STEARNS WOMEN: LIVING ON

Whitley City, Kentucky (LNS)--If a history of the labor struggles of the 1970's is written years from now, the story of the ongoing Stearns, Kentucky miners' strike for a UMWA contract might be sketched out briefly from events at the picketline, the courtroom, the jailhouse and eventually, it's hoped, the negotiating table. But the geography of change wrought by this long, bitter strike in Eastern Kentucky extends, too, to the private living rooms where the coal miners and their wives pass on what they've learned about the "justice" meted out by the courts; to the schools where the sons and daughters of striking families clash with the sons and daughters of scabs; and, especially, to the kitchens and meeting places where the women have been sharing support and plans that have helped keep the families going and the strike alive these 18 months.

For the women's participation, as throughout labor history, has been a strong and deep vein running through this strike. And the drawn-out battle, in turn, has had a substantial effect on the women's lives. Even to be acquainted with each other, and to be meeting together, marks a radical change from the lives they had before the strike began.

"It's brought the miners' wives together," a young mother in the local UMWA hall remarked late in 1977. "We didn't know hardly any of each other until this happened and now all of us know each other personally."

"I love to come over here and talk to the women and it's really something else," another miner's wife, Linda Waters, told us. "I've got five girls and It gets monotonous sitting at home,'

There's casual talk, where the women "sit and talk and gripe" about the seemingly endless strike. And there are organized activities carried out through the Stearns Women's Club. The organization, the first women's club "for the working people" in the area, grew out of a meeting called by a United Mine Workers organizer who had worked previously in Brookside, Kentucky, the site of a similar strike for a UMWA contract. Those who have seen the movie "Harlan County, U.S.A." documenting that strike may remember the powerful role played by the women there.

"The organizer brought the idea over here and he talked to the women at the courthouse and we had a meeting that evening and elected officers," Linda Waters recalled. "Then they rented this building and we started holding our meetings here."

"Here" is the UMWA Hall in Whitley City, across from the county courthouse and about ten miles down the road from Stearns. Ruffled white curtains frame its side windows. Letters of support and articles on the strike cover the walls. Tape covers up bullet holes in the hall's front plate glass windows. Folding chairs fill the center of the room where up to 70 women have held evening Club meetings though occasionally they've met in a corner of the hall instead.

"The building's been shot up," Waters explained. "I think it happened two or three times. So we were sitting here one night having a meeting and there wasn't very many of us and we said, 'What if someone come in and shot through here?' And we all lined up against the wall," she laughed, "and we're sitting there talking in one corner. Because usually we just spread out and a lot of them set up in the windows and I said 'It's getting a time you don't know what's going to happen.""'

Many of the Club discussions and activities are Jevoted to raising and distributing money to hard-hit striking families. "We have our bake sales around the first of the month, when retired miners get their checks and other people get welfare checks. That's what this county's made up of," Waters said. "We've done really good considering what has happened. We made $105 the first of this month and it was raining and cold and you wouldn't think anyone would have been here... We've paid all prescription bills and for a long time if anyone had to go into the hospital we bought them flowers. Or if

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they needed anything, we paid for that. And a gift if they were having a baby and like that. We take up dues each Tuesday night. The dues are just whatever you put in. A quarter is the usual thing. And then people bring flour, milk, just everything here."

Asked whether the miners had also raised money as a group she said, "I know they've gone around and took up donations. I know they've done that. But I don't think they come around here like we do and sit and talk... We sit around and bake and drink coffee. A lot of us have gained a lot of weight," she laughed.

In their kitchens, baking for the sales, or in groups at the Union Hall when they're able to stop in during the day, the women have a lot in common to talk about. Most were born and raised in McCreary County. Besides their husbands, many of their fathers, grandfathers and in-laws have spent their working lives in the mines.

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It makes it hard to think of leaving, despite the hardships of mining life, many of the women agree. The Waters family tried it once, but it didn't work.

"My husband got sick and he had to leave the mines and they wouldn't change his shift so they fired him and we moved to Cincinnati and we stayed up there and it was pure hell... It's just like you're nothing. You don't have a home. Up there, the kids couldn't get out. We lived in a rinkydink three-room apartment and it was miserable!" As another woman put it, "All the miners have their home here, you know. It's hard to pick up and leave your home."

Beyond'this shared mining culture is the history of mine disasters and the common experience of having been at home worrying about a husband or relative each time news of a mine accident sends shivers through Appalachia. Mine safety, in fact, is a prime issue in this strike, as signs posted on the Union Hall walls indicate. The 160 miners' vote to join the UMWA came soon after 26 miners died in the March, 1976 explosion in a non-union coal mine in Scotia, Kentucky -owned by the same Blue Diamond Coal Company that had bought the Justus Mine in Stearns a short time earlier.

"When those men got killed, that affected every person that knows anything about the mines," Waters recalled. "If you don't work in the mines you don't pay any attention to it. You hear of people getting killed and you say 'that's terrible'. But you don't think about it because you don't have anyone who could be killed. But when you work in the mines and you work around here you understand."'

STRIKE

Because of hazards in Justus Minc and the bad safety record of Blue Diamond in general, the deci sion whether to go out on strike came down to sev eral stark alternatives for many Stearns familles.

"It was a hard decision for us," Waters recalls. 'It really was. Because at the time we had our home that was just built and we were buying furniture for it and the kids had just about everything because he was bringing home $317 a week for six days. And we knew what we would be losing.

"But I don't think there was ever really any doubt that we wouldn't stock with the union, even if we lost our house, we lost our car and everything. Because there just wouldn't be anything if he wasn't with us. And I think it reflects a lot on other people too, because we knew other people were going through the same thing.

"We didn't want anyone to have to lose anything. But we didn't want anyone to be killed either. The future was the thing."

And so, a year and a half later, the Stearns families are still holding on. The women talk about financial hardships, how long the strike will last, and about what they might be able to do someday when they've recovered from the strike, supposing it ends in the near future with a contract for the miners.

For Linda Waters, who's been "trying to figure out what I would do if I were in some people's shoes," she says she'd probably "get out and work." "I sit around and dream a lot and I thought: 'Well, if I had the money to hire a babysitter and if I could, I would go out. And I would pursue a career because it would be something I wanted to do and it would help my family too.

"I think with a little bit of encouragement from me being their mother, my daughters can go out and pursue what they want to be. That's the reason they know all about housework. They think I'm hard on them. I'm not being hard on them. I say, 'This is what you have to do, if you're going to be a housewife. You've got dishes to do, beds to make, kids to take care of, that kind of thing.' Then if you want a career, then that's what I want for them.

"At one time we had two in diapers and no one to help me but now I've got one 14 months and it seems like it's never ending. It could be because I'm at home all the time and my husband's at home. When he was working, he worked the third shift and he was home during the day, he slept during the day and I'd go out, I'd go visit my grandfather, you know, do things to be away from home so he could sleep.

"Now my husband says he never realized what it was like to be with the kids. I said, 'Now you're learning.' He gets aggravated with them. He says, 'Boy, I want to go back to work,' I said, 'Yeah, I'm going to go right along with you.'

"I'll tell you, I don't know what to expect. I look around the house and I see the kids need new beds and I need new furniture. Our couch is wore out. Our car's not too nice but it's paid for. We've got that to be thankful for. Then I think, well, at least my husband's here. I've got that. I couldn't manage without. Oh, I could, I could manage, but I wouldn't want to,

I think after the strike if we could continue and raise money, in the club, there's a lot of other needy families here in the county besides just the miners' families that we could help out... I know a lot of work I'd like to do to get a lot of people out (of office). And to get some people impeached, if that were possible... And we could help in other places that they were trying to organize... I'd like to see the club go on."

Financial contributions to the Stearns Miners Womens Club can be sent c/o Irene Vanover, Route 1, Whitley City, Kentucky,