Mackenzie is a 2018 graduate of Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. Upon graduation, she immediately went to work for the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum as Director.
Under her leadership, the museum obtained several grants that expanded its ability to include many projects, such as Courage in the Hollers, where historical monuments were erected in various locations honoring those who helped form the UMWA. She also helped establish a program where UMWA history was taught in the local school system. One of her passions include educating children on UMWA community history.
Today, thanks to the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum Board of Directors and Mackenzie’s tireless work, the museum has educated children, as well as the public, on the history of UMWA coal mining ancestors who fought and died to form a union, to no longer be slaves to the coal barons.
“It is a pleasure to work with my friends from Local Union 1440,” said Mackenzie. “Being an associate member is truly a blessing. I feel like I am a part of a family. I thank the UMWA for everything they have done to support the Mine Wars museum.”
HARRISON COUNTY, Ohio (WTRF) – From the coal mine to Korea.
Jay Kolenc was 20-years-old when a letter from President Truman told him to report to the draft board in Steubenville 1951. He spent two years in the Army and five more more in the reserves, all with a young family back home. For nine-months, Jay Kolenc was in combat in Korea, helping its people fight for their freedom. Before that he was taken away from his job in the coal mines to join the Army. He said most people in the area who were drafted went to Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia or somewhere on the East Coast. Kolenc was sent to Camp Roberts in California.
“I trained with the 7th Armored Division, with the 33rd Armored Engineers on the Mojave Desert.” – JAY KOLENC, VETERAN
That was across the country and too far away for Kolenc to come home on leave before he went overseas.
“They gave me $14 to travel with, but I had 6,00 miles to travel, so the $14 did do it. I didn’t get a furlough. So, I went directly to Camp Stoneman, which I had to get there early. Middle of the night I was wakened up and put on an airplane and flew to Japan.” – JAY KOLENC, VETERAN
Kolenc was then abruptly taken to Korea and became part of a replacement battalion.
“In a ship and made an amphibious landing in Incheon. So, that’s where I stepped foot in the Republic of South Korea was in Incheon.” – JAY KOLENC, VETERAN
Since he had prior experience with high explosives in the coal mines, that became Kolenc’s job. He said a lot of what happened to him he left in Korea and doesn’t talk about to this day.
“War is not a pleasant situation.” – JAY KOLENC, VETERAN
Those who have followed Veterans Voices for years will remember the name Fred B. McGee. It turns out that McGee and Kolenc were good friends growing up. When McGee was wounded during the Korean War, Kolenc said he was only a few hills away, but he didn’t know that until he returned home. While he was in Korea serving, his life changed back at home.
“We were married and had a wife and a little daughter and my wife was three-months pregnant when they drafted me. So, my son was born when I was in Korea.” – JAY KOLENC, VETERAN
Kolenc sayid communicating with his family was difficult, especially because his son had some health issues as a young child.
“You’d gotten mail, but the biggest part of that was blanked out. There was only so much you could say about your positions.” – JAY KOLENC, VETERAN
When his time in Korea was over, Kolenc came home and went right back to work. He said he did his job for his country, and he’s proud of it.
“When you take that obligation you hold that right hand up to protect that constitution of the United States of America, that just don’t end when you’re out of the service. That stays with you till you take your last breath and to defend that flag and protect that flag.” – JAY KOLENC, VETERAN
Kolenc kept his mining job for a while, but also went to police officer training. Throughout his life he worked closely with local judges, the late Sheriff Fred Abdalla and the BCI. He is a member of several veteran organizations and remains involved with the UMWA. Kolenc and his wife were married for 46-years and had four children.
WASHINGTON (WJHL) — A top mining union official from Bristol will accompany U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine at the president’s State of the Union address next Tuesday.
The senator invited James Gibbs, an at-large international vice president of the United Mine Workers of America who lives in Bristol, Virginia. Gibbs is a third-generation coal miner from Dickenson County who has worked as an electrician underground and as a lineman at surface mines.
He told News Channel 11, that he’s proud to represent the UMWA in the nation’s capital. “I’m a proud union man,” said Gibbs, who currently serves as the head organizer for the union. He said he’s spent his career following the advice of his union, coal mining father and grandfather. “They had always told me a union to help take care of you and take care of your family. But you have to, you have to help take care of it,” Gibbs said.
He began working with the UMWA in the 1980s when a group of fellow miners asked him to help initiate new contract negotiations after years without a raise.
Among Gibb’s proudest accomplishments is securing continued funding for a federally-funded black lung benefits program and garnering support for the Bi-partisan American Miners Act of 2019. The law extends promised healthcare and pension benefits to retired miners, even if their employer files for bankruptcy.
“We still have over 12,000 pensioners,” Gibbs said. “My dad had earned that by working in these mines and breaking his back.”
He says he’s thankful for the opportunity to sit on the house floor and thank lawmakers who supported the measure. President Joe Biden is set to deliver the State of the Union at 9 p.m. Tuesday.
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The Inflation Reduction Act secured a permanent extension of funding for the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund – a resource that tens of thousands of miners who worked for bankrupt, dissolved, or disappeared companies can utilize to get health insurance coverage and a small living stipend. Tens of thousands more rely on black lung benefits legally required to be paid by their former employers. These small benefits are a lifeline to families across coal country – but historically, the claims process has been designed or administered to put miners at a disadvantage. Miners are fighting coal companies often single-handedly, while these companies have access to exponentially more financial and legal resources than the average American. If they are shut out of the system and ailing with a devastating respiratory disease, many miners would have to choose between paying for groceries and paying for their medicine. At the same time, if a miner is able to fight through this process to access benefits, the amount they receive typically is not adjusted for inflation. As prices rise, this puts them at a distinct disadvantage. But there are steps that Congress can take to help even the playing field and ensure miners can have access to the benefits they’ve earned.
The Black Lung Benefits Improvement Act helps solve a number of the problems these miners face and will ensure those who sacrificed their health working in the mines for coal companies to power our country get what they’ve earned.
This bill takes important steps forward to support miners, including:
Assisting miners in getting the medical evidence they are required to have to prove they have black lung – Right now, miners have to pay for medical examinations and procedures to show they have black lung disease. This bill makes those costs immediately reimbursable.
Ensures miners have representation through the claims process – Sick miners navigating complex corporate and federal bureaucracies shouldn’t have to do it alone. This bill ensures they have advocates and support when dealing with corporate lawyers and federal red tape.
Provides clarity on how to determine if a miner has complicated black lungdisease– Currently, the law is interpreted differently across the federal circuit courts. That makes it such that the determination of whether a miner has the most serious form of the disease is evaluated differently depending on the state in which the miner last worked. This Act would standardize that process.
Calculates benefits based on the actual cost of living – This legislation determines benefit levels based on the cost of living adjustments that respond to high inflation instead of the current level, which is tied to federal employee pay scales.
Ensures Coal CEOs pay miners what they’re owed – In recent years, many coal companies have filed for bankruptcy to shed their liabilities onto the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, plunging the fund further into debt. This bill requires the Department of Labor to develop new, stronger requirements for coal companies to cover their own black lung liabilities.
However, in an effort to maximize their profits, coal companies and their political allies do not support this legislation. The concerns many express with the Black Lung Benefits Improvement Act show a fundamental lack of understanding of the very real and common struggles that coal miners living with black lung face.
This legislation is informed by Government Accountability Office (GAO) analysis of the benefits process and shaped by years of collaboration with miners and experts in the field. It addresses some of the serious barriers mining families face that prevent them from accessing life-giving care and a basic safety net.
1) How does the permanent extension of the Black Lung Excise Tax change the future stability of the fund?
In the summer of 2022, we passed a permanent extension of the black lung excise tax, the only source of revenue for the Trust Fund. In addition, coal production and prices have increased over the past several months thereby increasing revenue for the fund.
Now that the resources are available to support miners, we need to be sure it can be accessed by those who’ve earned them.
In addition to a historically insufficient excise tax rate, part of the Trust Fund’s solvency issues are attributed to coal companies that have dumped their black lung liabilities onto the Trust Fund, plunging it deeper into debt. A February of 2020 GAO report found $865 million in black lung liability was pushed from bankrupt “self-insured” coal companies to the Trust Fund just between 2014 and 2016, increasing costs to the Fund in spite of the Fund’s insolvency. The BLBIA requires the Department of Labor to develop new procedures to help ensure that coal operators remain accountable for paying the black lung benefits of their employees. This provision to address the Trust Fund’s solvency issues is complementary to the historic win in the Inflation Reduction Act that secured a permanent extension of the excise tax.
The CBO estimate for the BLBIA over ten years is only $74 million. The drivers of the costs include: 1) a small increase in monthly disability payments for existing beneficiaries 2) a higher number of miners (approximately 60 additional miners over a ten year period) who are able to access benefits due to increased access to medical examinations and legal services and 3) reimbursing attorneys for particular legal fees accrued by supporting miners through the bureaucratic process of securing benefits.
However, the reason that this bill costs anything at all is because miners and their families have to rely on the Trust Fund rather than the coal operators responsible for their condition to pay their benefits. This reliance on the Trust Fund is a result of past governance and regulations that allowed coal operators to shed their black lung liabilities. Miners and their families should not be punished for regulatory failures. Coal companies have to be accountable for the costs they have accrued and the impacts they’ve had on the lives of miners
2) How does supporting miners’ legal fees help ensure the miners receive their benefits?
It is important to clarify why it is necessary to create a new reimbursement system for legal fees and what qualifies as reimbursable legal expenses.
Under the current system, there are few incentives for lawyers to represent miners in black lung claims. The claims process is lengthy and costly. According to the Department of Labor, in 2022 only 45% of claimants had attorney representation. An additional 24% had lay representation, (a representative who is not licensed to practice law), but over 1600 miners and their survivors who applied for benefits had no representation. Miners and their families seeking benefits lack financial resources for the development of medical and other evidence and the payment of attorneys’ fees is contingent on the success of cases. It is challenging for law firms to take on cases that are costly to litigate and that take years and years to conclude. Recent reporting looked at a sample of 200 black lung claims and found that, on average, it took 6.5 years to issue a decision. For some families the process takes over a decade.
In the BLBIA, up to $1500 in legal fees are to be reimbursed after a decision on the miner’s claim is issued by the Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs (OWCP). During that evaluation process, medical and employment information is provided by the miner. The responsible coal mine operator is also given an opportunity to submit evidence and contest the claim. OWCP then issues a decision. Only if OWCP makes a determination that the miner is disabled by black lung disease will the legal fees be reimbursed. The entity that would be contesting the decision from that point forward is the coal company. The company would appeal the decision to an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ). If, after an onerous legal process, the ALJ rules in favor of the miner, up to $1500 will be spent on reimbursing legal fees. Subsequently, the coal company operator will then be responsible for reimbursing all legal fees and nothing will have been paid by the Trust Fund. If OWCP or ALJ does not make a determination that the miner is disabled, then the legal fees will simply not be reimbursed.
Any mining family that has gone through the process of filing a black lung claim knows how frustrating it can be. This legislation ensures they have advocates who can help them fight through the red tape of government bureaucracy, have legal representation to stand a chance against the coal companies’ lawyers, and get what they’ve earned.
3) How does this bill affect coal companies that self-insure their black lung liabilities?
Requiring that coal CEOs to have the money they need to pay for their liabilities is common sense. For too long, these executives have exploited legal loopholes to shed these costs and put the burden on the taxpayer. This requirement helps solve for that by requiring coal companies to carry adequate insurance to cover the costs created by putting miners’ health at serious risk. Moreover, the Department of Labor (DOL) has developed a proposal to provide oversight over this practice which can ensure no further loopholes are exploited by coal executives. Whether or not this legislation passes, these procedural changes are already underway at DOL.
4) Why is settling claims a bad deal for miners?
When a miner receives their benefits, they are promised health care for their disease for the rest of their life as well as a small monthly stipend to help cover the cost of living. Black lung is a progressive disease. It gets worse over time. To be eligible for benefits, a miner must prove that they are disabled by the disease. But the point at which a miner is determined to be fully disabled is not the point at which they are most sick. They often get much sicker and the cost of their medical needs increases. There is also a tremendous amount of variability regarding the cost of medical care for a miner with black lung, making it difficult to project and calculate over time. For example, some individuals, such as those who receive a lung transplant, exceed a million dollars for their medical care in just a single year.
The industry wants miners – who are often under real economic pressure because they are disabled and no longer able to work – to accept compromises regarding benefits and medical care.
Because of the progressive nature of the disease, settling medical coverage will virtually always underpay the long-term costs and those costs will ultimately be left to the miner and their family, particularly in their later years.
The industry knows that allowing settlements of federal black lung benefits claims are a good deal for them and a bad deal for miners and their families.
The extension of funding for the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund is a literal life line for thousands of miners across the country, but it only solves part of the problem they face. The Black Lung Benefits Improvement Act is a common-sense solution that ensures miners with black lung have the resources and the support they need to access the benefits they’ve earned. Of course, the National Mining Association is not supportive of this legislation and would prefer to have miners settle their claims and not get what they deserve. But this legislation would go a long way toward ensuring those miners who’ve sacrificed their health to help power those companies and our country have the basic safety net they’ve earned while they face debilitating black lung disease.
Stock buybacks are a major way the rich can hoard their wealth instead of investing in workers — which is why a coalition of unions is demanding an end to such buybacks.
As gas prices at the pump continued to make national news and undercut voters’ confidence in the economy, Shell plc announced $4 billion in stock buybacks and increased dividend payments to its investors less than two weeks before the 2022 midterm elections. This prompted President Joe Biden to criticize the company’s decision and threaten a windfall profits tax on energy companies. Yet the reality of such legislation passing Congress was low. And only three days after President Biden’s statement, ConocoPhillips increased its existing share buyback authorization by $20 billion and boosted quarterly dividends by 11 percent.
Oil companies’ massive and record profits, together with an apparent disregard for the presidential threat of windfall tax legislation, highlight how the ability to affect economic change may not primarily lie with politicians at this point, but rather in the hands of US workers and their labor unions. Take the issue of oil company stock buybacks.
“We have serious concerns about the lack of investment back into facilities, particularly given the profits reported by the oil industry as a whole and the number of announced stock buybacks,” explained Mike Smith, chair of the United Steelworkers (USW) National Oil Bargaining Program.
Smith signaled that USW’s future bargaining and campaigns in the oil sector will mobilize workers to confront these corporate practices: “Rather than focus solely on shareholders, it’s essential for companies to commit to resources like safer technologies and decarbonization that will provide longevity and stability for the energy industry and its workforce. We intend to continue pushing for these types of investments.”
USW is not alone in this push. To fill a void of adequate governmental regulation or reform that would address corporate greed as a drivingforce of economic inflation, labor unions representing workers in a variety of employment sectors are organizing campaigns that expose the underlying causes of economic inequality and address Wall Street stock buybacks, dividends, and ownership in companies.
Workers Confront Wall Street Corporate Ownership
A handful of Wall Street asset management firms known as the Big Three — BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street — together comprise the largest shareholder in approximately 90 percent of S&P 500 firms and 96 percent of Fortune 250 companies. This concentration of ownership alarms both sides of the political spectrum for different reasons. But legislative regulation has yet to rein in Wall Street firms that arguably violate antitrust laws.
A recent Duke Law Journalarticle, “Agents of Inequality: Common Ownership and the Decline of the American Worker” by Zohar Goshen and Doron Levit, examines how the rise of powerful institutional investors like the Big Three impacts workers. The study finds that common owners — defined as “a few powerful institutional investors controlling large stakes in most U.S. corporations” — have contributed to a trend where “workers are bringing greater returns to their employers [and] shareholders are taking a larger and larger cut of each corporate dollar, suggesting that common owners have the market power to reduce hiring and keep wages down.”
Perhaps nowhere in the US labor movement is this battle for workers against Wall Street capital more visible than in Brookwood, Alabama, where the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) are engaged in a nineteenth-month strike with Warrior Met Coal.
Warrior Met, a company organized by Wall Street private equity funds during the US bankruptcy process, demanded significant cuts in pay and benefits from its workforce, then pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars as it took the company public. Now owned primarily by Wall Street management funds, Warrior Met spent $7.1 million during the third quarter of 2022 in expenses related to the interruption of business partially attributed to the labor dispute. It continued to post a net income of $98.4 million last quarter and has paid $1.3 billion in dividends to its shareholders over the last six years, according to UMWA.
“Warrior Met has the profitability to reach a fair contract with the union. It is simply choosing not to,” emphasizes Phil Smith, UMWA chief of staff and executive assistant to the president.
The extended labor dispute may be influenced by the fact that the Warrior Met Board has little accountability to its Wall Street shareholders, and company executives are able to cash in on this lack of oversight.
“Warrior Met is currently 96 percent owned by Wall Street investment funds. After the largest shareholders, where Vanguard has recently overtaken BlackRock, many funds own just a few percent. Ownership is very diluted among dozens of funds. No entity holds more than 15 percent of the stock, meaning there is no strong force bringing the company’s Board of Directors in line. The Board is essentially answerable to no one, leaving them free to take any action it wishes,” explains Smith.
The Warrior Met Board’s actions parallel a forty-year trend of an ever-widening gap between CEO and median worker pay that contributes to expanding and accelerating economic inequality in the United States. US Federal Reserve data shows that in the second quarter of 2022, the top 1 percent of earners held more wealth than the entire middle class in the United States combined (40th to 80th percentiles).
“Executive compensation is way out of proportion to worker pay and business operations,” Smith details. “In BlackRock’s report issued when it was Warrior Met’s largest shareholder, they highlighted this and voted against Warrior Met’s proposed Executive Officers’ Compensation Packages.”
Overall, stock ownership in the United States continues to be concentrated in the hands of the wealthiest, whitest, and most educated Americans, with 89 percent of stocks owned by households making over $100,000 a year. This means that both stock buybacks and dividend payments exacerbate racial and ethnic economic disparities, with black or Latino households owning only 1.6 percent of the total stock market value, according to US Federal Reserve data from the second quarter of 2022.
According to Goshen in an interview with Columbia Law School, “employees of public corporations are resigning themselves to depressed hiring and stagnant wages, even as their productivity — and consequently their value to the corporations — surges to record levels. Relatively richer investors get most of the benefit of higher stock prices.”
Moreover, “At present, Congress, to all appearances, does not have the political will to break up institutional common owners, as institutional investors have effectively ‘captured’ Congress through political spending. Since the 2008 financial crisis, institutional investors have drastically ramped up their campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures.”
While Wall Street investment in corporations has accelerated economic inequality and Congress has yet to pass overarching legislation to address this, unions are strategizing how to represent their members in labor disputes with companies that have Wall Street firms as major shareholders, and address the profit flow from workers into the pockets of wealthy investors.
Stock Buybacks as a Tool of Wall Street Greed
US families and workers struggled with financial hardships coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, including shifts in the job markets and increased costs for food, gas, and other necessities. At the same time, Wall Street lined the pockets of wealthy investors and corporate executives with record-breaking stock buybacks in 2021 worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Consumers still confront this corporate “greedflation,” in which unfettered and under-regulated accumulation of profits is concentrated in the hands of a privileged few able to increase consumer prices, suppress employee wages, and authorize stock buybacks for personal and shareholders’ financial gain.
Stock buybacks occur when a company purchases its own stock shares on the open market. Companies do this for two main reasons. First, stock buybacks are one way that companies distribute profits to shareholders who pay minimal taxes on buybacks versus dividend payments. This means that shareholders amass more personal income instead of paying more taxes that support schools, firefighters, libraries, and other shared public services.
Second, stock buybacks reduce the number of shares on the open market, and the value of the remaining shares typically increases due to reduced supply. Because of this, before 1982, stock buybacks were generally considered a form of market manipulation by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934.
“Stock buybacks were once illegal, and the practice should be outlawed again. After the pandemic slump, corporations across the economy have resumed this greed tool while citing ‘inflation’ and ‘supply chain’ issues for raising prices while racking up record profits,” explains Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA), representing fifty thousand flight attendants at nineteen airlines.
The AFA-CWA is part of an eight-union coalition that launched an aviation industry No Stock Buybacks campaign calling for airlines to “invest in the people on planes and all the workers who make them fly.” The goal of the campaign is to have airlines fix operational issues, provide enough staffing to meet the public’s travel demands, and conclude contract negotiations before any profit is sent to Wall Street through stock buybacks.
In aviation, as in other sectors of the economy, stock buybacks prioritize the short-term distribution of profits to a privileged few over reinvesting the money in the longer-term stability, growth, and operations of the company, particularly in preparation for unforeseen circumstances and market changes. From 2010 to 2019, major US airlines spent 96 percent of free cash flow on stock buybacks. In the five years before the COVID-19 pandemic, United, Southwest, American, and Delta spent more than $39 billion in stock buybacks. Thus, as airlines spent profits enriching wealthy investors for over a decade when hard times hit the airline industry in 2020, travelers and workers immediately felt the impact of the aviation industry’s investment in Wall Street instead of employees, operations, and cash reserves. Sean M. O’Brien, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, emphasizes that the campaign goals benefit both workers and consumers: “Greedy corporations would rather divert profits to Wall Street through stock buybacks than focus on workers and the flying public. We cannot allow this to happen. Our unions came together early in the pandemic to secure the Payroll Support Program (PSP) relief package which protected workers and also barred airline executives from stock buybacks.”O’Brien refers to how aviation unions successfully paused airline stock buybacks by intensively lobbying for PSP legislation that met the needs of their members while recognizing that travelers also benefit from airlines’ investment in operations and staffing. Money that airlines received through the PSP, initially part of the 2020 CARES Act and extended under subsequent legislation, set financial regulations on airlines receiving program funds, including capping executive compensation and banning stock buybacks for one year beyond the relief period. However, that ban on stock buybacks concluded on September 30, 2022 — directly after a “summer of airline chaos” with increased flight cancelations, delays, and prices.Through union-endorsed PSP legislation that “included strong labor protections,” president of the Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA) Captain Joe DePete explains that “U.S. carriers and their crewmembers were well positioned for the increased travel demand we are experiencing today. However, some airlines failed to properly plan, resulting in operational issues and increased cancellations causing significant frustrations for passengers and airline employees alike.”The No Stock Buybacks coalition channels public frustration over airlines’ recent unpredictable operations and mobilizes union members to pressure the aviation industry at a time when, according to Nelson, “nearly 700,000 aviation workers are at the table bargaining for our next contracts. . . . Our efforts have successfully stopped the return of stock buybacks in aviation for now.”
New legislation has yet to address windfall profits or stock buybacks; the No Stock Buybacks coalition has effectively deterred airlines from re-engaging in this practice. Together with UMWA, USW, and other organized workers that demand their unions engage in creating a more equitable economic system, labor is challenging Wall Street power.
Since 1991, the Union Plus Scholarship Program has awarded more than $5 million to students of working families who want to begin or continue their post-secondary education.
Enrollment for Medicare Parts A and B is mandatory for retirees, surviving spouses, and dependents receiving a health service card.
If you or your spouse are eligible to enroll in both Medicare Parts A and B by virtue of age or disability, then you are required to enroll.
Failure to enroll will result in a penalty and potentially a loss of health care benefits.
The initial enrollment period for Medicare Part B begins three months before your 65th birthday including the month you turn 65, and ends three months after that birthday.
In the case of a disability benefit, you are required to enroll 24 months after the date you are determined to be disabled.
If you do not enroll in Medicare Part B during your initial enrollment period, you have another chance each year to sign up during a “general or open enrollment period.”
Your coverage begins the following July.
However, your monthly premium increases by ten percent for each twelve-month period you were eligible for but did not enroll in Medicare Part B.
All individuals who meet the criteria described above are required to enroll.
If you have any questions, please contact the UMWA Health & Retirement Funds at 800-291-1425.
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“Warrior Met is currently 96 percent owned by Wall Street investment funds. After the largest shareholders, where Vanguard has recently overtaken BlackRock, many funds own just a few percent. Ownership is very diluted among dozens of funds. No entity holds more than 15 percent of the stock, meaning there is no strong force bringing the company’s Board of Directors in line. The Board is essentially answerable to no one, leaving them free to take any action it wishes,” explains Smith.
