UMW Chief Calls Halt to Sympathy Strikes Until Union’s Board Meets

United Mine Workers President Richard Trumka on Friday asked striking miners to end their unauthorized walkouts and workers in at least three states planned to return to the coal mines.

Trumka also declared an end to the union’s weeklong authorized work stoppage that idled 60,000 union miners east of the Mississippi River.

“I am personally asking our members to suspend their protest actions,” Trumka said in a news release.

At least 37,000 miners in eight states in Appalachia and the Midwest were on unauthorized wildcat strikes before this week. The wildcat walkouts began June 12 in support of 1,900 union members on strike against the Pittston Coal Group Inc. in a contract dispute.

In southern Indiana, a wildcat strike by 1,750 UMW members was suspended Friday. Alabama’s 5,000 union miners plan to return to work Sunday night, a union official there said. And Illinois union representatives said striking miners were planning to return to work.

Trumka asked the wildcat strikers to return to work until July 26, when the union’s international executive board meets.

He said miners would continue observing cooling-off periods or contract-sanctioned work stoppages in UMW District 31 in north-central West Virginia from Monday through Thursday and in UMW District 6 in Ohio and West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle from next Wednesday through Friday.

The announcement came during another day of unrest in the coal fields. Two mine employees were wounded by gunfire in Mingo County, W.Va., and a car bomb exploded at Pittston Coal Group Inc.’s headquarters in Lebanon, Va.

A federal judge Friday also called on the UMW and The Pittston Co., parent of Pittston Coal, to meet with him to find out what has stalled contract negotiations between the two sides.