News Archive - Page 46 of 58 - United Mine Workers of America

Cecil Roberts: We honor the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

Source: Charleston Gazette Mail

As Americans mark the tragic assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee, 50 years ago this week, we must continue our struggle to ensure that he did not die in vain. There is still too much poverty, too much inequality in our nation. We have not made enough progress.

Twenty years ago, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and I went through Appalachia talking about what steps were needed to end the crushing burden of poverty that forces millions of our fellow citizens to take desperate measures just to survive. Some say those who live in poverty should just “get a job.” But the truth is most of them have jobs. The job isn’t the problem — what the job pays is the problem. People cannot provide for a family on jobs that pay only the minimum wage or a few dollars more.

Back in 1998, Jackson and I were speaking about hope, and looking forward to a brighter future. But that future has not come to pass in Appalachia. More jobs are gone, caused by the depression in coal mining. Young families who relied on those jobs have little or nothing. Far too many have turned to opioids and other drugs. Many others have simply left to search for work elsewhere, deepening the economic hole as the population declines and tax revenue falls along with it.

The pensions of more than 87,000 retired miners or their widows are threatened. These pensions pump more than $600 million per year into the coalfield economy, with about two-thirds of that going to Appalachia. If Congress fails to do its job and that pension plan is allowed to fail, the impact will be felt throughout the region, not just where retirees live.

Schools and hospitals are closing throughout Appalachia. First responders are losing their jobs as counties and municipalities no longer have the tax revenue needed to pay for them. Roads and bridges are crumbling. The physical, social and economic improvements of the past 75 years are unwinding. Not too long ago, we were beginning to catch up to the rest of the nation. Today, we are falling further behind.

Too many of our political leaders have strayed from the path of ending poverty and instead have turned a blind eye to the suffering of their fellow citizens. They are entrapped by an ideology that worships dollars instead of people. They no longer act to help, they instead pass laws that make things worse for working families.

Times are indeed bleak in Appalachia. But I still have hope. These words of Dr. King still echo in my mind: “Ultimately, a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for the least of these.”

Let us take these days of remembrance and reflection to recommit ourselves to confronting poverty and inequality. We can no longer afford to turn away from these problems. We must act to solve them. The UMWA is already engaged in that effort, and we invite all to join us.

Written By: International President Cecil E. Roberts

Bill slows detection of black lung, other workplace illnesses

Source: Lexington Herald Leader

April 04, 2018 07:28 PM

BY BILL LONDRIGAN AND AND STEVE EARLE

In 1996, Kentucky instituted a completely new process for determining whether workers exposed to coal dust had contracted coal workers’ pneumoconiosis (CWP), or black lung disease — a progressive, incurable disease caused only by breathing excessive amounts of coal dust.

The 1996 statute created a convoluted and ineffective methodology for evaluating coal workers for CWP called the “consensus reading process,” requiring multiple unnecessary reviews of miners’ lung x-rays by radiologists certified by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health and designated “B-readers.”

The number of CWP cases where the B-readers failed to reach consensus skyrocketed. In Kentucky in 2006, 450 claims were dismissed and only 36 received awards.

As the number of dismissals mounted, the number of awards plummeted until 2012 when there were zero CWP compensation awards in Kentucky.

It was as if black lung disease had been eradicated.

But of course it was not. Multiple studies, including a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found “… the largest cluster of progressive massive fibrosis ever reported in the scientific literature” for miners in Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia.

In other words, more miners than ever before are contracting a disease we know how to prevent. An entirely new generation of miners has been sentenced to living a life tethered to an oxygen bottle before succumbing to a slow, choking death.

Prevention of CWP is simple, if coal operators will follow respirable coal-dust regulations. But the Kentucky mine safety and health apparatus has been destroyed by the state legislature over the past decade, meaning companies are free to operate outside the law without fear of action by the state.

On May 24, 2012, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that the consensus reading process enacted in 2006 for evaluating CWP was unconstitutional.

As a result, 43 percent of claimants received awards or reached agreement for compensation between Jan. 1, 2013 and Sept. 13, 2016.

But once again, the General Assembly this year bowed to the coal companies and passed House Bill 2, which effectively turns back the clock on Kentucky’s coal workers by re-instituting a form of the failed and ineffective B-reader consensus process.

Worse, HB 2 included all claims for occupational disease for all workers compensation — including asbestosis, silicosis and mesothelioma — in its modified B-reader consensus process.

So now, Kentucky legislators who will not take steps to prevent miners from getting black lung are keeping them from getting the compensation they deserve when they do get it. And they will spread that pain — literally — to every worker in Kentucky, from coal miners to factory workers, truck drivers to teachers, who may contract an occupational disease at work.

HB 2 is an abomination. Every legislator who voted for it will have the blood of thousands of Kentucky workers on their hands.

Bill Londrigan is president of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO. Steve Earle is District 12 vice president of the United Mine Workers of America.

Tribal and Union Delegation Calls on Central Arizona Project Board of Directors

Source: PRNewsWire.com

PHOENIX, April 5, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A group representing tribal leaders and the United Mine Workers of America today asked the Central Arizona Project (CAP) Board of Directors to take an active role supporting a smooth transition to new ownership for the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) and set aside proposals for power purchase agreements that would displace reliable, cost-effective NGS power.

The delegation, including Hopi Tribal Council members and Village Governors, asked the board to honor its obligation to take long-term power from NGS and fulfill its obligation to the tribes and taxpayers. Credible potential buyers continue to express interest and conduct diligence toward a possible purchase of the plant, which would keep it operating beyond 2019.

“The Navajo Nation is encouraged by the progress to keep the plant operating to protect the region’s energy supply and tribal jobs and economies,” said Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye. “We are asking the CAP board to show respect for the process, take a seat at the table and work with the U.S. Department of the Interior and new owners to support this effort.”

Investors have been meeting with key stakeholders as due diligence continues, according to Lazard, a global investment banking advisor that is leading the marketing process. Work continues toward selection of a final investment group and financial terms.

“The Navajo Nation is encouraged by recent discussions,” said Navajo Nation Speaker LoRenzo Bates. “Keeping the mine and power plant operating will protect Navajo working families and the entire Navajo Nation.”

NGS, which was sanctioned by Congress, historically has been among the most highly utilized plants in the region and would continue to be the low-cost baseload power source for the Central Arizona Project. Stakeholders believe NGS power going forward will be less expensive than power purchase proposals CAP has received ranging from $34 to $44per megawatt hour. Plus, NGS won’t be subject to the volatility or price swings from natural gas or intermittent solar power. Not taking power from NGS will increase water rates for those relying on CAP. The CAP has a fiduciary responsibility to its ratepayers to avoid these costs.

The CAP also owes the federal government more than $1 billion for construction repayment with an annual obligation of approximately $55 million for another 20 years. NGS contributes approximately $24 million in annual debt repayment assistance to CAP through surplus energy sales, existing power agreements and other revenues and is the vehicle designed to make debt repayment possible. Continued use of NGS power also will avoid premature decommissioning costs of more than $150 million.

Premature shut down of NGS also would spark higher power prices, electric reliability concerns and higher water rates, according to several studies. NGS would deliver a $370 million savings in power costs for the Central Arizona Project through 2030 versus purchasing power from the open market, and municipal and industrial customers would avoid a 30 percent increase in water charges over 10 years, according to a 2018 study by Energy Ventures Analysis.

“By keeping the plant operating, everyone benefits,” said Cecil Roberts, President of the United Mine Workers of America. “Miners and power plant workers maintain their jobs to support their families, the CAP continues to receive the lowest-cost power, and the tribes protect their revenues and economies. The CAP has an obligation to take this power, and the U. S. Department of the Interior has a responsibility to enforce this action.”

U.S. Interior owns nearly 25 percent of the plant, has a trust responsibility to the Navajo and Hopi and has said that it will work with all parties, including new and future owners, to keep the plant operating to protect tribal jobs. Both the power plant and mine that fuels it are sited on tribal lands supporting jobs and steady revenue for tribal governments. If the plant shuts down prematurely, at risk are:

825 direct jobs and thousands of support jobs;
About 85 percent of the Hopi’s annual general fund budget; and
About 22 percent of the Navajo’s general fund budget.

NGS was commissioned to run 70 years through 2044 and adds reliability and resilience to the electric grid at a time when natural gas prices are fluctuating. NGS has one of the lowest emissions profiles of any coal-fueled plant in the region, and more than $1 billion has been invested in environmental compliance over the past two decades.

“Yes to NGS” is a broad coalition of industry, labor and consumer groups representing more than 100,000 U.S. businesses and organizations. Visit Yes to NGS.org, Yes to NGS on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter @YestoNGS to learn more.

SOURCE Yes to NGS Coalition

UMW endorses Manchin, McKinley, Ojeda campaigns

Source: Charleston Gazette-Mail

The United Mine Workers of America issued a batch of campaign endorsements Friday, backing candidates on both sides of the aisle for federal office.

Re-election campaigns for Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Rep. David McKinley, R-W.Va., will have the UMW’s support, as will state Sen. Richard Ojeda, D-Logan, in his run for the open congressional seat in the 3rd District. The union’s pick in the 2nd District remains up for grabs.

Speaking at Manchin’s campaign headquarters in Charleston, Cecil Roberts, president of the UMW, praised Manchin for his assistance in passing legislation that secures health care benefits for 22,600 union members who lost them as the result of bankruptcy reorganizations of major coal companies.

That legislation, however, did not include protection for miners’ pension benefits, as had been written in earlier iterations of the legislation. Roberts said Manchin will continue to fight those pensions in the Senate.

Before a UMW gear-clad audience, Manchin said he would also like to change bankruptcy laws to prioritize employees of companies that declare bankruptcy. He also criticized recent legislative attempts to roll back mine safety laws.

“As I stand before you, there are people everyday trying to relax and remove our safety laws, everyday we’re fighting this,” he said. “They’re trying to remove the safety laws for sake of production. Now that is pure BS … When people put production, when they put profit in front of a human life, and the person responsible for them and their family, god help us all if we get ourselves into that position there.”

Later in the day, Roberts also spoke at the UMW regional office in Charleston to announce the union’s backing of Ojeda for the seat vacated by Rep. Evan Jenkins.

“I believe that Richard will be a yes vote for us on any issue that’s of importance to working people in the state of West Virginia, particularly working coal miners, or laid off coal miners, or retired coal miners,” Roberts said of Ojeda.

Flanked by union members, Roberts, and family (most of whom are also UMW members), Ojeda said he’s ready to fight to represent working families.

“Wait, watch and see,” Ojeda said. “You haven’t seen anybody who will pick a bigger fight than I will. Make no mistake about it, I would rather fight than eat.”

In a news release, the union also announced its backing of McKinley, who chairs the congressional Coal Caucus.

“David McKinley is a good friend of UMW members and their families and a strong supporter of coal miners and the work they do,” Roberts said. “Representative McKinley led the successful fight in in the House of Representatives to preserve our retirees’ health care and is once again the strong voice we need in our effort to protect their pensions. He has been a key ally in our efforts to preserve and expand our members’ jobs and keep them safe at work.”

Phil Smith, director of communications and governmental affairs for the UMW, said the union has not yet backed a candidate in the 2nd District House race. He said the endorsement will depend on who wins the Democratic primary, and the union has not ruled out an endorsement of incumbent Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va.

Mooney introduced a bill last year that would roll back financial disclosure requirements from publicly traded companies to investors about mining company safety violations or worker deaths that were imposed after 29 miners died at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine in 2010. The UMW opposed the bill.

Smith said despite issues with the bill, Mooney has been supportive of legislation the UMW wanted to see passed. With two “friends” in the Democratic primary — Aaron Scheinberg and Tally Sergent — he said the union will just wait and see who to endorse.

Written by: Jake Zuckerman

Mason County EMS workers want to unionize, officials say

Source: Fox 11

MASON COUNTY, W.Va. (WCHS/WVAH) — Emergency services workers told the Mason County Commission Thursday most of the county’s ambulance crew wants to unionize.

A majority prefer the United Mine Workers of America.

United Mine Workers of America officials say it has mined enough support to unionize ambulance workers in Mason County. The commission directly took over the EMS operation in January and financial uncertainties have the 47 workers concerned.

At a commission meeting Thursday, the union representative said an overwhelming majority of workers say they want a union.

Commissioners unanimously agreed to meet soon with a committee of four workers and lawyers to determine what will happen next, Brian Lacy with UMWA said.

This is new territory for both the EMS crews and commissioners,” Mason County Commissioner Sam Nibert said.

The United Mine Workers has represented emergency medical workers in Ohio as well.

The commission could elect to recognize the UMWA as a bargaining agent or force an election to determine if that’s what the EMS workers want, officials say.

Written by: Bob Aaron

Coal Country Rebelled Against Trump’s Candidate Last Night. Here’s Why.

Source: MotherJones.com

A few days before Democratic candidate Conor Lamb eked out a narrow lead over Republican opponent Rick Saccone in Pennsylvania’s special election for the House, President Trump was on the campaign trail repeating a familiar tune to crowds of his supporters. “By the way folks, some of you who are in the coal world,” Trump said. “Your coal is coming back. Big, big, big, big.”

In 2016, the fantasy of a revived coal industry worked, helping Trump carry the same district by nearly 20 points despite the fact that the local United Mine Workers Association did not endorse anyone for the presidential race. But in the days leading up to Tuesday’s election, it was Lamb who got a bump from the UMWA. The union’s support wasn’t about bringing shuttered plants back to life, but focused on an old policy debate over how to ensure nearly 90,000 ex-miners still get their pensions even when the coal industry is going bankrupt around them. Congress may be voting on legislation to address the issue before the end of the year.

In the week before election day, UMWA’s national president President Cecil Roberts had endorsed Lamb at a campaign stop with labor union members, noting his full support for coal miner pensions as a deciding factor. As the Washington Post reported, Saccone didn’t even try to outflank Lamb on the issue of pensions: “On Monday, as he campaigned at Canonsburg’s famous Sarris Candies with Trump Jr., Saccone dodged a question about the bill on miners’ pensions and accused a reporter who asked about it of talking to ‘liberals’ instead of real miners.”

Indeed, the UMWA saw Saccone as dismissive of the issue. In a press release issued Wednesday, they pointed out he seemed to prefer “to eat ice cream rather than answer whether he supported the American Miners’ Protection Act.”

After Tuesday night’s results came in, UMWA’s Roberts acknowledged in a statement that many of the local members probably had voted for Trump or not voted at all in 2016. “They may still agree with the President about a lot of things, but they know that if they lose their pension they will be scrambling just to survive,” he said. “All the other things any politician is doing or saying fall by.”

Concern over pensions was actually a minor issue in the 2016 presidential election. As Natalie Schreyer reported then for Mother Jones:

The dispute has its roots in 1946, when, in response to a massive coal strike, the Truman administration nationalized the mines. In order to end the strike, then-United Mine Workers of America union president John Lewis and Interior Secretary Julius Krug worked out a deal in which coal companies would pay royalties into a pension fund for retired miners and would also contribute money (deducted from miners’ paychecks) into a health insurance fund.

In recent years, the pension and health care funds have lost much of their value as coal mines have closed, companies have declared bankruptcy amid cheap natural gas prices, and the 2008 financial crisis gutted many pension funds. Some troubled companies have offloaded workers’ benefits into volatile offshoots that don’t always honor commitments to health and pension benefits. Phil Smith, a union spokesman, told Schreyer, “As coal firms slashed their workforces, the amount of money being paid out in retirement benefits surpassed the amount coming in.”

If the UMWA fund runs out of money, Congress would play an important role. The federally backed Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation would foot the bill, but it too could run out of money and require taxpayer bailout. They would have to juggle a number of competing demands, not just from former coal miners, but multi-employer pensions in other declining industries.

The UMWA has lobbied for federal intervention for years, and while there’s bipartisan support for it, congressional action has languished. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked a vote on one fix at the end of 2016. There have even been a few proposals that would not have increased the budget deficit. According to the Washington Post, one intervention would have charged slightly higher “merchandise processing fees” for importers in 2025. Congress last year scraped together a solution at the last minute for the 22,000 ex-miners who were about to lose health care benefits, but the pensions issue remained in limbo.

In 2018, Congress has created a bipartisan 16-person committee comprised of House and Senate members to come up with solutions to the problem. They aren’t just looking at pensions for coal miners, but multi-employer pension funds in other industries backed by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, and potentially affecting 1.5 million workers in states like Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. The committee’s first hearing was the day after the Pennsylvania election, as it worked towards a bill that can be put to a vote before the end of the year.

This issue could come up again in other districts with deep coal roots. And as Tuesday’s election shows, it might even be a deciding factor in places where Trump triumphed in 2016.

“This is the most important issue our union is confronting right now,” Smith says. “This is issue one. If you’re not going to be with us you’re not going to be number one.”

Written by: REBECCA LEBER

How a Democrat Succeeds in Trump Country

Source: The New York Times

When the Democratic candidate Conor Lamb began his race in a special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district, he faced headwinds of the type that caused horizontal snow in the nor’easter last week.

For starters, Donald Trump had won the district by 20 points in 2016. The district has been held by Republicans for most of the last 50 years. Conservative “super PACS” were willing to spend millions — it ended up being around $10 million — to buy TV time to savage Mr. Lamb.

The incumbent, Tim Murphy, a conservative anti-abortion Republican, had a lock on re-election until The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported last year that he had urged his mistress to have an abortion. Republican House leaders decided that Mr. Murphy had to go. He resigned in October.

The man Republicans chose as their candidate was Rick Saccone, a Jurassic-era conservative who boasted that he was “Trump before Trump was Trump.”

That apparently was a few Trumps too many for voters in the 18th, which begins in the Pittsburgh suburbs and slithers its way, in classic gerrymandering fashion, through conservative small towns and rural areas toward the West Virginia border.

It’s no wonder that Mr. Saccone entered the race as the favorite. This race was Mr. Saccone’s to lose — and darned if he didn’t.

Absentee ballots still must be counted but Mr. Lamb held a lead of just under 600 votes, enough for him to declare victory early Wednesday. The news media was more cautious, but if the absentee ballots match the split of the vote at the polls, Mr. Lamb’s narrow lead will shrink, but hold.

The problem with political campaigns is that they don’t exist in theory but in fact. Factors like the candidate’s personality can carry weight, as does the effectiveness of his field effort and advertising. And, lest we forget, his position on the issues.

Mr. Saccone, 60, was a wet blanket of a candidate, without a scintilla of charisma. He also didn’t particularly care for campaigning, organized few public rallies and rarely took to the streets to speak with voters. He let the super PACS do the talking for him, with saturation TV ads.

While Mr. Saccone was a mediocre campaigner, Mr. Lamb was an excellent one.

He has a sterling all-American résumé: Marine, federal prosecutor, scion of a politically prominent Democratic family from Mount Lebanon. At 33, he had the stamina and the desire to knock on door after door. He stopped wearing a suit and tie on block visits after one resident yelled “You’re a Jehovah’s Witness!” at him. Mr. Lamb yelled right back, “I’m a Catholic!”

The race in the 18th morphed into a side-door referendum on Mr. Trump, and on Tuesday turnout was high in both red and blue portions of the district.

Mr. Lamb’s strongest showing was in Allegheny County, where suburban voters — including Republicans — provided him with votes. Mr. Saccone ran up his votes in the three outlying counties.

Ted Kopas, a Democrat who is a Westmoreland County commissioner, warned about finding national or even cosmic trends in analyzing Mr. Lamb’s victory.

“Before you get try to put too much theory into voters’ minds, I think all the credit should go to Conor Lamb,” Mr. Kopas said. “There is no substitute for a candidate who is willing to go everywhere and do anything. He is the kind of person who, when people meet him, they like him. Smart and articulate. He is the picture of what people want to see in a congressman.”

Voters also liked his politics. Last weekend, Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers, reached deep into his bag of compound adjectives to declare at a Lamb rally: “He’s a God-fearing, union-supporting, gun-owning, job-protecting, pension-defending Democrat.”

The 18th has long been the anger zone of state politics, populated by contrarians known mostly for their dislikes: of social progressives, of abortion, of politicians from the east (read: Philadelphia), of anti-gun do-gooders — the list could go on.

With the demise of coal and steel and ancillary industries, we are witnessing the “revenge of the working class,” according to someone who should know.

David Levdansky was a state legislator from Allegheny County, a pro-union Democrat who served for 26 years until he was unseated by Mr. Saccone in 2010 by 151 votes. Two years later, in a rematch, Mr. Saccone won again — by 112 votes. The defeat still stings.

What the collapse of core industries did was create a cadre of voters who, as Mr. Levdansky said, mimicking these angry voters’ message: “We want change! Give us change! We want to punish the elected officials in office!”

To Mr. Levdansky, Mr. Saccone is a “charlatan” who specializes in feeding voters red-meat issues while supporting cuts in education and human services. In the Pennsylvania House, Mr. Saccone introduced one bill to require schools to emblazon “In God We Trust” on every building and another to allow gun owners to carry concealed weapons without a permit.

Hillary Clinton did not stand a chance in the 18th^. She was running against Mr. Anger himself.

President Trump stopped by the district for a rally on Saturday night at which he spent five minutes urging the crowd to support Mr. Saccone and 70 minutes talking about himself.

If Mr. Saccone prided himself on being a Trump clone, Mr. Lamb bears a striking resemblance to another successful Democratic Pennsylvania: Senator Bob Casey, who is also pro-union and anti-abortion, although Mr. Lamb takes the position that while he is personally opposed to abortion, the laws should not change. Mr. Casey’s brand of politics, and his nice-guy persona, work well in Pennsylvania.

When he first ran for the Senate in 2006, Mr. Casey won the 18th by 11 percentage points. It’s all the more impressive because the man he defeated was Rick Santorum (another angry man, come to think of it) who represented the district until he quit to run for the Senate.

In another era, Mr. Casey would be called a centrist. Now, he’s too conservative for progressives and too liberal for conservatives. The only people who like him are the voters.

Mr. Lamb does not meet the test of ideological purity sought by his party’s progressive wing, but the future of the party may rest upon Democrats like him, who have the insight to understand Mr. Trump’s appeal and act accordingly. Ivory Soap Democrats won’t cut it in territory like the 18th.

One additional note: whoever wins should take only a short-term lease on his district offices. After all this storm and fury — not to mention the millions spent — the 18th in its current form is likely to disappear. The state Supreme Court has redrawn all congressional district lines effective in the November election though Republicans have sued in federal court to overturn the redistricting.

In any case, if Mr. Lamb’s lead holds, to keep his seat he will have to run again in the fall for a full two-year term. And although the image is still a little blurry, the results of the latest political Rorschach test are in, and it doesn’t look good for Mr. Trump or his party.

Written by: Tom Ferrick Jr.

Special Election Results in Trump County Give Democrats Hope

Source: Time.com

Until very recently, Bob Rogers, a retired coal miner in his seventies, thought his party was dead. Rogers, who flew Chinook helicopters in Vietnam before spending 43 years in the mines of western Pennsylvania, is a lifelong Democrat, but for a while now has worried that people like him had been forgotten by the party.

“They were strong union supporters and they’ve just dropped the ball in that respect,” he says.

But he was reinvigorated by Conor Lamb, a 33-year-old lawyer and former Marine from Pittsburgh who as of late Tuesday night was ahead in a special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district.

Hours after polls closed, his lead was precariously narrow — just 847 votes more than Republican state representative Rick Saccone — but even a slim victory would have major implications: Donald Trump won this district by double digits in 2016.

Saccone, a social conservative who once bragged that he was “Trump before Trump was Trump,” was the beneficiary of a desperate multimillion dollar campaign staged by national Republicans, and yet Lamb managed to flip good portions of the district. The success gives hope to Democrats and intensifies concerns among Republicans about the November midterms.

By the standards of the party today, Lamb is an unorthodox Democrat. He devoted his campaign to connecting with blue-collar workers in southwestern Pennsylvania and their unions, largely steering clear of the Trump-era flashpoints — Russiagate, White House staff turnover — that have consumed the national conversation. He has spoken out against stricter gun control, was reticent on the subject of abortion and, most notably, has said that when he gets to Washington, he won’t back Nancy Pelosi as the party’s leader in the House of Representatives.

But this was precisely the chord he needed to hit in this southwestern Pennsylvania district, which Trump won with nearly 60% of the vote but where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans roughly two to one. “It’s labor,” Rogers, the former miner, says simply when asked what matters to voters here. Workers like Rogers are old enough to remember the heyday of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, which built the infrastructure for contemporary social welfare in the U.S. They tend to resent the party’s embrace of economically centrist realpolitik over the last quarter-century. To them, Lamb was a breath of fresh air.

“It’s time for a change,” one elderly woman, who politely declined to give her name, said as she left the polls in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday. She voted for Lamb. “The old Democratic machine has been in power a little bit too long. All the insults and stuff that go on — we have no statesmen anymore. No one’s thinking about the constituents who put them in charge. It’s all about their salaries and their continued employment. When you lose a job, you lose a job!”

Because of how emphatically the region supported Trump in 2016, this special election took on outsized importance nationally. It was, many pundits said, a litmus test of Trumpism: that nebulous term that connotes a populism incubated in the forgotten economies of the Rust Belt. Had it survived nearly a year and a half of scandal, of false promises of a rejuvenated nation? (On the topic of the latter: Politico reported this week that Republicans abandoned their arguments citing the recent tax reform bill in the election, which they have previously touted as a boon for the middle class but which disproportionately benefits the country’s top earners.)

But find the archetypal voter in this model — the disaffected blue-collar worker whose job is now in Bangladesh — and he’ll likely tell you that the myth of a unanimous Trump frenzy in postindustrial America was to an extent just that — a myth. Indeed, the majority of voting Pennsylvania workers who spoke to TIME in the days leading up to the election affirmed they voted for Clinton, albeit reluctantly.

It was the lesser of two evils: our choices were Crazy Trump and Lyin’ Hillary,” 70-year-old Jim Rawlings, a former miner, says. Rawlings was one of more than a hundred members of the United Mine Workers of America who turned out on Sunday for a union event backing Lamb. “Was that even a choice? It’s a shame in this country that’s all they could come up for to run for president.”

But most of these voters agree on something: that in recent years — some trace it to the Obama Administration; others go all the way back to Bill Clinton’s presidency — their party lost the thread. Union support, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid: these are the issues that the Democrats of western Pennsylvania considered the party’s bread and butter, and there was an abstract sense that they didn’t matter so much to the folks in Washington anymore.

They point to Hillary Clinton’s campaign in particular as a comedy of errors — an abject neglect, they say, of the Democratic Party’s blue-collar backbone. A cameo on “Broad City” or a chummy interview with Lena Dunham might play well with the Twitter-savvy millennial voter in Brooklyn, but for a Pennsylvania steelworker whose plant just shuttered, it was a foreign language. It didn’t help that in a call for renewable energy at a March 2016 town hall, Clinton said suggested that “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” (It was a gaffe warped grotesquely out of context by the conservative press, but all the same, it stuck.)

“If they’re going to get rid of coal mines and get rid of pollution, if they’re gonna drop everybody from their jobs, then they need to have some system that picks those people up,” 73-year-old Carl Wade, another retired miner out rooting for Lamb, says. “That doesn’t exist. Medicare, Social Security — those things you rely on once you retire.”

Unions Show Their Force In Pennsylvania District Won By Trump

Source: The Huffington Post

WAYNESBURG, Pa. ― Over 200 coal miners, family members and local activists crowded into a hall at the Greene County fairgrounds Sunday afternoon in Pennsylvania’s rural southwest corner.

The attendees, many of them retirees in their 60s and 70s clad in the United Mine Workers of America’s signature camouflage-patterned regalia, were there for one last get-out-the-vote rally for Democrat Conor Lamb.

But the raucous atmosphere at the rally felt more like a church revival service than a political gathering. And while everyone present was there to support Lamb, the main event was Cecil Roberts, the charismatic preacher and president of the UMWA labor union.

After ascending the stage to chants of “U-M-W-A,” Roberts delivered a nearly 30-minute sermon in which he managed to portray a vote for Lamb in Tuesday’s special election as a sacred and patriotic act in keeping with the godly social justice tradition of Moses, Gandhi, UMWA founder John Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr. and the recently victorious West Virginia teachers’ strike.

“We’re God-fearing folks down here in these coal fields,” Roberts roared in his West Virginia twang. “I believe in God and so do you and we don’t apologize to anybody for that.”

“The bible tells us some day we’re all gonna be judged by how we treat the least of these, and the labor movement and the Democratic Party are about treating the least with respect and lifting them up,” he continued, to loud applause and affirmative shouts of “that’s right” from attendees.

To hear Roberts tell it, the struggles of organized labor reflect a deep spiritual and patriotic fervor ― a fervor that Lamb shares.

“It just excites me when people run up to me with a camera and say, well, ‘Tell me what kind of person Conor is.’ We don’t know each other personally, but let me tell ya, I know what he’s about,” he intoned in his breathy preacher’s cadence.

“Let me try to explains [sic] to ya what kind of folks we are and what kind of Democrat Conor is. He’s a God-fearing, union-supporting, gun-owning, job-protecting, pension-defending, Social Security-believing, health care-greeting and sending-drug-dealers-to-jail Democrat!” he bellowed in conclusion as the audience rose to their feet and broke out in chants of “CON-OR, CON-OR.”

Elements of the rally ― the religiosity, the pro-gun rhetoric and the romantic attachment to coal country ― would surely make more socially liberal Democrats squirm.

But for better or worse, Roberts’ speech was the rhetorical capstone of a campaign that has sought to bring rank-and-file union members who voted for Donald Trump or past Republican congressional candidates back into the Democratic fold.

And in union-heavy congressional districts like Pennsylvania’s 18th, if not in the country at large, organized labor remains a powerful tool in Democrats’ toolkit.

Suburban women played a key role in Democrats’ electoral sweep in Virginia in November. And black women got credit for helping put Democrat Doug Jones over the top in his surprise win in the Alabama Senate race in December.

Now it’s labor unions’ turn to bask in the spotlight: If Lamb wins Tuesday, he will owe much of his success to them.

Lamb has acknowledged as much, telling the audience at the UMWA rally that organized labor has “been the heart and soul of this campaign.”

A Lamb victory would not merely give organized labor an avowed policy champion, however. It would elevate the political capital of unions across the country by reminding both major political parties of their power to sway close contests ― particularly in the swing-voting industrial states along the Great Lakes.

“What this race shows already, regardless of the outcome, is that labor is still very relevant and still has a lot of clout and the ability to organize and affect elections,” said Mike Mikus, a Democratic political consultant based in western Pennsylvania.

Organized labor has experienced a steady decline in the country in the past few decades, devastated by the hollowing out of manufacturing and employers’ increasingly aggressive union avoidance tactics. Just 10.7 percent of American workers belong to unions, down from 20.1 percent in 1983.

But in Pennsylvania’s 18th, with its high concentration of steelworkers, coal miners, carpenters and civil servants, about 23 percent of voters remain unionized.

Thanks to more conservative views on hot-button issues like guns, abortion and immigration, rank-and-file union members have increasingly lent their support to Republicans, often against the advice of their leaders.

President Trump, with his talk of reviving American manufacturing and coal mining, proved especially effective at picking off union members in this region. The UMWA, fretful about the effect of the Obama administration’s environmental regulations on the coal industry and Clinton’s promise to continue them, declined to endorse a presidential candidate in 2016.

Nationwide, Hillary Clinton received 10 percent fewer votes from union members than Barack Obama in 2012, according to an internal survey by the AFL-CIO, a national umbrella federation of labor unions.

But in a Saturday conversation at the smoke-filled Cuddy Sports Club in Cuddy Hill, Zeszutek said he would vote for Lamb. A representative of his union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 5, called him to say that Saccone supported right-to-work laws. That is a dealbreaker for Zeszutek, who believes that preventing unions from compelling dues payment from workers they represent is tantamount to theft.

“If they start taking money out of my pocket, what are they going to do for the rest of this country?” Zeszutek said.

Of course, labor unions’ efforts on Lamb’s behalf have not been without their hiccups. Lamb rankled some union officials during a February debate in which he disavowed the $15 minimum wage, which has become a leading progressive cause thanks to the organizing work of the Service Employees International Union.

Lamb’s remarks prompted rare public griping from some labor officials, which Republican groups have tried to capitalize on in campaign literature.

(For his part, Saccone said he opposes an increase in the minimum wage, which is $7.25 in Pennsylvania, and argued that the floor on pay should be “market-driven.”)

Darrin Kelly, a union firefighter who is now president of the Allegheny County Labor Council, said that organized labor was at least guaranteed an audience with Lamb when it disagrees with him.

“The best thing about what we have with Conor Lamb is that we know he’ll listen,” Kelly said. “That’s all we really want when we help someone get elected ― is to make sure that our voices get heard.”

Written by: Daniel Marans

Our Promise to Miners Must be Kept

Source: The Register Herald

Among the many issues in the news, the one that is missing serious attention is passage of the American Miners Pension Act. This act pertains to securing promised benefits to nearly 87,000 coal miner retirees, widows and future retirees in the negotiated United Mine Workers of America 1974 Pension Plan. Passage of this Act has major repercussions on the West Virginia economy.

The situation is clear. In 1946, President Truman signed the historic Lewis-Krug Agreement negotiated by UMWA President John L. Lewis and U. S. Department of Labor Secretary Julius Krug. This industry-wide agreement obligated the federal government to life-time health and pension benefits for the nation’s miners through the initially called UMW Welfare and Retirement Fund. In the deal, workers sacrificed wage increases for the promise of life-time health-care and pension benefits. These promises were obligations and responsibilities agreed to by corporate America and top political leadership in the absence of national programs, such as those in Canada and Europe, that were legislatively obtained through the political process. The plan was set up with royalties paid per ton of coal backed by a federal guarantee.

In 1974, the Employment Retirement Income and Security Act caused the above-mentioned fund to split into two separate funds, with the 1974 Pension Plan providing pension benefits to eligible miners who worked on or after January 1, 1976. As a result of extremely depressed coal markets, coal company bankruptcies, layoffs, consolidation and other factors there has been a dramatic decrease in the level of employer contributions to the 1974 Plan. In the last two years alone contributions have dropped by more than $100 million, leaving less than $25 million per year still coming in to the Plan.

As noted, there are many factors that are contributing to the problem. One is the failure of the federal government to honor its commitment to coal miners who made America a great nation. Another is declining coal production. A third is the use of bankruptcies to take away worker’s lawful benefits. It is ironic that this country does not recognize that human resource obligations negotiated by companies and government are a legal debt equal to if in fact not superior to the debt owed to commercial vendors. Abraham Lincoln made the point clear when he said, “labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could not have existed had not labor first existed. Labor is superior to capital and deserves the much higher consideration.”

Indeed, there is an issue of moral values. Corporations that over the years gained wage concessions and promised health/pension benefits for life, now have unscrupulous leaders. Benefits that promised economic security were agreed to by all parties. Workers, accepting the promise in good faith, paid for the promise over and over again. But when the promises had to be honored, the promise-makers danced and laughed. They milked assets and ran. They hid behind bankruptcy laws and non-union shields. Furthermore, they preached in favor of moral values while they practiced deceit. They claimed to be in favor of family integrity while they practiced policies that disrupted and destroyed family stability. The decision to break commitments, promises and guarantees to workers and their families is morally despicable.

The described contradictions cause deep division and consternation. We cannot boast of being free politically when we permit workers to be economically enslaved, disregarded, disrespected and relegated to the human scrap heap. Bankruptcy laws must become humane and government commitments are treaties that must be honored. Judges must be made accountable. Economic terrorism must be stopped. And fairness, good working relations, and honesty must return as the top priority to the value system of those who lead America.

Coal miners are owed the American Miners Pension Act. It represents a promise for today and tomorrow made yesterday that must be kept.

Written by: John P. David Guest Columnist