attempts to incorporate disciplinary measures against unofficial strikes.

Narrowly endorsed

It also reduces the amount payable by miners for health care from a proposed $700 maximum to a proposed $200 maximum.

The wage increase remains 31% over three years and some concessions are made on levelling up pension payments for retired miners.

The new proposals were narrowly endorsed by the UMW's Bargaining Council by 22 votes to 17.

These bureaucrats were no doubt anxiously looking , over their shoulders at their militant members who in a ballot earlier this month voted 2-1 to throw out an earlier proposed contract that the Bargaining Council had endorsed.

Gives up rights

And yet once again, by attempting at all costs to defuse the longest-running coal strike in US history UMW bureaucrats have put their names to a contract that gives up substantial rights to the employers.

Under the proposed deal, miners would lose control of the health and welfare funds that have guaranteed them a unique free health service since 1947. They would begin to pay for a ALLAH HAS OOJINGUSHD THIE WHO STRIVE AND FIGHT BYA SPECAL REWARD ABIVE HOSE WHO SIT AND REST HEIS NOT THE INST MINIT BA THE 115 HE RELERSE OF RELI of political prisoners privately-run service.

And the employers wi given the go ahead to in divisive 'incentive' scheme: basis of majority support area.

These provisions must rejected and all unions called to join the miners in a gene strike to defeat any moves enforce the Taft-Hartley col injunctions.

But whichever way the rest goes, one thing is certain: t millions of organised workers the USA who have witnessed a assisted the UMW inflicting a st stantial defeat on the coal bos and on the Carter government u learn substantial lessons for th next struggles on pay and jobs.

The task for Trotskyists in t United States is to draw t political lessons from this strug! -pointing to the necessity for t building of a mass working cli political party to repeat all ar union laws and fight for a social programme of nationalisation major industry.

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EADERS AYATOL MALEGANI MAINT MONTAZEN PHOTO: Mark Rusher, IFL