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- <text id=90TT0133>
- <title>
- Jan. 15, 1990: Business Notes:Labor
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Jan. 15, 1990 Antarctica
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- BUSINESS, Page 49
- Business Notes
- LABOR
- Fresh Air in The Mine Shaft
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> The nine-month strike produced an estimated 3,000 broken
- windshields, dozens of scuffles and nearly $65 million in
- court-ordered fines against the United Mine Workers union. But
- last week both sides in the dispute were smiling. After two
- months of federally mediated talks, the U.M.W. and the
- Connecticut-based Pittston Co. reached a tentative agreement
- to end the rancorous walkout that had crippled the company's
- coalfields in Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia. Some 1,700
- miners and 4,000 laid-off and ill union members will vote on
- the contract as early as next week.
- </p>
- <p> Details of the agreement were kept secret, but it is
- believed to contain a promise of continued health benefits for
- Pittston's 130,000 retired workers and a profit-sharing program
- for current employees. Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole helped
- satisfy the coal company's health-coverage concerns by
- appointing a commission to examine the mining industry's
- difficulty in paying what it says is the increasingly high cost
- of insurance premiums.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-