Miners discussed out plans to advance the fight and also to build up a solidarity fund that the union has launched. In an interview after the meeting striking miner Chris Skidmore said, "If we go back now we will be going back for nothing. I don't want to do that." He explained miners decided to hold a second ballot to demonstrate the continuing support for the strike should the coal bosses attempt to lock the miners out. Skidmore said he was confident the union would get another vote for strike action.

Skidmore said the NUM in the Yorkshire area had appealed for financial support from miners at other pits. The bosses at the mines had taken down union leaflets encouraging contributions to the Rossington support fund. "This will not stop us from winning support," he said, "because I'm confident about the feeling of others out there." Donations have arrived from branches of the Fire Brigades Union, the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union in Bristol, and the public sector union UNISON. "The messages of support that come with these donations are as important as the money itself for maintaining our morale," Skidmore explained.

The Rossington miners also decided to reject a company request that the union

allow 39 miners to go back to work to help deal with problems involved in securing safe working conditions on some of the coal faces. " We won't do this," Skidmore said. "It's just a ploy to get some of us back to work and divide us. We're not on a crusade here. We want to be able to go back to work, and in safe conditions, but UK Coal can cover this work with the pit deputies who are already working."

The striking miner said the company has withheld sick pay from those who were sick before the strike began, pay from those miners who worked during their holidays, and tax rebates, "so no we are not going to have 39 go back to please them."  
 
Issues in the strike
"Our fight goes back to June last year," John Gibson said. "After a 95 percent vote for action we had an 11-week overtime ban. Our demands were parity of conditions with the rest of UK Coal. We have an eight-hour shift while the rest of UK Coal has seven-and-a-quarter hours for the same money. So their hourly rate is higher. Plus we don't get any extra allowances such as shift and travel money," he said. Gibson reported that miners were also concerned that the productivity bonus are lower at the Rossington colliery than at other mines.

The Rossington mine is run by UK Coal on a 'lease and license' basis from the government. The coal bosses have used this arrangement to impose conditions on the miners there that are worse than other mines. In response to the miners' demand and their decision to not work overtime, UK Coal issued "a letter threatening to sack us," Gibson said.

After lifting the overtime ban, the union pressed for renegotiation of the bonus scheme in light of the company opening up a new coal face. Instead, the "managers just came to each shift and told them of the new work arrangements and bonus. There was no negotiation. They just announced it," the striking miner said, adding the company set a base of 21,500 tons of coal produced each week before miners could get a bonus, which in the coal mining industry here often amounts to a significant percentage of a worker's wage. At Rossington, coal production was only averaging 16,500 tonnes a week, meaning workers received no bonus at all.

In this situation, Gibson explained, miners had only their basic pay to rest on. For the highest paid face workers this totals £69 per shift (£1=US$1.40). "We only got the bonus three times from March to June. We requested they discount shifts where there was no production, but they refused. Again and again they wouldn't meet us."

The anger of the miners grew until the bonus figures were posted in early June, recording no bonus would be received by workers. In response, Gibson said, "miners went down the pit shaft and didn't get on the underground trains to go the face; they decided to go home." Miners from the morning shift met those from the next shifts and they too joined the walkout. The following Sunday the miners held a meeting and decided to return to work and press for a new bonus scheme, but still the company refused to answer. Miners decided to organize a vote for official strike action. Gibson reports the result was a clear 71.7 percent in favor of a strike, which began August 15. This action is the first all-out strike in the UK mines since the defeat of the yearlong strike in 1984-85. At that time there were 140,000 miners working in 133 mines. there are now no more than 8,000 working in 17 deep mines.

Miners here say UK Coal wants to implement seven-day, round-the-clock shifts--a big change from the five-day, and 37-and-a quarter-hour weeks at most mines. In an interview with the Yorkshire Post, UK Coal spokesman Stuart Oliver said that mine machinery today "is far more reliable. It doesn't require the same care and maintenance program. But working practices haven't changed." The coal bosses have launched a drive to cut the cost of producing coal by 25 percent by early next year. Among the changes they are looking for, the Yorkshire Post reports, are working four-day rotations on longer shifts, a practice miners call "continental shifts."

Miners at many pit gates over the past week stopped to talk to Militant supporters and tell them how bitterly they are opposed to the continental shifts. At Stillingfleet, NUM official Nigel Pearce pointed out that "miners want to be at home on weekends."

At the Wellbeck mine in Notting-hamshire, miners said that although they often receive a £20 bonus per shift they think the bosses will take advantage of the new shift schedules to eliminate jobs.

Keith Picken, a surface electrician and union delegate at Gascoigne Wood preparation plant in North Yorkshire, said the Rossington strike "is very important to me. They've been made the lowest of the low. If we support them, then it can help our situation. We need parity across the board."

Picken said miners where he works have also been hit by low bonuses, which are determined on the average production from the three mines in the area that feed the preparation plant. "Our bonus has been virtually nonexistent for months," he said, showing his wage slip with just £2.65 bonus for the week on top of the £51.90 basic shift pay for a surface worker. "You have to work seven days to get a decent wage packet now," he said, noting that "miners often get penalized if you miss an overtime shift. They can stop you working for the next three weekends"

At the Gascoigne Wood plant, "Rumblings began a few months ago," Picken said. "One weekend most of the lads said that was enough and refused to volunteer for overtime. But the manager rostered us for compulsory overtime. After taking legal advice we refused to do this," he said. "Since then, we've had some well-attended meetings of 50 to 60 out of the 200 NUM members there," with some determined to press for action and others still uncertain. "We have plans for a ballot for industrial action, but these are held up pending talks, we're waiting to see what they offer us," Picken added. "We've got them frightened."

Meanwhile, several hundred miners at Hatfield in Yorkshire may win their jobs back. On August 13 they had marched in protest of the sudden closure of the mine four days earlier. According to the government, a new buyer has been accepted for the mine.

In a substantial victory for mine workers and the union, women who have worked as mine canteen workers and cleaners won an equal pay ruling last April. Since then, reports NUM Executive Officer Paul Hardman, women have packed meetings held in miners union halls in Barnsley, Yorkshire. The miners union successfully argued that their pay should be comparable to other surface workers such as bath attendants, who were all male. The women stand to gain £1,000 for each year worked. Some have worked up to 30 years.
 
 
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