May 27, 1977
With the blessings of the Carter administration, coal companies have launched a massive offensive against the United Mine Workers of America. They are threatening to destroy national collective bargaining in the coal industry.

By repeatedly violating contract provisions, the employers (called coal operators) have provoked a series of wildcat strikes in the eastern coalfields.

Many of the company violations are literally life-and-death questions for coal miners.

The operators want a free hand to maximize production without "interference" from safety regulations. That’s why 393 coal miners died on the job between the December 1973 and September 1976 UMWA conventions.

Now President Carter demands vastly increased coal production as part of his energy plan--while he also seeks to eliminate allegedly "burdensome" regulations on job safety and pollution. This is a formula for slaughter in the mines.

When miners strike in self-defense the operators and big-business press rail against "anarchy" in the coalfields.

The president of the Bituminous Coal Operators Association, Joseph Brennan, has been asking in recent speeches, "What value is there to a contract when individuals with seeming impunity can violate it and in so doing can shut down large portions of the coal industry?"

Brennan and his fellow operators would like to see a return to the 1920’s when negotiations took place on a company-by-company basis. Employers could play off sections of the union against one another, keep wages low, and ignore pleas for safer conditions.  
 
May 26, 1952
Bolivia’s new government took a step toward the nationalization of the country’s tin mines on May 14 when President Víctor Paz Estenssoro issued a decree establishing a nine-member commission "to study the bases and conditions for the nationalization through expropriation of the mines controlled by or belonging to the enterprises forming the Patino, Aramayo and Hochschild groups."

The commission was empowered to conduct hearings and obtain whatever data it needed from public and private sources, and was directed to submit a complete plan "for the legal expropriation of the mines listed" to the government within a maximum of 120 days.

This time limit appears to be a compromise between the positions previously taken by the two wings in the cabinet, which is controlled by the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR).

The right wing of the cabinet, headed by Paz Estenssoro, favors a "cautious" and slow approach to nationalization, seeking not to offend Washington and hoping for some kind of understanding with the tin barons. Paz had said, when he was inaugurated President last month, that he thought the projected commission would need at least six months to study the question.

The MNR left wing, headed by Juan Lechín, Minister of Mines and Petroleum and leader of the Bolivian labor movement, has taken the initiative in pressing for nationalization of the mines. The unions have demanded nationalization without compensation and workers control of the nationalized industries, and Lechín publicly declared a month ago that the nationalization commission would not need more than a month to complete its proposals.  
 
 
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