Word: wildcats
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Employees in the 300-member union of Harvard maintenance workers, who have been involved in contract negotiations with the University since December, last night voted to initiate a wildcat strike today...
...determination to bludgeon the union into a contract that had little chance of ratification by the rank and file. In exchange for a 37% pay increase over a three-year period, the owners insisted on making the miners pay for part of their medical benefits and fining them for wildcat strikes. For reasons that are still obscure, U.M.W. President Arnold Miller went along with a settlement that he must have known would be as acceptable as black lung to his membership. When it was overwhelmingly rejected by the bargaining council, which consists of the union's 39 district leaders...
After nine days of intense negotiations, maneuvers and threats, the B.C.O.A. surrendered more or less completely. What the United Mine Workers wanted, they got: a $2.40-an-hour wage increase over three years, company-guaranteed health care, and the right to honor wildcat pickets without retributions. For the mineowners, there was only the minor sop of a presidential commission to examine improved health, safety and productivity. The agreement "will be ratified overwhelmingly," predicted one confident U.M.W. official...
...support from rank and file miners, who barged into U.M.W. headquarters?rejected President Miller's initial agreement with the B.C.O.A. The agreement called for a three-year wage increase, from $8.11 an hour to $10.46. But the pact also allowed mine owners to penalize workers who joined in a wildcat strike by requiring offenders to pay $20 a day to the U.M.W. health fund. The owners were adamant on the wildcat provision because 2.5 million man-days were lost that way in the coal mines last year, ten times the average for all industries. The miners, on the other hand...
When the miners are working, they make about $55 a day. Living is cheap, by urban standards, in Cabin Creek: a three-bedroom house rents for no more than $185 a month. But wildcat strikes are frequent-District 7 walked out for ten weeks last summer over a reduction in health benefits-and miners generally save little of their earnings. "Sometimes you're high on the hog, and sometimes you ain't got nothing," says Jerold Hamrick...