Source: MetroNews
Date: March 16, 2025
ARLINGTON, Va. — Longtime UMWA President Cecil Roberts considers the next seven months his “long goodbye.”
Roberts announced last week he would retire from the position he has held since 1995. Prior to his presidency he served as vice president of the union and before that was active in the leadership of UMWA District 17.
“When I walked through those doors in District 17, I was a 30-year-old coal miner right off the shuttle car. It’s pretty hard to go from the shuttle car one day to sitting behind a desk the next day trying to figure out what you’re supposed to do,” laughed Roberts.
However, it was clear from day one for Roberts, his career would be a near constant battle to protect the benefits of the union membership.
“That very day I started a letter was sent to every single person active and retired that their benefits from the health and retirement benefit fund were being cut. I’m standing up in front of crowds trying to explain this. I was thinking what did a shuttle car operator have to do with this? But I realized you’ve got to take responsibility and fix it,” Roberts told MetroNews.
So for the next five decades he, along with many others, fought to preserve benefits. One of the greatest uphill battles was to preserve the retiree pension benefits and healthcare benefits promised in contracts from long ago. Bankruptcy laws created escapes for coal companies responsible for funding the programs, but as the industry changed the revenue to pay for them slowly evaporated. Eventually, it took congressional action to keep the promise.
“One of the things I’m most proud of is nobody lost their healthcare completely because we found ways to continue to provide it until we managed to get up on Capitol Hill. Legislation passed in 2017 and in December 2019 we passed legislation which protected our healthcare and our pensions,” he explained.
While that was his proudest accomplishment, Roberts said his biggest disappointments were two failings which went hand-in-hand.
“Not only was I unable to save the coal industry, no one else was either. Whether they were politicians or presidents who were favorable to the coal industry, it continued on the decline,” Roberts said.
In recent years, the environmental pressures on the industry put Roberts and the union in the odd position of teaming up with coal operators to fight for the survival of the industry. It was a fight with limited success and for Roberts led to his other big disappointment.
“I would love to have been able to organize more people, but it’s really hard to organize in an industry that’s losing people left and right. You go into a mine with 200 people and start passing out cards to organize, the next thing you know that mine is gone,” he said.
The industry transformed during Roberts’ time. When he took his first union position at District 17 there were 200,000 union coal miners. Today, there are around 44,000 union or non-union employed in the coal industry.
“If you had told me this was going to happen, I wouldn’t have believed you. Heck you could quit a job or get fired from a job at 9:00 in the morning and have another job before the evening shift started, but those days are gone,” said Roberts.
Roberts will serve in his role until the International Convention in St. Louis in October.
Written By: Chris Lawrence
