Vindication for Jock Yablonski

As the rebel candidate for the presidency of the United Mine Workers of America, Joseph ("Jock") Yablonski charged that the U.M.W. was "the most notoriously dictatorial labor union in America." When he was defeated by Incumbent W.A. ("Tony") Boyle last December, Yablonski protested that the election had been a fraud. After Yablonski, his wife and 25-year-old daughter were found murdered, Boyle still dismissed the fraud charges as "wild allegations" and claimed that his union had been the "victim of a journalistic lynching bee." Last week the Labor Department moved to vindicate Jock Yablonski. It asked federal courts to throw out the election on the grounds of gross voting irregularities.

The federal move was belated, an obvious reaction to the killings. Until the triple murder on New Year's Eve, Labor Secretary George Shultz had taken no effective action on the Yablonski complaints. But once he decided to act, Shultz went all out. He used 230 investigators, who conducted more than 4,400 interviews at a cost to the Government of $500,000.

Lengthy Litigation. Among other things, the investigators concluded that the union had denied candidates the right to post observers at the polling places, even failed to hold elections in some locals, used union money to promote the candidacy of incumbents, failed to ensure that individual miners could cast their votes in secrecy, and subjected some anti-Boyle voters to "penalty, discipline or improper interference or reprisal." The union was also accused of failure to keep proper financial records. It will now be up to the courts to decide what to do with the Government's charges. Even if litigation --which is bound to be lengthy--ends by upholding the Government, Boyle will remain in office until a new election is held.

The union's general counsel, Edward Carey, scoffed at the charges as "minuscule." Actually, they constitute a serious and unusual action against a union by the Government. Since passage of the Landrum-Griffin Act in 1959, only three new elections have been ordered in international unions for violations as defined by that law.

If a new election is held, the most likely candidate to oppose Boyle is Elmer Brown, 52, a disabled miner from Delbarton, W. Va., who had campaigned as vice president on the Yablonski ticket. Brown contended last week that because the election was now labeled a fraud, he should immediately be named to the presidency. There is no possibility of that. In fact, lacking a leader of Yablonski's dynamism, it is questionable --despite the furor in the union over the slayings--that the anti-Boyle faction can mount an effective campaign against the tough union boss.

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