UMWA International President Cecil E. Roberts wrote a letter of support for Acting Secretary Su in favor of her nomination as Secretary of Labor.
“The resignation of former Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh has left a huge void in our nation’s ability to protect and uplift workers on the job at a critical time. Workplace fatalities are up to an unimaginable 5,000+ per year. More workers than we have seen in decades are seeking a voice in their workplace and the protections of a union contract.”
“President Biden has made the right choice for Secretary of Labor, and I strongly recommend a vote in favor of her nomination by the full Senate.”
The Warrior Met Coal strike has been one of the biggest labor stories in Alabama since the miners first walked out on April 1, 2021. The strike came to a fitful end in mid-February, but negotiations between the company and the workers, who are represented by the United Mine Workers of America, have continued. The miners remain determined to win the fair contract they deserve, but this week, the company threw yet another wrench into the works. According to the National Labor Relations Board’s website, a decertification petition has been filed. Essentially, Warrior Met was not satisfied by busting up the strike; now, they’re trying to break the union.
“We were made aware of this filing late yesterday afternoon; but we believe that at the end of the day, this petition will be dismissed,” Erin Bates, the UMWA’s director of communications, said via email… “It’s unfortunate that this is happening at the very moment our members are going back to work and all parties are trying to move forward and the fact is that the company’s consistent refusal to bargain in good faith from the outset of this process has created an atmosphere where this kind of union-busting could exist. We certainly hope that no management personnel is encouraging or participating in this effort, which would be a blatantly illegal act.”
It’s already been a long and bitter fight between the Brookwood-based, Wall Street-backed coal executives and the unionized workers whose labor generates the company’s considerable profits, and the miners’ union has poured millions of dollars into the campaign (over $38 million as of March 1). The forces of capital constantly conspire to rob the working class of their ability to defend and advocate for themselves, but Warrior Met has truly gone above and beyond. Throughout the course of the strike, the company has used every possible means to break the strike, from acquiring court injunctions that severely limited workers’ ability to picket to smearing them in the local press to turning a blind eye when their own employees committed vehicular assaults on strikers and their spouses. The union has fought back and held the line, but skyrocketing coal prices hurt their ability to inflict meaningful economic damage on the company. As the months dragged on, the union was forced to change tactics.
In February, UMWA International president Cecil Roberts sent an unconditional return-to-work offer to Warrior Met’s CEO, essentially offering to send the miners back to work while contract negotiations continue. The company accepted the offer but added a number of conditions (including a mandatory physical, a drug test, and a refusal to rehire 41 of the strikers) that have slowed down the return process. As one UMWA staffer told me, the company has only been scheduling a handful of physicals per week. The decertification petition lists 795 workers, but as of now, only 273 UMWA members have returned to work, joining the hundreds of replacement workers and scabs whose efforts have allowed the mines to continue pumping out coal throughout the strike.
The company’s slow-walking return has undoubtedly contributed to the miners’ frustration. One UMWA staffer believes that Warrior Met is intentionally trying to stir up discontent and animosity towards the union. This decertification petition was filed by an employee, almost certainly a scab; the same UMWA staffer told me that supervisors allegedly escorted said employee over to the filing office.
In order for the decertification effort to be successful, “the employee will have to show that 30% of employees want to hold an election to decertify the union,” the person behind @UnionElections, a Twitter account that tracks NLRB filings, said on Friday. “Then, if that showing of interest is met, the union will need a 50%+1 vote to remain the exclusive representative.”
It might not even get to that point; the union plans to appeal and hopefully block the election altogether. This is a developing story, and while the circumstances do seem to lean in the union’s favor (the sheer number of scabs alone raises questions about voter eligibility), this latest twist of the knife means that Warrior Met is still playing hardball and that these workers’ ordeal will continue until further notice.
Written By: Kim Kelly
Kim Kelly is an independent labor journalist, author, and labor activist.
She has been a regular labor columnist for Teen Vogue since 2018, and her writing on labor, class, politics, and culture has appeared in The New Republic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Baffler, The Nation, the Columbia Journalism Review, and Esquire, among many others.
Kelly has also worked as a video correspondent for More Perfect Union, The Real News Network, and Means TV. Her first book, FIGHT LIKE HELL: the Untold History of American Labor, is out now on One Signal/Simon & Schuster.
On Thursday, March 30, 2023, Brother Charles Bird, from Clay County, West Virginia, was presented with his 80-year pin from UMWA International President Cecil E. Roberts.
Brother Bird started working in the mines when he was only 18 years old, starting in 1943. “I don’t understand why these young miners don’t join the Union and pay their dues,” Bird said. “We’re just like a bunch of brothers.”
“It was an honor to present Brother Bird with his 80-year pin,” UMWA International President Cecil E. Roberts said.
“Brother Bird not only dedicated his life to supplying energy for this nation but is also a World War II veteran. I am truly humbled to have the chance to know this great man.”
District 17 Vice President Brian Lacy also attended this monumental occasion.
Membership pins are presented to UMWA members, by their District Offices, who have been dedicated members of the United Mine Workers for at least 20 years. Honoraries are also featured in the bi-monthly UMW Journal. To receive a membership pin, fill out the Membership Application Form and provide it to your District Office. Click here to find your District Office.
In March 2011, the West Virginia House of Representatives and Senate passed legislation that designated March 30th as West Virginia Vietnam Veterans Recognition Day.
The West Virginia State Council, Vietnam Veterans of America, with support from the West Virginia Veterans Assistance Department, plans to commemorate this event on the grounds of the West Virginia State Capitol on March 30, 2023.
UMWA International President and Vietnam Veterans Cecil E. Roberts will be the keynote speaker for the event!
Everyone is welcome to join and honor the men and women were thanklessly served our nation during the Vietnam War.
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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.
