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The passing of Brother Marty Hudson

August 29, 2019

 

It is with great sadness to relay to you the passing of Brother Marty Hudson, Trustee of the UMWA Health and Retirement Funds and former UMWA Chief of Staff . 

 

Marty Donald Hudson, of Stafford, VA., died suddenly on August 25, 2019 while vacationing in Myrtle Beach, S.C.. A lifelong member and leader of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), Marty was serving as a Trustee of the UMWA Health and Retirement Funds at the time of his death.

Marty was born in Charleston, WV, on September 18, 1956. Growing up on Coal River in Boone County, Marty was active in athletics – especially baseball – and a Golden Gloves boxer while attending Sherman High School. While at Sherman, he met his future wife, Georgia Lynn (Bonz) Hudson.

Following graduation from high school, Marty went to work in the coal mines, starting at Kessler Coal. He quickly became involved in his UMWA Local Union by serving as Recording Secretary and on the Safety Committee. His talent and strong support for the Union were soon recognized by Union leadership in District 17, especially by then-District 17 Vice President and now International President, Cecil Roberts. Roberts recruited Marty to work in the “Why Not The Best” UMWA leadership campaign that concluded with the election of Richard Trumka as President, Roberts as Vice President, and John Banovic as Secretary-Treasurer.

Marty came with Cecil to Washington, D.C. in 1982, working as his Executive Assistant. When the Pittston Coal Company forced its workers to strike in 1989, Marty was selected to be one of the on-the-ground strike leaders. After he refused to tell miners to stop using nonviolent civil disobedience as a tool in the strike, Marty was jailed for several weeks.

As Roberts became International President in 1995, Marty became the Chief of Staff for the UMWA. He took a position as a Trustee of the UMWA Health and Retirement Funds in 1997 before returning to the Union as Chief of Staff in 2004. He retired from the UMWA in 2012, going back to the Funds as a Trustee.

“Marty was sometimes like a son to me, sometimes like a little brother,” Roberts said. “Carolyn and I consider the Hudsons like family. I will miss him terribly, and so will the thousands of UMWA members he helped during his incredible career. Our hearts go out to Lynn and Jordan, and we will be with them every day through this difficult time.”

Marty is remembered by his family and friends as a fierce advocate for workers and their families, and as a staunch ally to those whom he loved and served. He never walked past a person in need; he never backed down from a bully.

Marty was predeceased by his beloved son, Adam Lyndon Hudson, by just over a year, his mother, Thelma Stewart, his mother-in-law, Shirley Bonz and his grandparents, Okey Stewart and Angie Stewart. He is survived by his wife of 40 years, Georgia Lynn Hudson, son, Jordan Bonz Hudson (Yessica), sisters, Joda Browning (Fred), Robin Discenzo, and Gina Bonz Barnes; brother, Stanley Stewart (Mindi); father-in-law, George Bonz; nieces, Terri Beller and Crystal Discenzo; nephews Ethan Barnes and Andrew Discenzo; and great-nephew, Ian Beller.

Marty also loved each and every man and women in his Union brotherhood, which he considered to be an extension of his own family.

 

Donations may be made to UMWA Miners Aid Fund, 18354 Quantico Gateway Drive, Suite 200, Triangle, VA 22172 to the attention of Bob Scaramozzino.

 

 

 

Service Information:

 

Viewing:

Date: Tuesday, September 3, 2019

Time: 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Location: Sylvester Church of God – 22814 Coal River Road, Sylvester, WV 25193

 

Memorial Service: 

Time: 12:00 p.m.

Location: Sylvester Church of God – 22814 Coal River Road, Sylvester, WV 25193

 

Grave Side Service:

Time: Immediately following the memorial service

Location: Pineview Cemetery – 21557 Coal River Road in Orgas, WV 25148

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UMWA Labor Day Events

The United Mine Workers of America has several Labor Day celebrations this year and we would love for you to attend!

If you have any questions about a particular event reached out to the District offices. Their numbers can be found here. 

 

Coal Workers Fight for Benefits as Industry Struggles Under Trump

Source: NBC News

Coal workers have been among the president’s strongest supporters, but their pensions remain at risk as industry barons thrive.

WASHINGTON — Dozens of retired miners, some in wheelchairs and using oxygen tanks to manage black lung disease, recently visited the Capitol seeking federal help for their failing pension plans.

A day later, President Donald Trump traveled to the miners’ home state, West Virginia, to raise an estimated $2.5 million for his re-election campaign at an event hosted by Robert Murray, who owns America’s largest underground coal company.

As an insurgent candidate in 2016, Trump promised miners he would restore the industry — and their jobs — after years of steady decline.

But as the president gears up his 2020 re-election campaign, coal magnates like Murray, whose company has a history of labor violations, have been among the biggest beneficiaries of his agenda.

The rank-and-file miners Trump showered with attention as a candidate have been less fortunate as their job prospects dwindle and their communities languish.

The year 2018 was second only to 2015 for coal plant retirements this decade, as the industry contends with strong competition from natural gas and renewable energy. At the same time, safety protections for miners, enacted after deadly mine collapses, have been weakened. Waves of retired and retiring miners concerned about failing pension plans have become a fixture on Capitol Hill, often holding vigils to gain attention.

At issue is the Miners Pension Protection Act, legislation that would transfer public funding into the miners’ troubled pension fund in order to guarantee their pensions and health care. Estimates suggest Congress would need to increase its appropriation by $260 million annually to keep the fund solvent.

Every day for the last seven months, Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, has tweeted at Trump asking him to help protect the retired coal miners living in fear of losing everything.

Trump hasn’t publicly responded, while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose state of Kentucky employs over 6,000 miners, has blocked a separate measure that would shore up miner pensions.

“The President is committed to all Americans, including our great hardworking coal miners,” White House spokesperson Judd Deere told NBC News. “It is because of President Trump’s economic policies of tax cuts, deregulation— including rolling back the previous administration’s harmful and unlawful so-called Clean Power Plan — and energy independence that coal miners are winning.”

Mine owners are Trump’s fifth biggest source of individual/family contributors, directing at least $6.1 million toward joint fundraising committees, his inauguration and related super PACs, according to an NBC News review. And they’ve won plenty of regulatory breaks in return, most notably a rollback of the Clean Power Plan, which President Barack Obama enacted in 2014 to help curb carbon emissions.

The Trump administration has also loosened rules governing coal ash disposal and mercury pollution from power plants. A former coal lobbyist, Andrew Wheeler, now leads a shrinking Environmental Protection Agency.

Manchin’s office says Trump has been privately supportive of the miners, yet the president has said nothing publicly to pressure McConnell to act. While McConnell has sought a broader fix to shore up the federally chartered Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the miners have said they don’t have time to wait for it.

That pension program covering union workers in transportation, mining, construction and hospitality is facing insolvency as several individual plans struggle to stay afloat.

“We’ve worked years in the coal mines. It was promised to us,” said Tom Phillips, a miner who voted for Trump in 2016. Phillips, who has numerous disabilities, said he believed Trump’s promise of a coal revival.

“I’m kind of up in the air” on Trump now, Phillips told NBC. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”

Tom Gibson, who worked as a miner for 33 years, has been walking the halls of Congress.

“I don’t like doing this, but we have no choice,” Gibson said. “Somebody needs to do something.”

David Popp, a McConnell spokesman, said the majority leader met with miners this year but believes the looming pension insolvency “is best addressed through a broader bipartisan and bicameral pension reform effort” that includes other industries.

Meanwhile, under Trump, coal executives thrive.

Among those beneficiaries are Joe and Kelly Knight Craft of Alliance Resource Partners, the largest coal donors to Trump. The Crafts, who are worth from $1 billion to $1.2 billion, according to a public disclosure form from 2017, contributed over $2 million to Trump’s joint fundraising committees, his inauguration and related super PACs. Alliance Resource Partners, of which Joe Craft is president, did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump named Kelly Craft the U.S. ambassador to Canada, where she served for 20 months. This month she was confirmed as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Other mining executives have reaped millions in retention bonuses as their companies undergo the bankruptcy and restructuring process.

“Many of the coal miners recognize there is a distinction between them and their bosses,” said Art Sullivan, a mining consultant and former miner.

Murray, who hosted the Trump fundraiser in late July, has donated $1.4 million to Trump and related super PACs. Since his company is privately held, he discloses little about his wealth.

A Murray spokesperson said the premise that coal executives are faring better than miners is “false.”

“Coal miners make up the coal industry. Coal miners, and the coal mining industry, have been, and are continuing to be helped by the Trump administration,” the spokesperson said.

“Draining the Swamp”

The state of coal country illustrates how Trump’s 2016 mantra of “draining the swamp” in Washington has, in many cases, yielded the opposite — windfalls for donors and lobbyists.

“I will never put the special interests before the national interest. I will never put a donor before a voter, or a lobbyist before a citizen,” he said at a campaign event in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2016. “I am the change candidate. Hillary Clinton is for the failed status quo to protect her special interests, her donors, her lobbyists and others.”

Three years later, hedge fund companies continue to gobble up bankrupt mines and miners lose their jobs while their bosses get lucrative “retention” bonuses during bankruptcy proceedings. Coal mine closures are forecast to continue, particularly in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions, according to BloombergNEF, a research service covering energy.

In early July, two coal mines in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, which has provided most of the nation’s thermal coal in recent decades, shuttered and abruptly put 700 individuals out of work. That was months after Westmoreland Coal Co., another large coal company in the state, filed for bankruptcy and agreed to sell its Kemmerer mine to investor Tom Clarke, who’s purchased several iron and coal mines out of bankruptcies.

Much like other mine bankruptcies, Clarke was able to stop paying retiree’s health and pension benefits.While Congress in 2017 acted on a permanent fix for health care coverage for miners, it has not acted on pensions.

Meantime the miners interviewed by NBC said their communities, many hard hit by the opioid crisis, are reeling, and include “grandmas and grandpas” raising grandchildren on as little as $300 per month.

“I’m not just saying this,” Gibson said. “That’s just the way it is.”

By Heidi Przybyla

Unions stick up for the whole working class

Source: Kentucky State AFL-CIO

August 7, 2019

We’re used to union-haters lying about us.

One of their standby falsehoods is the bogus claim that all unions care about is ourselves.

Tuesday‘s rally in support of the protesting Harlan County miners is more proof—as if it were needed—that organized labor sticks up for more than our own.

The miners don’t belong to a union. But Kentucky State AFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan, Secretary-Treasurer Jeff Wiggins and National AFL-CIO Senior Field Representative Dan Justice, were at the rally.

Londrigan spoke from the back of a pickup truck.  So did United Mine Workers of America Secretary-Treasurer Levi Allen.

Steve Earle, UMWA international District 12 Vice President, and District 12 Representative Tim Miller came to the rally as did several dozen UMWA rank-and-filers and members of other unions.

The aggrieved miners worked at the Blackjewel mine. The company “filed for bankruptcy and issued miners cold checks for their last weeks of work, leaving many of them and their families in severe financial stress,” Londrigan said.

He added that the miners “have committed to remain at the mine site and block any coal trains from leaving the property for as long as it takes for them to get what they are owed.”

Meanwhile, family and friends ”have been bringing food and supplies to the miners,” but “they continue to need financial assistance to get them through this difficult period,” Londrigan said.

A bank account is open for those  who wish to send the miners money. Checks should be made payable to “With Love From Harlan” with “Coal Miner Fund“ on the check’s memo line. Checks may be mailed to PO Box 1621, Harlan, KY 40831.

Said Londrigan: ”This is another in a long line of coal companies that have declared bankruptcy and have denied miners the wages, health care and pensions they are owed. The UMWA has been fighting these unscrupulous mine operators for decades and have stood shoulder to shoulder against bankruptcy courts that routinely protect the pay of CEOs, executives and bankers.  With adequate financial assistance these miners can withstand this attack and they value the assistance provided by organized labor.”

Indeed, the “long line” goes back a long way.

History records the bloody “Harlan County War” of the 1930s when wealthy coal barons stubbornly and violently fought to keep the UMWA at bay.

The miners’ struggle inspired “Which Side Are You On,” the famous union song.

Unions are on the side of the whole working class.

Written by: Berry Craig – AFT Local 1360

A former coal tycoon donated over $1 million to coal miners whose employer declared bankruptcy

“We would like to commend the Richard and Leslie Gilliam Foundation for their philanthropic support for these miners who deserve to get paid for the work they have done.

However, we hope this act of kindness does not conceal the bigger problem that this country faces when it comes to bankruptcy laws. Why are miner’s, that didn’t do anything wrong, having to picket every day to receive what they have earned?

Unfortunately, we have too many corporations running the court systems and not very many Richard Gilliams.”

– President Roberts

 

Source: CNN

August 6, 2019

For the eighth straight day, miners are blocking cars full of coal from passing on a railway track in Eastern Kentucky to protest their employer, who stopped paying their wages after declaring bankruptcy.

Now, to ease the miners’ financial burden, a former coal tycoon has donated over $1 million to directly assist those miners and their families.
On Monday, the Richard and Leslie Gilliam Foundation donated over $1 million to give 508 Blackjewel miners in immediate need $2,000 each. Checks were presented to community assistance groups in Harlan and Letcher counties in Kentucky and Wise County, Virginia.
Blackjewel LLC filed for bankruptcy on July 1, and thousands of miners in Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia have been without work and haven’t been paid since. The coal operator owes its 1,700 miners about $5 million in back pay, according to attorney Joe Childers, whose firm represents miners in litigation with the employer.
The central Appalachian communities have rallied around the miners and their families, during what they call a financial crises that started without warning. As a part of fundraising efforts, immediate-need databases were created by community groups in the region, and every miner on those lists will get that $2,000 check from the foundation as early as Friday.
This news comes the same day as litigation in West Virginia federal bankruptcy court started, in which a judge is to approve the sale of Blackjewel mining assets that were sold in an auction August 1-3. The backpay complicates the litigation because, by law, if there is an auction and there is money as a result of that, the money would go to the miners before other unsecured creditors.

“The best man I ever worked for”

Brandon Pearson, 27, is among the Blackjewel employees who’ve been taking shifts to block the railway all hours of the day. Pearson’s first coal mining job at 18 years old was for Richard Gilliam’s company. In fact, many of the miners in Blackjewel mines worked for Gilliam.
“Richard Gilliam, he’s the best man I ever worked for,” Pearson told CNN while on a bus home from West Virginia where miners flocked to protest Blackjewel at court during the bankruptcy hearing.
Pearson never met Richard Gilliam but says management had a way of communicating with employees that “you felt like you knew him personally.”
Richard Gilliam grew up in the coal mining region, and built his business there. “When he heard about the financial crisis, he just felt sad and his heart went out to them,” Julia Gilliam Sterling, Gilliam’s daughter who works for the family foundation, told CNN.
When Richard Gilliam sold his coal operating company, Cumberland Resources Corporation, and its affiliates for $960 million in 2010, he started the foundation with his late wife, putting $100 million into the foundation. An additional $80 million of those sale profits went straight to the employees he left behind. About 500 employees received $4,300 for every year they’d worked for Gilliam, plus an additional 401(k) contribution.
“He really values those employees and everything they did for him, and they were a huge part of his personal success. His hope is this will spur and encourage others with success in business to help the people that made them successful,” Gilliam Sterling told CNN.
Since selling the coal operating business, Richard Gilliam runs a family investment firm and serves as the director of his foundation.

Written By: Lauren del Valle, CNN

Sarah Jorgensen and Polo Sandoval contributed to this report.

 

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Retired Coal Miners Take Capitol Hill, Pushing for a Fix to Pension System

Source: 100 Days in Appalachia

July 25, 2019

A rush of retired coal miners and advocates were in Washington this week, pushing members of Congress to protect their pensions..

About 40 members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) arrived on Capitol Hill Tuesday to meet with lawmakers and voice their concerns during a congressional hearing Wednesday.

The UMWA’s pension fund is headed towards insolvency, with almost all of the coal companies that paid into the fund now bankrupt.

UMWA came to Washington to demand action and to support a bill sponsored by Rep. David McKinley of West Virginia’s 1st District, H.R. 935 – Miners Pension Protection Act.

Rep. David McKinley testified before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources Wednesday. Photo: Courtesy House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources

McKinley’s bill is designed to move funds from the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund to the 1974 United Mine Workers of America Pension Plan in order to “pay pension benefits required under that plan if the annual limit on transfers under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 exceeds the amount required to be transferred for existing obligations.”

Levi Allen, UMWA’s Secretary-Treasurer, said the pension security for his union’s members was the result of hard bargain between coal companies and miners and involved sacrifices on part of the workers. According to Allen, miners’ pensions are not a handout, but a hard earned right.

“They gave up money on their paychecks every single payday to ensure that retirement security,” Allen said.

Rep. McKinley said during a hearing in front of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources Wednesday the insolvency of the pension fund was not caused by the miners, or the union, but by the government’s overreach and regulations.

Lorraine Lewis, executive director of the UMWA Health and Retirement Fund, reiterated in her testimony that the fund was and still is well managed and said that up until 2008, it was well on its way to being fully solvent.

But the country’s 2008 financial crisis paired with coal company bankruptcies that followed caused the fund’s financial struggle.

McKinley’s proposed legislation was met with some indirect opposition from the Republican party leadership.

According to earlier reporting by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Republican leadership wanted to pass much broader legislation that would include other worker pension funds risking insolvency.

But apart from leaving the UMWA miners without the retirement pensions they bargained for, if not resolved immediately, the insolvency of UMWA pension fund could be the first domino to bring down others.

“Government has decided that as a backstop to failed pension plans, workers need the protection of the government, and that’s the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. If the United Mine Workers fails … and we go into the Pension Benefit Guaranty fund, they [Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation – ed.] have stated in their testimony before Congress, that they will fail. When that collapses, there is no more backstop for any other group,” Dave Hadley, a 69-yearold retired miner from Indiana, said.

When asked about why the GOP signaled an unwillingness to vote in Senate on the legislation in its proposed shape Allen said that it’s guided by ideology. “And it’s absolutely wrong,” he added.

The most common pushback takes the form of a bailout argument. Both Allen and Hadley agreed that that’s the one argument that boils the blood of any retired miner who hears it.

“If part of your paycheck is to set money aside for your pension in your older age, and you’ll forego that money today so you have it when you retire. And all you’re asking for with this legislation is just continue paying us what we were owed, what we earned, what we worked for, what we died for, and pay us back – to call that a bailout … you’re totally misrepresenting the work that we lived with and died with,” Hadley said.

The bailout argument was immediately presented to the Subcommittee by Rachel Greszler, a Research Fellow in Economics, Budget, and Entitlements at the Heritage Foundation and a minority witness.

She called the proposed legislation an “open-ended bailout without reform” to the system that, according to her, is failing due to mismanagement by the UMWA.

According to UMWA’s Allen, the fundamental injustice of the situation resides in the fact that, while retired miners are left without recourse, with the bankruptcy of their pension fund on the horizon, mining companies were saved by the bankruptcy courts.

“These bankruptcy laws, these broken laws … that were built allowed the continued extraction of that resource, and allowed the corporations who now own and mine that resource to continue making money to it,” he said of the loopholes that allowed for over $4 billion of collective debt forgiven to the coal companies that went bankrupt.

Some of the 81,500 retirees depending on the UMWA fund, like Sam Ball, a retired miner from Virginia who came up to D.C. to testify, can barely break even every month with their current benefits. He told the committee that any reduction in his income could force him to sell his house.

“I think really what it boils down to is the size of the pocketbooks and people involved, if you’re helping people with small pocketbooks, we have a whole bunch of people out there that want to call that socialism. But if you’re helping people with big pocketbooks, they call that capitalism for some reason,” said Allen.

The bill will now be scheduled for committee markups, but a date has not yet been announced.

We must keep our promise to mine workers

Source: The Hill

July 23, 2019

Perhaps the warning light on your dash is nothing major, but what if it is? No one wants to pay for repairs that might not be needed, but we know that ignoring or avoiding the issue is to do so at your peril and sometimes at great cost.

Congress is facing a flashing warning light with the looming insolvency of the United Mine Workers (UMWA) 1974 pension plan. Now is the time to finally act and do something before the problem gets worse. Congress should pass the Miners Pension Protection Act (H.R.935).

In less than three years, the UMWA’s pension fund will reach insolvency and pension benefits for more than 100,000 miners and their families will be at risk. The families and communities that depend on those pensions will be at risk as well.

The Miners Pension Protection Act ensures that our nation takes care of those who risked their lives to power it. Congress has an obligation to pass this bipartisan bill that would ensure our nation will keep the promise it made to our retired miners, their families, and their widows.

These miners did not do anything to cause this crisis. Their union did not cause it, and their employers did not cause it. Yet, they are the ones who will suffer if we fail to act. Their modest benefit, an average sum of $586 per month, helps them pay for their homes, their groceries, medical bills and basic life necessities.

Misguided federal policies have decimated coal jobs for decades across the country. At the same time, funding for technology that will allow the world to use coal in a carbon-neutral way – a key component of any effort to curb emissions — has languished.

The increased use of natural gas to generate electricity, along with artificial market manipulation to encourage greater use of renewable sources, has led to the closure of hundreds of coal-fired power plants, cost tens of thousands of jobs, reduced the demand for coal and bankrupted more than 50 coal companies. All these recent events – on top of the 2008 financial crisis – brought us to this point.

Since 2013, we have pushed for legislation to fix this problem, and protect the solvency of pensions for retired miners.

In May of 2017, we took a small step by providing a fix for miners’ health care benefits that were at risk of going away. After years of uncertainty, we provided miners and their families with peace of mind that the health care benefits they worked to earn would be preserved. Congress needs to do the same for the UMWA pensions.

While some have advocated turning over UMWA pension plan to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), the PBGC has said such an action would cause their multiemployer fund to be exhausted in just one to three years, resulting in massive benefit cuts.

Our solution allows the fund to survive and protect the modest benefits these miners earned through a life of hard, dangerous work.

For years now, Congress has been ignoring the miners’ pension fund warning light and now we are quickly running out of time to keep our promise.

While others may overlook and underappreciate miners, we know that they have worked to make this country the most powerful on earth, and now it is our turn to keep our promise to them.

Congressman David B. McKinley represents West Virginia’s First District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Cecil E. Roberts is a sixth-generation coal miner and President of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA).

‘Our paychecks bounced’: US workers in limbo as coalmines suddenly close

Source: The Guardian

July 23, 2019

 

Blackjewel files for chapter 11 in a move critics say is increasingly used to avoid paying workers what they are owed.

On 1 July, Missy Cole was notified by her bank that her husband’s most recent paycheck had bounced, leaving their account more than $1,000 in the red. Her husband had worked as a coalminer for nearly three years at one of the eastern Kentucky mines operated by Revelation Energy affiliate Blackjewel mining.

But both companies had filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, a financial move that has implications far beyond just laying off staff as the ex-workers now wait for bankruptcy proceedings to play out. Critics say the move is a ploy increasingly used in the struggling industry to avoid paying workers what they are owed.

“A layoff is always expected with miners. It’s always in the back of your mind and it’s no surprise when it happens in the coal industry. But this is much more than a layoff,” Cole told the Guardian.

“We have absolutely no access to our bank accounts. Those accounts are still negative, and falling deeper into the negative daily. We cannot even touch his 401(k) to withdraw money to survive on without the signature of the Blackjewel mining CEO or his personnel.”

One of the largest coalmining operators in the United States, Blackjewel abruptly shut its mines after filing for bankruptcy, jeopardizing the jobs of about 1,700 workers in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Wyoming.

Workers are still unsure if they will be permitted to return to work and for how long, if they will be paid for bounced checks and what will happen to their health insurance and benefits.

“It’s been very hard, not knowing if you’re going to be able to put food on the table for your three kids,” said Mark Turner, a Kentucky miner at a Blackjewel-operated mine. He’s unsure how he is going to afford his upcoming house payment, electric bill or buy clothes and supplies for his children with the new school year approaching.

Jimmy Justus, 22, a mine worker for Blackjewel in Virginia, owes his bank more than $1,400 because his last paycheck bounced.

“Now my account has been closed,” he said. On 1 July, Justus was sent home under the impression work would restart the next day, but then heard from co-workers the company had filed for bankruptcy. “The day-shift foreman had no intention of telling anyone anything.”

Another coal worker in Virginia, Mark Atwell, was on vacation with his family at Dollywood when he discovered his last paycheck had bounced. “I had no money to feed my family or even gas to get back home on,” Atwell said, who has three children and a disabled wife.

According to the bankruptcy filing, Blackjewel mining has at least $500m owed in liabilities. A worker in Wyoming has filed a class action lawsuit against the company, which claims the company failed to give employees’ proper notice, and wages and benefits earned before and after the bankruptcy filing.

Blackjewel is the third large US coal company to declare bankruptcy since May 2019, despite promises from Donald Trump that he would save the coal industry and its jobs.

Since Trump took office, about 2,000 jobs have been added to the coal industry, which currently employs an estimated 53,000 workers. The industry has shed more than 30,000 jobs in the past decade, driven by automation and changes in the energy industry, as renewable sources recently surpassed coal production for the first time ever in the US, and natural gas production hit a record high in 2018.

Through filing bankruptcies, attorneys who have represented coal miners argue current laws allow operators to avoid obligations they have to workers.

“It is especially egregious where Blackjewel bounces paychecks to the employees. This compounds with the loss of health insurance and other benefits,” said Jack Jacobs, an Alabama-based attorney who has represented workers in black lung cases. “The miners work very hard and sacrifice a lot for these operators. Very frustrating to see how their loyalty is repaid.”

Attorney Shannon Anderson with the Powder River Basin Resource Council in Wyoming condemned the management of Blackjewel by its CEO, Jeff Hoops, who was recently forced to resign.

Hoops did not respond to a request for comment.

Anderson said: “Hoops was buying up distressed assets from bankruptcies and companies trying to offload mines that were no longer economically viable, and basically created a coal company with those assets.”

She said several Blackjewel-operated mines in Appalachia racked up various environmental violations and citations as the company operated at a loss and tried to keep costs as low as possible.

She added: “None of these mines were making money and he was paying himself before any of the lenders, and basically running these mines at very low cost.”

Because Blackjewel LLC is privately owned, Anderson noted there is less public disclosure into what’s going on with the company, leaving many questions unanswered for workers, their communities and if Hoops will be held accountable.

“All the information we’re getting is more or less off of social media and other co-workers in other states,” said Joe Williamson, a Blackjewel coal worker in Virginia.

Hoops resigned as a condition for a $5m emergency loan, though his multimillion-dollar plans to build a resort in West Virginia will reportedly not be impacted by the bankruptcy. In a letter to workers, Hoops claimed “no one is hurting more than me” as a result of the bankruptcy.

Few workers agree.

“Our paychecks bounced,” said Jeffery Cochran, a coal miner in Kentucky who has worked at a Blackjewel-operated mine for nearly four years.

“Some people have been denied unemployment which is owed to us. He didn’t pay into it for some people, but yet he can build a $30m resort, and doesn’t have to pay us.”

A representative for Blackjewel shared a press release issued on 10 July that noted about 140 employees have returned to work, and they would be paid for prior and future work, but did not address bounced checks for employees outside of Wyoming or the fees workers are accruing due to bounced checks and late bill payments.