The Nation - News from July 14, 1989

Hundreds of striking union miners were arrested for blocking a road to a non-union mine in West Virginia, and rock-throwing pickets in Kentucky injured the president of a coal company. Coal officials criticized Gov. Gaston Caperton and state police, charging they had let strikers in West Virginia get out of hand. “There is a total state of chaos,” said A.T. Massey Coal Co. spokeswoman Deborah Herndon. In Prenter, W. Va., state police arrested 277 of the 500 strikers who blocked the road leading to the non-union Elk Run Coal Co. Elk Run is a subsidiary of A.T. Massey. Rocks were thrown at another A.T. Massey subsidiary, Sidney Coal Co. in Sidney, Ky., and company president Charles Snavely was hit in the face with a rock. The strike began April 5 when 1,900 United Mine Workers members walked out in a contract dispute with Pittston Coal Group.