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Source: The Columbus Dispatch

The passion from the crowd of thousands who traveled from all over the country was palpable as union workers descended on the Statehouse Thursday to call on their elected representatives — both in Columbus and Washington — to save their dwindling pension funds.

The massive crowd gathered for a rally ahead of a Friday hearing at the Statehouse. The hearing will include both Ohio U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, and Rob Portman, a Republican, who will take part in a joint congressional committee tasked with solving the looming pension crisis that has put at risk the pensions of about 1.3 million retirees and active workers.

But before the elected leaders take to the drawing board in hopes of crafting a bipartisan solution, those at risk of losing their livelihood and retirement made it a point to have their voices heard and blow off a little steam in the process.

Those in attendance said their elected officeholders have pushed this problem off for too long. Retirees spent years paying into multi-employer pension funds, with the expectation of having that money when they finish working. With the Wall Street collapse and subsequent recession, those plans are now struggling and in need of support.

Without new legislation, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation — the federal entity that insures pensions — could go under.

Speakers representing dozens of labor unions took the stage to draw attention to the crisis.

“This is the people’s building,” said Tim Burga, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, pointing to the Statehouse in front of him. “We have had to assemble here to remind everyone of that.”

Repeated chants of “Fix it!” rang through the crowd as speakers urged them on. Retired union workers and those planning for retirement called on Congress to pass legislation that would pump hundreds of millions of dollars into struggling pension funds.

“This is not a bailout,” said Mike Walden, president of the National United Committee to Protect Pensions. “Why aren’t we viewed as a taxpayer like everyone else?”

Brown proposed the Butch Lewis Act that many in attendance supported, but it failed to get bipartisan support. That bill would have created a low-interest, 30-year federal loan to troubled pension plans, with no cuts to retirees’ benefits.

Dave Field, a lifelong Republican who supported Donald Trump for president in 2016 and donated to his campaign, said he stopped supporting the president following the tax plan that Republicans passed in December because it gave tax cuts to corporations, but forgot about pensions earned by people such as him and others in attendance.

Field traveled from North Carolina to attend the rally. He said he is doing his part by showing up as a sign of solidarity. After working for almost 40 years, Field has seen his monthly pension check cut by more than half, losing nearly $700 a month. He is worried that if things don’t get better, he’ll be forced to sell his house.

“People work for 40 years to earn a pension and now it’s being taken away,” he said. “The companies that caused it had bailouts. The government fined those companies, kept the fine money and left us hanging.”

Numerous pension plans, including the massive Central States Pension Fund for Teamsters, the United Mine Workers Pension Plan, the Iron Workers Local 17 Pension Plan and hundreds of other plans are on the brink of failure.

More than 300 multi-employer plans across the nation are in danger of failing.

The hearing at the Statehouse will be the fifth on the pension crisis, but the first outside of Washington, D.C. Ohio was chosen because it is among the states with the most pensions at risk, with nearly 60,000 workers in the Central States fund that is in severely declining status.

By the end of July, the committee will finish the hearings and move on to finding a solution — one that needs bipartisan support.

A solution must be approved by five out of eight members of each party on the committee, then pass both the House and the Senate by an up-or-down vote, with no amendments allowed to be added.

odaugherty@dispatch.com

 

 

Source: The Columbus Dispatch

WASHINGTON — Denny Pickens spent more than 43 years working in coal mines in anticipation of the prize at the finish line: the pension he’d spent four decades working for.

Now, with that pension in danger, the 66–year–old from Wheeling, West Virginia, will head to Columbus on Thursday with a singular message: Let me keep that pension.

“These pensions are what keep us going and all we worked for,” he said. “We have to have these. This money isn’t fun money. This is money that pays our bills.”

That same urgency will drive other retirees to Columbus for a rally Thursday that may draw thousands. On Friday, there will be a field hearing of a bipartisan joint congressional committee tasked with solving a pension crisis that has put at risk the pensions of about 1.5 million retirees and active workers.

The committee, made up of four Republican senators, four Democratic senators, four Republican House members and four Democratic House members, chose Columbus in part because of how deeply the state is connected to the crisis — 66,000 pensioners in at–risk plans are in Ohio — and partly because its co-chairman, Sen. Sherrod Brown, is from Ohio. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, is also a member of the committee. The hearing is scheduled for 2 p.m. at the Statehouse.

The hearing is coming at a critical point in the committee’s work. By the end of the month, the committee will conclude the fact-finding part of its investigation and move on to finding a solution.

That solution, due in November, must be virtually bulletproof: It has to be approved by five out of eight members of each party on the committee and then pass both the House and the Senate by an up-or-down vote, with no amendments allowed.

The stakes are high, and if a solution isn’t found, so is the potential for catastrophe.

“There is no easy solution,” said Brown, a Democrat who fought for creation of the committee. “If there were an easy solution, Congress would’ve done it a long time ago.”

But failure, he said, would mean businesses on the hook to pay pensions could be at risk, retirees could lose money and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation — the federal entity that insures pensions — could go under.

At issue are about 150 to 200 of the 1,400 multi-employer pension funds in the nation, created by companies that pooled their resources to provide their employees with retirement funds. For years, most of the plans ran at a surplus, but the recession, combined with corporate bankruptcies and a rash of baby-boom retirements, has taken a toll on the solvency of the pension plans.

Those who watch the issue worry that if those 150 to 200 plans go under, the others could fall like dominoes — creating the potential for a catastrophe that could impact a vast swath of the economy.

“The only thing we know is that nobody knows for sure” what will happen if the plans fail, said Aliya Wong, executive director of retirement policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“This isn’t just a retiree problem,” Wong said. “It’s a business problem, and it’s a jobs problem.”

She and others see few solutions that don’t involve some sort of loan program that would help offset the potential for catastrophe. But Republicans have been resistant — part of the reason the committee was set up was because a bill Brown introduced — the Butch Lewis Act, named after a Cincinnati–area retiree who died fighting for his pension — stalled in the Senate. That bill would have created a low-interest, 30-year federal loan to troubled pension plans, with no cuts to retiree benefits.

Portman, meanwhile, admits there’s a “fault line” between Republicans and Democrats on the issue, with Republicans opposing a loan program and Democrats saying the solution should be a loan program.

“My role has been from the start that we have to take the two points of view and reconcile them,” he said.

He said any solution that does not involve what he calls “shared responsibility” will likely “not stand the test of time.”

The very structure of the committee, with an equal number of representatives from both parties, “is very challenging,” Portman said, and the timing — the solution is to be presented around Election Day — does not help. “But that’s what we have to work with,” he said.

He is not the only one worried. Mike Walden, president of the National United Committee to Protect Pensions, said he sees the current process “as being deadlocked.”

Walden, one of six scheduled to testify at Friday’s hearing, said the only solution likely to pass would be one with “shared responsibility” — a solution that would involve pensioners giving up some of their pensions and employers as well as taxpayers also kicking in.

“Nobody is going to be 100 percent happy on this,” he said.

Written by: jwehrman@dispatch.com

President Roberts talks about the importance of making our presence known during the Joint Select Committee hearing in Columbus, Ohio on July 12, 2018. Reach out to your closest UMWA office to get on a bus to attend the Pension Rally! The rally will begin at 11:00 a.m. on July 12, 2018.

We need to make sure that Congress knows we will not stop fighting to the retirement that you earned and deserve!

“We have been fighting for eight long years to preserve your pension, and this rally is one of the most important moments in that fight. This is a tremendous opportunity to make our voices heard, joining with thousands of other union members and retirees whose pensions are also in jeopardy.”

 

Source: FightBackNews.org

Ludlow, CO – On June 23, a commemoration of the Ludlow massacre took place, sponsored by labor unions, local officials and Greek and Greek-American civic and religious organizations. They gathered here to unveil a remarkable memorial: a new statue of strike organizer and Ludlow martyr Louis Tikas.

“Louis Tikas plays an important role in our community’s local history for his contribution to the 1913-14 strike,” said Yolanda Romero, event organizer in Ludlow.

An immigrant from Greece, Tikas was murdered in 1914 during a strike by 13,000 miners. Tikas was responsible for the striking miners’ camp, including women and children, after they were expelled from coal company housing. An eyewitness, a sergeant, said Lieutenant Karl Linderfelt broke a rifle butt over Tikas’ head and ordered him shot during the raid on the miners’ camp. Tikas was later found dead, with two others, shot in the back.

The Ludlow Massacre occurred when the Colorado National Guard and company thugs burned the miners’ tents and shot people in the camp, killing 13 children, two mothers, and number of miners. Folk singer Woody Guthrie memorialized the dead in his famous song Ludlow Massacre.

Miners were demanding an end to company scrip (money), company stores, company doctors, and coal company security goons enforcing a closed camp, like today’s detention centers. The miners wanted an eight-hour work day, enforcement of Colorado mining safety laws, and most importantly – union recognition.

Coal miners in Colorado were ready to strike after hundreds were killed in the years leading up to 1913. In 1910, one explosion killed 79 miners in Colorado. Mine owner John D. Rockefeller wrote in his reply letter, “How come the company is not growing faster?”

In response to the Ludlow Massacre, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) armed around 1000 miners, who shut down more than six mines. For the next ten days, miners were in charge and shot anybody who dared to oppose them with weapons. The Colorado Coalfield War left around 50 coal company thugs and state militiamen dead. Federal troops were called in to prevent the miners from seizing control.

The coal miners called off the strike in December 1914 with no immediate victory. However, the miners soon made gains in safety standards, including an end to child labor in the coal mines. The Rockefeller-owned mining company soon created a company union.

“I used to be a coal miner, and I stand on the shoulders of these people. They set the table for addressing health and safety issues in the mines, as well as other benefits such as wage increases which have trickled down to workers in other industries,” said Bob Butero, Region 4 Director, UMWA.

Butero concluded, “All workers should remember the sacrifice of martyrs such as Tikas.”

National leaders and rank-and-file members of the UMWA, and Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, AFL-CIO, attended the unveiling. Also attending were Louis Tikas’ relatives from Greece, members of several Greek-American organizations, and the Honorable Gregory Karahalios, Greek Consul General in Los Angeles, Also honoring Tikas were local government officials from Trinidad and Las Animas County, Colorado, and many supporters from across Colorado.

“If we ask if he lost the battle? At the end, we will say no. He didn’t lose. He might die, but he died for a cause. And his cause is still alive today! We need people like him to be our guiding light in everything we do,” said Consul Karahalios, who spoke with great pride.

Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, said about Louis Tikas, “He is indeed a hero in the United Mine Workers. He is a working class hero. And he is an American hero.”

Written by: Tom Burke and Shaine Carrol-Frey

Source: Estevan Mercury

A visit from the Task Force on the Just Transition for Canadian Coal-Power Workers and Communities to Estevan on June 14 resulted in numerous meetings and plenty of discussion.

The task force met with representatives from local municipal councils, the Estevan Chamber of Commerce, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) Local 7606, suppliers, affected workers and more during a visit to Estevan.

But the biggest crowd was reserved for a town hall-style meeting with the employees of the Westmoreland Coal Company’s Estevan mines, and SaskPower’s Boundary Dam and Shand Power Stations that attracted more than 100 people to the Beefeater Plaza.

Task force members were also in Regina on June 13, and Coronach on June 15.

The task force was announced by the federal government last month, in response to its plans to phase-out conventional coal power by 2030.

Jody Dukart, an international auditor/teller with the UMWA, met with the task force in Regina and Estevan.

“The meetings were good, from the aspect of them reaching out to listen to us for what we could be transitioned to,” said Dukart. “But ultimately, for us to transition to any other industry, it’s going to be tough.”

Not only will they likely be making lower wages, but they likely won’t be union jobs, he said, and a majority of the affected workers would likely have to leave the Estevan area, which would affect real estate values in the city.

Dukart described the task force’s visit as a “reality check.” His message, for the UMWA, though, is to keep fighting for the future of coal.

“We need to lead this fight,” said Dukart. “We need to start helping the provincial government to get that equivalency agreement through, and start pushing the federal government to start rethinking their decision on the phase-out of coal in 2030.”

He thought a task force should have been created to come to Estevan and Coronach regarding the future of clean coal technologies.

“We have the technology here. It just has to be expanded,” said Dukart. “I guess we’re not ready to accept that they’re trying to phase out coal.”

The future of the carbon capture and storage (CCS) was not addressed, although task force members did tour the CCS facility at the Boundary Dam Power Station.

“At one time, we were the leading country, I felt, in clean coal technology, just because we had a plant up and running, and all these countries were coming to our country to see what we had and how they could adjust to it.”

Dukart believes Saskatchewan still needs the power that coal provides in the winter months.

Among the coal miners who spoke at the meeting was Dave Grass, a local coal miner. He applauded the task force for coming to Estevan to learn how this will affect miners, their families and their communities.

Grass noted that coal-fired power stations have an average lifespan of 40 years and run throughout the year, providing reliable power.

“However, with the implementation of carbon taxes, federal regulations on emission levels and environmental policies, the playing field has been artificially tipped in the renewable energy industries’ favour,” said Grass.

Grass also noted the advancements that have been made in CCS, and the benefits associated with the technology.

“Within our mining industry, great strides have been taken to protect our environment,” said Grass. “We have diverted production for the sake of one nesting burrowing owl, halted another dragline for bids nesting near the equipment, stopped production in an area due to Indigenous teepee rings discovered,” said Grass.

Harold Matthews, the vice-president of power for SaskPower, was there each day. He said the Crown corporation was pleased the task force came to Estevan to discuss the impacts if coal mining were to end.

He was also impressed with the composition of the committee, with representatives of several different unions.

SaskPower wanted the task force to understand the number of employees who would be directly affected, and the number of people indirectly impacted, including contractors.

They also discussed the value of coal in the fleet, particularly from a baseload perspective, and how carbon capture and storage supports SaskPower’s strategy for renewables.

“We had quite a talk about carbon capture, and the possibilities around carbon capture and the CCS strategy,” Matthews said.

And there were discussions on how the loss of coal would affect ratepayers.

If coal is taken out of the power generation chain, it would eliminate the source of about 40 per cent of Saskatchewan’s electricity.

In the case of the Shand Power Station, for example, it would accelerate retirement, making it a stranded asset.

“You have a lot of money tied up in the asset that we can’t recover,” said Matthews.

Souris-Moose Mountain MP Robert Kitchen said he was pleased the Task Force came to Estevan and Coronach and talked to workers and others who would be affected.

He attended meetings in Estevan and Coronach to listen to the comments and to address the task force.

“As I’ve indicated, and as I’ve said all along, this is going to have a major impact on the workers of the mines and the workers of the power plants. No doubt about it. The families will be impacted. The communities will be impacted. The suppliers are going to be impacted.”

But he said he was disappointed with communication regarding the visit. He found out through another source that the task force would be coming.

Affected MPs will now be invited to the meetings.

Kitchen said he was very proud to hear people who attended the meeting standing up for their jobs, rather than asking for a buyout or a handout.

“They were asking (the task force) to take back to the government to not buy us out, find a way to get us these jobs and to keep these jobs. They want to work, and I’m so proud to know that that’s what my constituents are looking for.”

He also hopes the task force will remind the government that CCS is green, viable and innovative.

 

Every June 11th, the United Mine Workers of America observe William Davis Miner’s Memorial Day (Davis Day) in honor of Nova Scotian William Davis who was killed when company guards fired into a crowd of striking miners near the town of New Waterford in Nova Scotia, Canada. William Davis was 37 years old at the time of his death.

Davis was a father to nine children with a 10th on the way when he died. He previously worked in  Springhill mine where his older brother Thomas died at the age of 14 in the mine disaster in 1891.

Today marks the 93rd anniversary of his murder which took place at approximately 11:00 AM on June 11, 1925. This year the annual event was held in New Waterford, Nova Scotia with  a memorial service at 10 a.m. at the Calvin United Church on Hudson Street.

Secretary-Treasurer Allen and International District 2  Vice President Yankovich spoke at the event with Canada’s Auditor-Teller Emeritus, Bobby Burchell, MC’ing.

The Men of the Deeps, North America’s only Coal Mining Chorus, was invited to perform throughout the ceremony.  The event also included the placing of the wreaths in Davis Square at the Miner’s Memorial.

 

Source: Williamson Daily News

That’s why Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, encouraged a room of doctors, lawyers and miners Wednesday to get on a bus with him and rally for the nation’s miners.

“If Jesus had stayed in a building somewhere with his disciples and told his disciples, ‘Write some letters and tell people about me and about Christianity because I don’t want to go outside this building because I’m afraid to go outside this building because people hate me and don’t believe what I’m saying’ – no,” Roberts told a full room, kicking off this year’s West Virginia Black Lung Conference at Pipestem Resort State Park.

The three-day conference addresses different facets of black lung disease, or coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, from developments in workers’ compensation to screening for the potentially fatal disease.

Roberts’ speech Wednesday came only a few days after the Government Accountability Office said in a report that the Black Lung Trust Fund could require a government bailout at the end of the year, when the coal tax is to decrease 55 percent. The survey examined different factors that might affect the trust fund, which benefited about 25,700 people in fiscal year 2017.

Even if benefits were completely shut off next year, the fund would still be $6 billion in debt in 2050 if the tax rate declines, said Richard Miller, director of labor policy for Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., who requested the GAO study.

There’s no immediate risk of beneficiaries losing benefits, he said, but the cost of inaction is high.

“From an advocacy point of view, our view is that members need to be aware of this deadline coming up, because this is a relatively obscure, in-the-weeds issue and to let them understand what the consequences are and how, I would argue, irresponsible it would be to let the red ink spiral out of control,” he said.

During his speech earlier in the day, Roberts snaked around the banquet hall, urging people to stand up for what’s right.

“None of us are powerful people by ourselves, but I want to dissuade you from the fact that we can’t do something if we stick together,” Roberts said.

It’s the working class, not the millionaires, he said, who have a history of making waves. And the UMW has a history of standing strong to defend its miners, he said.

“People need to get out from in front of the television and say, if they’re going to take my black lung benefits and they’re going to take some of them away from me, I want to be part of a movement that says that isn’t going to happen,” he said. “And if you want to be part of a movement that stands up and fights back … if you want to fight back, this is the place to be, because this is a fighting movement we’ve got right here.”

Written by: Kate Mishkin