On November 3, 2017, 371 delegates representing 267 locals unanimously voted to pass three resolutions that give the UMWA the resources it needs to continue the fight to preserve the pensions more than 100,000 retired miners were promised and have earned.
The delegates to the 2017 Special International Convention have set in motion the plan International President Cecil Roberts has to win the pension battle; including the transfer of up to $32 million from the Selective Strike Fund to the General Treasury that will allow the union to continue the fight. Click here to view a copy of the three resolutions passed during the 2017 Special International Convention.
On November 4, 2017, President Roberts led a rally with 1,000 UMWA members, families and supporters to lay out the union’s next steps to ensure Congress passes legislation preserving the pensions for retired miners.
Senators Joe Manchin, Shelley Moore Capito, and Sherrod Brown, along with Rep. David McKinley, sent video greetings, pledging their continued support for the American Miners Pension (AMP) Act that was introduced on October 3, 2017.
Bill Londrigan, President of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO, and Josh Sword, President of the West Virginia State AFL-CIO, were in attendance and spoke to the crowd about their support to keep the promise.
On Friday and Saturday, hundreds of members of the United Mine Workers of America will return to St. Louis — the hometown of corporate coal and the city where, in 2013, the organization began its ongoing fight for benefits jeopardized by the wave of bankruptcies that have plagued the industry.
To this point, the protracted fight has largely been centered on health care, with UMWA members scoring a partial victory this year when Congress passed legislation to help fully fund the health benefits promised to more than 22,000 retirees.
But now the organization is pivoting its focus and resources to pensions, where it says there is unfinished business and lingering risk to its members.
“We’re halfway finished with it,” said Phil Smith, the UMWA’s director of communications and government affairs. “We still need to secure pension benefits.”
Stretching back to the 1970s, collective bargaining agreements the union reached with various coal companies contributed money to a single pension fund for UMWA members. The problem, Smith explains, is that many of those revenue streams have dried up, as companies paying into that fund have succumbed to bankruptcy in recent years.
“We’re down to just a few companies paying into it at this point,” Smith said.
The dwindling fund supports 87,000 beneficiaries at present, with an additional 20,000 UMWA members eventually set to join them once they reach the eligible age range, according to Smith.
This week’s special convention aims to channel the UMWA’s full resources toward a push on the pension issue by moving money into the union’s general fund.
If the effort to secure health care benefits is any indication, the fight over pensions figures to be another costly and politically charged battle. The multi-year push on that front cost the union $31 million, according to an advisory detailing this week’s proceedings. It also sparked two dozen marches, rallies and protests by UMWA members, including 12 that were staged in St. Louis in 2013, with Peabody’s downtown headquarters a main target for demonstrations.
Prior to her husband’s hospitalization earlier this week, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., had been scheduled to appear at the convention, though UMWA officials said her attendance is now in doubt.
Smith said the convention could be attended by about 900 people, including 390 UMWA delegates from the U.S. and Canada. He also said the union is “bringing in anyone who was arrested at any rally” protesting the potential loss of health benefits.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro held a roundtable listening session with local United Mine Workers of America members at UMWA’s District 2 office in the Uniontown area Friday afternoon amid the backdrop of a looming insolvency for their union pension plan.
Shapiro heard from numerous retired mine workers urging pension reform and assured them that he and his office were fighting for them.
“We’re just asking for what we are owed,” South Union Township resident and UMWA Local 2300 Secretary Tony Kodric told Shapiro. “We’re not asking for any handouts or whatever. We just want what was promised to us for working all the years.”
“I’m going to use whatever influence I have to push those guys in Washington, number one,” Shapiro promised the several dozen attendees. “And number two, I’m going to use whatever legal tools I have to make sure you get every single penny of what is owed to you.”
Both houses of Congress are considering related versions of the proposed American Miners Pension Act, which according to the UMWA would protect the pensions of 87,000 current beneficiaries and 20,000 more who have vested for their pensions but have not yet begun drawing them.
The UMWA 1974 Pension Plan is expected to become insolvent in 2022 or 2023, but any market downturn will rapidly accelerate insolvency, according to the UMWA.
So sticking with the UMWA pension status quo is not an option, Shapiro was told repeatedly by UMWA retirees Friday. One pensioner told Shapiro that his 82-year-old mother has lived on a $664-per-month pension since 1988 when his father, who worked in the Ellsworth mine for 44 years, died. Another pensioner said that his 89-year-old mother-in-law gets a pension of just $425 a month after her husband passed away from black lung disease.
Shapiro was flanked during the listening session by Chief Deputy Attorney General Nancy A. Walker and UMWA International District 2 Vice President Ed Yankovich.
“He’s always had our back,” Yankovich said of Shapiro when the attorney general stated that he had opposed right-to-work laws his entire career in response to an attendee’s complaint about them.
Under right-to-work laws, states have the authority to determine whether workers can be required to join a labor union to get or keep their job.
“I don’t view this as welfare,” Shapiro said of UMWA members’ pensions. “I don’t view this as us paying you to help you out. I view this as something you earn along the way that you have a legal interest in.”
Shapiro said that Walker is the first ever chief deputy attorney general for fair labor, operating in the Fair Labor Section of the attorney general’s office.
“We put our money where our mouth is,” Shapiro said. “Nancy’s job is to use the law to protect your interests and rights. Ed (Yankovich) knows how to reach her and reach me.”
“I appreciate all your help,” Kodric told Shapiro towards the end of the listening session. “Any help we can get, we’ll take it.”
The region’s congressional delegation in Washington is backing the American Miners Pension Act, a necessary measure aimed at protecting more than 87,000 current beneficiaries and another 20,000 eligible coal miners with vested pension.
The 1974 UMWA Pension Plan is currently headed toward insolvency. The AMP Act aims to shore up the 1974 plan to ensure retired miners in the country, including the 26,967 retired miners in West Virginia and 7,300 in Virginia, won’t lose the pensions they paid into for decades.
Keep in mind that these are the same brave men and women who helped to power our nation while laboring deep underground. Now it is up to Congress to ensure that they receive their hard-earned benefits.
Specifically, the AMP Act would use the provision from the Miners Protection Act to allow transfers of excess funds in the Abandoned Mine Land program to the 1974 UMWA pension plan.
The bill was introduced last week by U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.; U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.; U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., U.S. Rep. David McKinely, R-W.Va., U.S. Rep. Evan Jenkins, R-Va., and U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Va.
The Abandoned Mine Land program uses fees paid by present-day coal mining companies to reclaim mines abandoned before 1977, according to a CNHI News West Virginia report. The American Miners Pension Act would also direct the Treasury Department to loan the pension plan funds annually; cap the annual loan amount at $600 million and set the interest rate at 1 percent; require the fund to pay interest for the first 10 years and then pay back the principal plus interest over a 30-year term; and require the fund to certify each year that the pension plan is solvent and able to pay back the principal and interest.
Congress passed legislation earlier this year to ensure health benefits for 22,600 miners. Now it is important for lawmakers to take additional steps to ensure that the retired coal miners receive the pension they rightfully earned.
The American Miners Pension Act merits full consideration and support.
The latest attempt to secure benefits for tens of thousands of retired coal miners pits Appalachia against the West, with battle lines drawn by region and not by party as Congress seeks to solve a looming crisis by pumping federal loans into failing pension plans.
Last week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced the American Miners Pension Act, legislation aimed at ensuring the pensions of 87,000 retired union miners — and another 20,000 who will retire in the coming years — don’t go belly up. The bill is the latest attempt to secure the financial future of miners and comes on the heels of Congress acting late last year to preserve health care benefits for workers and their families.
But while the health care issue attracted wide support, the matter of pensions is proving to be trickier. In addition to opposition from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who believes broader pension reform is the answer as opposed to a bill tailored just to miners, geographic differences have been amplified.
At last week’s press conference announcing the bill, lawmakers spoke openly of how the policy battle is, in essence, pitting one state against another.
“Wyoming is not on board. … This is where we have our work cut out for us,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia Republican and a co-sponsor of the bill along with Sen. Joe Manchin, West Virginia Democrat, Rep. David McKinley, West Virginia Republican, and Rep. Peter Welch, Vermont Democrat.
Indeed, while Wyoming has its own rich history of coal mining, lawmakers there remain deeply opposed to the miners’ pension act.
Sen. Michael B. Enzi, Wyoming Republican, has opposed similar efforts in the past and once again stands in the way of the bill.
“Senator Enzi has the deepest respect for coal miners and has said time and time again that coal miners play an integral part in our economy,” the senator’s spokesman, Max Donofrio, said in a statement. “But he has serious concerns with legislation designed to bailout of the United Mine Workers of America’s (UMWA) underfunded pension plan. While it might appear that loaning taxpayer dollars into the pension plan with the American Miners Pension Act would be a worthy cause, Senator Enzi believes that in reality it would be a perilous treatment that wouldn’t cure the disease.”
Mr. Enzi also said the legislation relies on “budget gimmicks” that will add to the nation’s debt.
To shore up the miners’ pensions — which Mr. Manchin and others say are backed by the federal government under a decades-long commitment initially put in place by former President Truman — the bill would transfer unused funds from the federal Abandoned Mine Land program into pensions.
More important, it would direct the Treasury Department to lend the pension plans up to $600 million each year with an interest rate of 1 percent, and the pension funds would pay back only interest for the first decade.
In trying to get skeptical lawmakers, such as Mr. Enzi, on board supporters have framed the issue as a moral one.
“If it wasn’t for these hard-working men and women, … you wouldn’t have the country you have today,” Mr. Manchin said last week at a press conference unveiling the bill. “We’ve got to fix this and we’ve got to make sure we take care of the people.”
Still, Mr. Enzi and others dispute that the federal government actually has any obligation to bail out the union pension plans. Mr. Enzi’s spokesman maintained that the issue is “a private agreement made between the members and the UMWA.”
While the regional battle certainly makes for an unique political fight, the bill looks to have little chance of going anywhere. The pension plans are projected to remain solvent through 2022, giving lawmakers little incentive to act now.
Furthermore, Mr. McConnell isn’t throwing his weight behind the measure.
“The UMWA pension is one of many struggling multiemployer pensions, and Sen. McConnell believes that it would be best addressed through broader pension reform,” said a spokesman for the Senate leader.
A bipartisan Congressional group from the Ohio Valley and beyond introduced a new bill to save pensions for retired union coal miners throughout the region.
The American Miners Pension Act, or AMP, would secure pensions for about 43,000 miners in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia whose retirement benefits have been undermined by the decline of the coal industry.
West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin said Congress acted to protect miners’ health benefits last year but pensions got kicked down the road.
“And every day that it goes without settling our pension problems it’s another day this will cost more,” Manchin said.
Without Congressional action, the United Mine Workers pension plan could become insolvent in about five years. The UMW blames the pension fund’s decline on a downturn in coal markets and coal company bankruptcies. The AMP Act would transfer excess funds from the federal Abandoned Mine Land program to the UMW pension plan. Manchin said bankruptcy laws are also at the root of the problem.
“This will repeat itself time and time again. We’re not going to change it unless we change our bankruptcy laws,” Manchin said.
Manchin said the bill seeks a loan, not a bailout. The AMP Act would require the pension fund to certify each year that it is solvent and able to pay back the principal and interest. UMW representatives warn that if their pension plan collapses, the beneficiaries and their dependents will be moved into the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, which could also put that important source of pension protection at risk.
Robert Bailey was a coal miner for 36 years and retired from Patriot Coal, a company Peabody Coal created. Patriot carried many pension and health benefit costs from Peabody and has twice declared bankruptcy. Bailey said he worries he will lose his main source of income if the UMW’s pension plan becomes insolvent.
“It would definitely be devastating to the majority of coal miners that depend on this,” Bailey said.
Bailey said he has developed black lung and is unable to work. His wife left work to stay home and care for him as well. He said the federal government promised long ago to guarantee lifelong benefits for miners — a pledge he said the AMP Act would keep.
“If they have any morals, to me, they would have to pass it,” Bailey said.
Coal retirees have been fighting to secure their benefits for nearly five years. The average monthly pension payment in the Ohio Valley is about $500 to $600.
WVPB’s Glynis Board, Roxy Todd, and Jessica Lilly contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — United Mine Workers Union President Cecil Roberts says union officials met last week with President Donald Trump’s nominee to head up the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, David Zatezalo.
Zatezalo, of Wheeling, is the the former chief executive of Rhino Resources. Roberts said the union wants to keep an open mind.
“We’re trying to be fair here. I don’t want to say, “well he came out of industry and was a supervisor and we are going to be opposed to him,’” Roberts said. “We thought it was fair to have him come in.”
Roberts said the meeting lasted for more than 90 minutes. Union officials haven’t yet decided where they will land, Roberts said.
“We’re still having that conversation and we’re not ready to take a position on that. We are very appreciative of his willingness to (have the meeting),” Roberts said.
Zatezalo holds an undergraduate engineering degree from WVU and a graduate degree from Ohio University. He began his mining career with Consolidation Coal Company where he was a member of the UMWA. He then moved into management.
The confirmation vote from the U.S. Senate is required before Zatezalo can assume the role.
Many thank you’s were extended Wednesday morning from members of the Black Lung Association to Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., for her support of the Miners’ Protection Act, which allowed United Mine Workers to keep their health insurance.
But after the pleasantries were exchanged with Capito’s field representative, a fourth generation coal miner asked, “What’s the status of our pension?”
Ricky Coalson, a man who spent 37 and a half of his 60 years underground, said he was glad health care was addressed first.
“I have black lung, heart trouble and back trouble,” Coalson said as the overhead light reflected on his salt and pepper hair. “I take nine pills a day.”
His wife of 41 years, Kathy, also has health concerns.
“She takes about five pills a day. We really didn’t know what we were going to do if we lost coverage.”
The Coal City man is thankful for the peace of mind the Miners’ Protection Act has offered his family. But now, his attention is turned to his pension, as he and his wife are on a fixed income.
He said he’s not greedy by any means, but he wants what was promised to him and others who made sacrifices to help power the nation.
“When I went into the mines, I knew my health would pay the price. But I knew I’d have good benefits and my family could live good.”
His great-grandfather, his grandfather and his father were all coal miners before him. He followed in their footsteps, but he urged his son to take another path.
“He asked me about going into the mines. I told him I’d rather him not. He drives a tractor-trailer.”
Coalson said he and his fellow miners have been told they could see a resolution for their pensions by 2021.
He said they’ll continue working with Capito and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. They’ll also continue calling other senators asking for their support.
“I just ask them to give us what was promised. The president promised it back in the ’50s that we would have hospitalization and pension for doing such dangerous work.”
Without his pension, Coalson said his finances will be thrown for a loop.
“We’ll have to figure out ways to redo it. We’ll make it, don’t get me wrong, but it’ll put us in a bind. We would lose almost $1,100 a month.”
Capito’s field representative Todd Gunter said senators are working on a solution.
“We’ve received a lot of phone calls from UMWA workers in the last three weeks,” Gunter said. “Capito and Manchin are working on that.”
He added, “Health care was a heavy lift, and the pensions are going to be a heavy lift, but I don’t think it’s impossible.”
Manchin introduced the Miners Pension Protection Act in May, which would amend the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 to transfer funds in excess of amounts needed to meet obligations under the Abandoned Mine Land fund to the 1974 Pension Plan to prevent its insolvency.
The bill has been referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, but has not yet been brought to a vote.
RACINE, W.Va. — Even though their years in the coal mines of Southern West Virginia are well in the past, Jerry Bell and Curtis Akers said Monday they still worry about the future of miners who don’t have the advocacy of a union.
Bell, of Logan, and Akers, of Boone County, stood under a tent at the 79th annual United Mine Workers of America Labor Day Celebration on Monday. They listened to speeches from politicians and music from across the state while they discussed the past work and future battles in their ongoing war to secure wages, health care, retirement and overall well-being in the Mountain State.
“Right now, we’ve been having a big battle for years about our health care,” Bell said. “We were promised health care back in 1946 from the government, and through a series of calamities, they were cutting a lot of people off. We kept fighting for it. Now, we’ve got health care, but the battle’s not over.”
About 1,000 union members, their families and local and state politicians came to John Slack Memorial Park, in Racine, as part of the annual celebration that is equal parts friendly reunion and campaign event, said Boone County Circuit Clerk Sue Ann Zickafoose.
“They come to talk about the industry, about mining,” Zickafoose said. “They talk about being unionized. What I think people take away from this is that they have better days ahead of them. They’ve got a hopeful voice about them.”
Zickafoose said this year’s crowd was on the smaller side, since it’s not an election year. She also attributed lower union membership from the downturn in the coal industry and the expansion of non-union mines.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January that union participation nationwide decreased by 0.4 percent between 2015 and 2016. About 866,000 people worked in the mining, quarrying and oil and gas extraction industries in 2015, and that number decreased to 765,000 in 2016, according to the bureau’s statistics. The number of union members in those industries decreased by 4,000 in the same time frame.
Longtime union brothers Danny White of Varney (left) and Phillip Justice of Gilbert catch up during Monday’s annual United Mine Workers’ Labor Day barbecue, at John Slack Memorial Park, in Racine, Boone County. Credit: F. BRIAN FERGUSON | Gazette-Mail
Brian Lacy, international representative for the UMW, said the downturn of unions in West Virginia is connected to the passage of prevailing wage and right-to-work laws by the West Virginia Legislature in 2015.
“[Right-to-work] is designed to divide membership and try to weaken labor organizations,” Lacy said. “They pretty it up with a pretty slogan and make it sound like they’re out there fighting for workers’ rights, but really, it’s the opposite.”
Sen. Ron Stollings, D-Boone, described the picnic as being part of Boone County’s heritage, and he also brought up the prevailing wage and right-to-work laws.
“All the things organized labor feels is necessary basically is gone now,” Stollings said. “These people who are working non-union are working for less salary and less benefits.”
Fayette Smith, of Boone County, sat in the shade with her back to the Big Coal River as she talked about how her husband worked in the mining industry. She said she’s concerned about the loss of wages among those working in non-union mines today.
“[The non-union mines] take and bribe these people to work for them, putting money out in front of them,” Smith said. “In the long run, they’re stealing everything they have from them as they get older. Whereas, in the union, it’s the opposite.”
After singing for the crowd, Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, said people in the coal mining industry are “good, honest, hardworking people.”
“People like to know that they’re not going to have to declare bankruptcy over being sick,” Pushkin said. “They like to know that, when they go to work, they have a safe workplace. They need a job to go to.”
Smith said she worries about the safety of people, including her son, who work in the mines.
“They’re out there to make money, these non-union mines,” she said. “All of the coal mining industry is for money, but if you don’t have safety, and you keep running through people, pretty soon you’re not going to have workers. They’re going to be gone, because you killed them all.”
There have been 12 mining deaths in the United States in 2017, according to the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, and six of those were in West Virginia.
Sen. Richard Ojeda, D-Logan, said it is up to lawmakers to not cave in to threats from lobbyists for the coal industry while working for the rights of union workers.
“Unions are the voice of our working-class people,” he said. “The moment the union loses their voices, we go back to slavery in West Virginia. That’s a fact. Make no mistake about it, when they are successful in doing away with the UMWA and the other unions, then the working person has no voice.”
Reach Lacie Pierson at lacie.pierson@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1723 or follow @laciepierson on Twitter.
