Striking Miners Vow to Wait Out Deal
By Lutey, Tom
HARDIN – Citing years of below-average pay and a hostile work environment, the mostly Crow Indian work force of the Absaloka Coal Mine vowed Monday to strike around the clock until conditions change.
The mine, 30 miles east of Hardin, has been without its 125- member crew since miners walked off at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.
Railroad workers honoring the strike also left a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train half-loaded with coal at the 15,000-acre, single-pit mine, which is owned by Westmoreland Resources Inc. of Colorado Springs, Colo.
Monday, more than 60 miners raffled at the Westmoreland entrances. They brought drinks, a gas barbecue grill and floodlights for the night shift. Classic rock ‘n’ roll mixed with the occasional shout out to loyal pickets, blared over a public-address system.
“We’re looking for better treatment, better respect and better pensions,” said Conrad Stewart, lead loader hand for crew A at the coal mine. “We want to work with Westmoreland. All we’re trying to do is work and make better lives for our families.”
Miners had been working without a contract since March. Months of negotiations preceded the contract’s expiration.
Friday night, Westmoreland proposed a new package of wages and benefits, which it deemed fain The miners rejected the offer. Westmoreland Coal Co. issued a statement Monday from D.L. Lobb, the company’s chief executive offer and president.
“We continue to be committed to offer fair and reasonable wages and benefits to our Westmoreland Resources Inc. employees and remain optimistic this labor stoppage will be short in duration,” Lobb said.
“We are committed to our customers during this time and will continue to strive to meet their needs.”
The company declined to comment further.
Wages were a key issue in the strike but not the only factor, said Tracee Raymond, a negotiator for the Operating Engineers Local 400 Montana.
Miners complained of being “bird-dogged” by Westmoreland supervisors if laborers stopped for a breather.
In the mine’s 34 years, worker-company relations had never produced a strike, but the relations became strained last year after Westmoreland assumed daily management of the mine, which had previously been operated by a third party – first Morrison Knutson and later Washington Corp.
The Absaloka Mine set a record for its coal extraction last year, shipping 7.4 million tons in rail cars.
The Absaloka is a classic Western strip mine, relying on a mammoth 2570 Bucyrus dragline shovel capable of scooping more than 450,000 pounds of coal at once. As production picked up, workers say the company started making demands on miners that it hadn’t before.
In May, Westmoreland’s previous CEO, Keith Alessi, told the Colorado Springs Gazette that the company’s best opportunity for mine expansion would be tripling the size of the Absaloka Mine.
Overtime hours, once voluntary became mandatory, as did working holidays, said miner Norman Morrison.
He and four other miners stood at a public railroad crossing Monday, waiting to see if BNSF would send nonunion engineers across the picket line to retrieve its coal-loaded train. The men said there was so much overtime being worked at Absaloka Mine that they could be assured a two-day weekend only if they spent some of their vacation hours.
The men said they didn’t like Westmoreland’s Friday offer, which didn’t seem to solve their overtime concerns. They also balked at the contract’s length, five years, which miners said locked in their compensation for too long, considering the unpredictable nature of the economy. Initially, miners requested a one-year contract before offering to sign a three-year agreement as a compromise.
They also disapproved of the way the company was calculating mine wages. Absaloka miners expected to receive wages comparable to those at other mines in the region. Miners at the nearby Rosebud mine out- earn Absaloka miners by more than $7,000 a year in hourly pay, Raymond said. The neighboring mine is also owned by Westmoreland.
However, the company used the wages of the Big Horn County road department to determine its comparable offer. Wages on the mine’s dragline crew now, at top scale, are $22.25, compared with $25.52 at the neighboring mine, which relies on members from the same union. On the picket line, miners make $35 a day.
Raymond said the union would like to see Absaloka miners and Rosebud miners on the same contract.
Copyright Billings Gazette Jun 10, 2008
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