President Cecil Roberts gives an update on the United Mine Workers’s continued fight to preserve the pensions of retired and active miner’s.
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Miners Lobby for Action on Pensions
Source: E&E News
The United Mine Workers of America returned to Capitol Hill this week as Congress mulls who will decide the fate of their pensions.
Party leaders in both chambers have yet to select the special joint committee tasked with shoring up pensions for roughly 1.5 million union workers, including 107,000 former UMWA miners (E&E Daily, Feb. 8).
Born out of the recent budget compromise, the panel — 16 members split evenly between House and Senate, Republican and Democrat — avoided another government shutdown fight over the issue.
The committee is instructed to come up with legislation by the last week of November. If at least five Democrats and five Republicans approve, the bill will be guaranteed an expedited floor vote without amendments.
After nearly a decade of camouflage-clad campaigning, the UMWA sees a crack of light at the end of the tunnel.
Democrats are solidly behind the push, and many Republicans have backed at least a UMWA fix, but selection of panel members will be vital as conservative groups have criticized pension action.
“The key is to get people on there that want to settle it,” UMWA retiree Eddie Embry said yesterday. “Not somebody that wants to muddy the water and drag it out from now until November and then disband the committee.”
Embry has made a dozen road trips — traveling about 17,000 miles — from western Kentucky to Capitol Hill in little over a year.
This time, UMWA members delivered letters from retirees unable to make the journey.
Dick Lucas, a UMWA retiree from West Virginia, noted pension money is important not only to people but rural areas where retirees represent a major portion of the population and keep many businesses afloat.
The pension funds aren’t expected to go belly up until at least 2021, but the recent tumult in the coal industry has heightened fears.
“We’re one bankruptcy away from being completely broke because we’ve had so many companies go into bankruptcy,” shedding their pension obligations, Embry said.
Written by: Dylan Brown
Speaker Bates reaffirms support for Navajo families at ‘Yes to NGS’ rally
Source: The Navajo-Hopi Observer
PHOENIX — Hundreds of Kayenta Mine and Navajo Generating Station workers marched on the Arizona State Capitol Feb. 6 to announce the formation of ‘Yes to NGS,’ a coalition that advocates for solutions to ensure the continuation of NGS operations beyond 2019.
The workers were joined by members of the Navajo Nation Council, United Mine Workers of America, state senators and reprepresentatives.
Navajo Nation Council Speaker LoRenzo Bates (Nenahnezad, Newcomb, San Juan, Tiis Tsoh Sikaad, Tse’Daa’Kaan, Upper Fruitland) and Navajo Nation Council Delegate Seth Damon (Bááháálí, Chichiltah, Manuelito, Tsé Lichíí’, Rock Springs, Tsayatoh) were on hand at the rally.
“It’s heartening to see so many Navajo and tribal families here to bring a powerful message to Arizona and Washington leaders. Today, we say ‘Yes to NGS!’” Bates said. “With the creation of this coalition, we are taking another step in this challenging journey to keep Navajo families together by keeping NGS and Kayenta Mine in operation beyond 2019.”
In 2017, Bates sponsored legislation that finalized an agreement between the Nation and NGS owners to continue NGS operations and protected the jobs of hundreds of Navajo workers through the end of 2019.
Myron Richardson and Dwight Lomaintewa, who are employed at Kayenta Mine and whose families rely on the operations of both the mine and the power plant to provide for their households, joined speaker Bates.
Each of them shared the importance of keeping NGS in operation and explained that NGS and Kayenta Mine have allowed their families to remain on their traditional homelands with their extended families rather than having to away from the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribal lands to find employment.
Lomaintewa also noted that the potential closure of NGS would impact the Hopi Tribe tremendously because coal production at Kayenta Mine provides approximately 85-percent of the tribe’s annual revenue.
“Too often we equate the Navajo Generating Station with only dollars and cents,” Bates said. “The real story is about the traditional working family and the work they do to benefit tribal people and families across Arizona.”
Damon, who chairs the Council’s Budget and Finance Committee that is tasked with developing the Nation’s comprehensive budget each year, said he and his colleagues are doing everything possible to advocate for NGS and Kayenta Mine workers to keep their jobs at home and to provide financial stability for the Navajo Nation.
President of the United Mine Workers of America Cecil Roberts also spoke to the workers and urged the federal government to work with the tribes to continue NGS.
“The Navajo Generating Station was developed on tribal lands by tribal workers who mine the coal and create the power that moves water to benefit families and businesses across Arizona,” Roberts said. “The path forward is for the federal government to maintain its ownership position and continue leading the transition to new owners.”
The nonprofit ‘Yes to NGS’ coalition will be tasked with informing communities, engaging stakeholders and advocating for solutions that would allow NGS operations to continue beyond 2019. According to the coalition, the founding members represent well over 100,000 U.S. businesses and organizations.
More information about ‘Yes to NGS’ coalition is available by visiting Yes to NGS.org.
Workers To Rally In Phoenix To Support Navajo Generating Station
Source: kjzz.org
Workers from the Navajo Generating Station and the Kayenta Mine in northeast Arizona will be in Phoenix on Tuesday. They’re calling for action to save the NGS power plant, which is slated to close at the end of next year.
The utility companies that co-own the Navajo Generating Station say they can get power elsewhere more cheaply.
The scheduled shutdown affects hundreds of workers at the station and the Kayenta Mine, which supplies it with coal.
Many of the workers at the plant and the mine are member
s of the Navajo and Hopi nations. The NGS also pays royalties to the tribes.
The United Mine Workers union is urging station owners to sell the plant rather than shut it down.
“We believe there are at least four potential buyers for this power station,” said Cecil Roberts, the union’s president. “Why would you close it, creating all this pain and suffering for many, many others, when somebody wants to give you money for it?”
The mine’s owner, Peabody, has hired a financial firm to work on securing a buyer for the NGS. No buyer has yet come forward publicly.
SRP and other private owners say a sale is possible, but the longer it takes for a buyer to secure a solid deal, the harder a sale becomes.
By Bret Jaspers
UMWA pushes for permanent fix to pension crisis
Source: wdtv.com
MARION COUNTY, W.Va (WDTV) – Roger Merriman never thought that at 66-years-old, he would have to fight to protect his future.
“I put 28 and a half years in the mines with the understanding that I would have lifetime pension and health care,” Merriman said, referring to the Promise of 1946, which was struck by President Harry Truman and the United Mine Workers of America.
The deal created the UMWA Health and Retirement Funds. But that promise is in jeopardy.
Due to the 2008 Recession and a series of bankruptcies in the coal industry, the pension fund has been severely depleted.
There’s fear that if a solution isn’t reached soon, the fund will become insolvent.
“Another coal company going bankrupt or a downturn in the market could make it go a lot quicker,” Merriman said, speaking to 5 News from the UMWA offices in Fairmont.
The congressional delegation from West Virginia has been instrumental in pushing legislation to ensure the 1974 UMWA Pension Plan can continue to pay retired miners or their widows. But bills introduced in the House of Representatives and the Senate last year have stalled.
Union representatives hope conversations about government funding will shine a spotlight on the pension crisis, which could impact more than 100,000 beneficiaries.
“As Congress works to develop legislation to fully fund the government for the rest of the year, it is critical that a solution to the looming multiemployer pension crisis be included in that bill,” said Cecil Roberts, International President of the UMWA. “The UMWA 1974 Pension Plan is on the cusp of insolvency, and is one more coal company away from going under.”
Merriman, who has been to Washington, D.C. to lobby several times on behalf of miners, applauds Senators Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito for relaying miners’ concerns to other lawmakers.
In a statement to 5 News, Manchin cited his role in building consensus to end the government shutdown earlier this week.
“I worked all weekend to find a bipartisan compromise to end the government shutdown,” Manchin said. “And over the next three weeks I’ll continue working to ensure we keep our promise to our coal miners so they don’t lose their hard-earned pensions. These miners earned their pensions through a lifetime of backbreaking work, and I will not stop fighting until these pensions are finally secured.”
Senator Capito echoed those sentiments, releasing her own statement this week.
“I have led bipartisan efforts to address the miners’ pensions issue and will continue these efforts to see that the ‘American Miners Pension Act’ or similar legislation is enacted,” Capito said.
The senators did not, however, indicate if they would insist that a permanent fix be included in any spending bill, or if they would push for it in separate legislation.
Will Congress break pension promise to coal miners, millions of other Americans?
Source: Lexington Herald Leader
A life of hard work should bring more than an old age in poverty. President Gerald Ford underwrote that promise in 1974 by signing the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
The law authorized the use of premiums, not tax dollars, to insure private-sector pensions through the federally chartered Pension Benefits Guaranty Corp. Secure in the knowledge that Congress had their backs, unionized workers often gave up wages in favor of earning retirement benefits.
Now, like any 44-year-old structure, the PBGC needs repairs.
If Congress fails to shore it up, 1.5 million people — including almost 24,000 coal miners and Teamsters in Kentucky — will face cuts in their retirement income. Millions more would suffer if Congress allows the pension backstop to collapse under the weight of 200 teetering plans expected to fail within a decade.
Two years ago, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell killed a stabilization plan for coal miners’ pensions, despite bipartisan support. McConnell has insisted that any fix be part of a broader reform. His spokesman referred questions to the Senate Finance Committee.
Happily, a member of that committee, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is proposing a broad reform, one Democrats want in the spending plan that Congress must approve by Jan. 19.
Under Brown’s plan, Treasury would make low-interest loans to pension funds that have been hammered by economic changes and stock market crashes. The infusion of capital would allow them to make long-term investments while paying benefits. After 30 years, the pension funds would have to repay the loans. Pension funds could borrow no more than they can be expected to pay back and would have to put the loans in safe investments. A new Pension Rehabilitation Administration would require evidence that borrowers are regaining solvency.
Brown’s bill also acknowledges that loans alone will not restore pension funds in the most critical condition, including that of the United Mine Workers of America which covers almost 10,000 Kentuckians, and the Central States Pension Fund which has 400,000 participants, including 14,188 in Kentucky. For them, Brown proposes an infusion of taxpayer dollars into the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corp.
The cost has yet to be determined. Brown is awaiting an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, but the longer Congress delays, the more expensive the fix becomes. Brown’s plan would be far cheaper than letting the PBGC fail, which the CBO says would cost $101 billion, borne by retirees, taxpayers or both.
Brown has dubbed the bill the Butch Lewis Act, in honor of a Vietnam vet who worked to preserve his fellow Teamsters’ pensions. He died in 2015. The bill could bear the name of thousands of workers who risked their lives in the dank underground or through long nights moving goods that kept the economy going — workers who held up their end of the bargain, but who now, through no fault of theirs, could lose the benefits they earned and that they thought the government had insured. The personal pain and economic ripple effects of lost pensions would be especially severe in the coal-mining regions that have supported McConnell and President Donald Trump.
Anti-union think tanks sneer at Brown’s plan as a “bailout” that would do nothing for most taxpayers. It’s no more a bailout than the loans Congress rushed to the bankers who caused the crash of 2008, except the aid would go to the crash’s victims not its perpetrators.
Optimism returns to Grande Cache as coal mine plans to reopen
Source: CBC News
There is renewed optimism in the small resource community of Grande Cache after a foreign company agreed to buy the steel making coal mine that has been shuttered for two years and helped drain the town’s population.
Hundreds of jobs were wiped out in the community northwest of Edmonton after metallurgical coal prices tanked, forcing the local operator to shut the surface and underground mines in 2015.
Facing almost $500 million in debt, Grande Cache Coal was forced into receivership a year ago.
Since then, steelmaking coal prices have bounced back, and the court-appointed receiver has found a buyer.
Sonicfield Global, one of the mine’s lenders, plans to restart mining operations “as soon as possible” after the purchase closes at the end of May, according to court records.
“We have a number of people that have properties and family in Grande Cache that are working elsewhere; they can’t wait to get home,” said Gary Taje, a representative of United Mine Workers of America, which represented coal miners in Grande Cache.
“There’s some excitement in town. The town suffered through a bit of a recession, if not a depression for the last couple of years, and this will get the town back on its feet and restore property values.”
Metallurgical coal from Grande Cache’s mines have historically been shipped to customers mostly in Asia, with some coal heading to Brazil, Europe and Canada.
The coal produced at Grande Cache is used to make steel, as opposed to thermal coal which produces electricity and is being phased out as part of Alberta’s climate change agenda.
At its peak, the mine employed 640 people, but layoffs began in early 2015 after surface mining was suspended due to slumping coal prices. After prices sunk further, the underground mine was shuttered later that year.
By the time that Grande Cache Coal’s Chinese lenders forced it into receivership over nearly $500 million in debts, just 18 workers remained.
Mayor Herb Castle said the town’s population has drained in the past two years.
“We’ve had people walk away from homes, have had cars and trailers and things like that repossessed from people who no longer had employment,” Castle said.
“This is a welcome pick-me-upper or a welcome injection in the economy in our community, because it has the potential of bringing back 500 employees to our community.”
Coun. Yvonne Rempel said the town has survived resource swings in the past, and this time was able to rely on the forestry industry and Grande Cache Institution, a medium security prison, as top employers.
“Grande Cache over the years has weathered the storm this time much better than ever before,” Rempel said.
“We have a community that’s very resilient. We have businesses that have stuck through the hard times and are still in operation. Are things tight for them? Absolutely. But this is a great community.”
Taje said the company plans an initial startup of the surface mine which he believes will lead to 200 new jobs.
The town has been through bouts of disappointment in the past when promises the mine would reopen were never fulfilled. But Taje said this time is different, with a well-financed company now seeking court approval to buy the mine and an outlook of higher coal prices.
“This deal will happen.”
A court is expected to hear the sale application Jan. 8.
Ahead of the expected closing of the deal on May 30, Grande Cache Coal is seeking expressions of interest in over a dozen senior roles at the mine, including foremen and superintendents.
Written by: Reid Southwick
Looming pension shortfalls to complicate next shutdown fight
Source: Politico.com
The next potential sleeper cause of a government shutdown? Pensions.
Congress barely averted a shutdown last year amid a fight over miners’ health care. Now the looming collapse of pension plans for the miners — as well as thousands of Teamster truck drivers and food service workers — is fueling another, even more expensive, round of brinkmanship.
Key Democrats are vowing to fight for a fix as part of any forthcoming deal to fund the government. And they warn that if Congress doesn’t step in soon to forestall the insolvency of several key pension plans — including the massive Central States plan, which covers an estimated 400,000 union workers and retirees — taxpayers risk ending up on the hook for an even bigger multibillion-dollar rescue for the government’s pension guarantee agency.
But it’s far from clear the workers will get their rescue. Conservative Republicans will be loath to provide anything that looks like a bailout, particularly for union workers. And one of the Senate’s leading Democratic advocates for relief, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, is one of the GOP’s top targets ahead of his reelection campaign next year.
Brown said in a Monday interview that he sees the pensions fix as a “moral appeal” for action, along the lines of the Democrats’ push to help the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers.
“There are tens of thousands of Teamsters and mine workers and bakery and confectionery workers and carpenters that will see huge cuts in their pensions, and they start pretty soon” if a long-term solution isn’t reached, Brown said. “It’s not just fixing it and getting it done because the economics and the math get worse and worse. It’s because of what it does to families.”
Last year at this time, Brown joined West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and other Democrats in a standoff over adding long-term health care and pension help for retired miners to must-pass government funding legislation. Senate Majority Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ultimately included a rescue for retired miners’ health care in a $1 trillion spending deal earlier this year, but addressing their pensions wasn’t part of that package.
This winter, it’s more than retired miners who are facing potentially steep pension cuts if their plans aren’t shored up by early next year. The Teamsters are dispatching retirees to the Hill this week to lean on Congress to back a pensions rescue plan.
“We’re still going to do everything we can,” Manchin said in a Monday interview. “I’m pushing as hard as I can.”
Manchin underscored, however, that “it has to be a bipartisan fix.” His proposal to keep miners’ pensions afloat is backed by West Virginia’s GOP senator, Shelley Moore Capito, and GOP Rep. David McKinley, but Brown’s bill that would rescue other so-called multi-employer pension plans has yet to attract a Republican backer.
“We’re working with a lot of Republicans — some that are listening,” said Mike Walden, a retired Teamster who serves as president of the National United Committee to Protect Pensions. “So we’re trying to get them on board to at least get this passed or attached to the spending bill.”
Senators in both parties have been in talks for weeks about a way forward on the pension funding, one source in the upper chamber said. But the prospects for a deal by year’s end are highly uncertain, even though Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) listed “Americans’ endangered pensions” alongside aid to Dreamers as one of their key priorities in a year-end spending deal after a meeting last week at the White House.
And while Brown said he wants a fix included in a funding bill, he did not threaten to withhold his vote if the at-risk pensions aren’t addressed. Lawmakers likely have until the spring to act before certain beneficiaries begin to face lost benefits. “The Republicans are always the ones to shut the government down,” he said. “They’re always the ones threatening.”
Another obstacle, beyond the number of other high-profile priorities on Congress’ year-end to-do list, is the price tag of a broader pensions fix.
Brown’s proposal would empower the Treasury Department to make loans to the at-risk pension plans, which would use the money on safe investments to backstop the retirement plans that are currently at the greatest risk. Beyond those loans, the at-risk plans are expected to require as much as $25 billion in long-term assistance from the government-backed Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation in order to avert insolvency.
But the PBGC is already projected to reach insolvency by 2025, and staving off that worst-case outcome would cost $101 billion over 20 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Miner pensions in jeopardy unless lawmakers act
Source: WTOV9
Pensions for almost 100,000 coal miners and their families are in jeopardy.
Now, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin is teaming up with many Ohio Valley miners. They’re asking for other lawmakers and the public to back them.
The biggest thing Manchin wanted to stress–this is not a government bailout. He says if the bill isn’t passed it could actually cost taxpayers more in the long-run with other government assistance.
Denny Pickens is a United Mine Worker retiree. He’s teamed up with Manchin and other state representatives to push a pension bill.
“I have widows call me,” Pickens said. “I am a past president of my local and without these pensions, I don’t know what they’ll do and it’s a sad phone call when you have to tell someone we don’t know where this is going.”
Pickens says the bill would save the funds for almost 100,000 miners and their families. Manchin and other miners have been meeting in Washington, D.C. with lawmakers concerning the pension issue.
“These are not elaborate pensions and most of them average around $500 and there are a lot of widows that if they lose that in the next year o r two, they lost everything,” Manchin said.
Manchin says the bill should have passed last month, but he says Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell fought the act. Without a compromise, leaders say the fight could actually shut down the government.
Manchin and U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) have pledged to block a federal funding bill unless Republicans act. Other lawmakers from the Ohio Valley are also supporting the pension bill.
“People want to think this is a government bailout, but we are not asking for a taxpayer bailout,” Manchin said. “We are not asking for anything but what our miners have earned. They worked for it and negotiated for it.”
The benefits will expire at the end of the year unless the senate steps in. Manchin urges people to contact lawmakers.
by Crissy Clutter
Service remembers 37 miners killed in Robena Mine explosion
Source: Observer-Reporter
Ray Benninghoff was at work at Fischer Body in West Mifflin 55 years ago when he was pulled aside and told his father was one of the miners missing following an explosion at the U.S. Steel Co.’s Robena No. 3 Mine.
Benninghoff left work that day, Dec. 6, 1962, and went to his parent’s home in McClellandtown to comfort his mother.
“It was sad,” said Benninghoff, who was 32 years old then and is 87 now.
“I remember everything about it,” he said. “There was a lot of snow, the weather was really bad.”
Bennington said he doesn’t remember his family having much hope right from the start.
“There were two explosions,” he explained.
The loss of his father, Norman, who was 57 years old, was very hard on his mother, Anna.
“My mother sat in her rocking chair for a year, waiting for my dad to come home,” he said. “My wife, Mary, took care of her.”
Benninghoff was among the many who gathered Wednesday morning at a service held by United Mine Workers District 2 and Local 1980 to honor the 37 miners who died in the Robena explosion. Norman Benninghoff was a good man and a hard worker, his son said. He was a mechanic and had worked at Robena many years. He was also a good friend.
“I lost my best fishing buddies,” Benninghoff said, referring to his father and two others miners who were friends and who also died in the explosion.
The explosion at Robena occurred at 1:03 p.m. and took the lives of members of two continuous mining crews working about two miles from the base of the mine’s Frosty Run Shaft.
According to news accounts, the force of the explosion was so strong it knocked down men working underground more than two miles away. One hundred and seventy miners were in the mine at the time and 133 escaped unassisted.
The explosion is believed to have been caused by a buildup of methane gas, resulting from a temporary shutdown of ventilation fans. The gas was ignited by a spark from mine equipment.
Each year, the UMW holds the memorial service to honor the fallen miners at a granite monument on Route 21 in Monongahela Township, just west of the shuttered Hatfield’s Ferry Power Plant, and to recognize the importance of the men’s sacrifice in the fight for stronger mine safety laws.
“The spirit of the 37 miners who lost their lives in the Robena No. 3 Mine disaster, hardened the resolve of the United Mine Workers of America,” said Levi Allen, UMW international secretary-treasurer, who was the keynote speaker.
Following the disaster, the union made a commitment to strengthen safety laws, a fight that took seven years and was opposed by coal operators, he said. Finally, on Dec. 30, 1969, Congress passed the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act.
“Robena miners were the catalysts in getting that legislation done,” Allen said. “Their sacrifice has paved the way for every single coal miner who is here today to go home at night after a hard day’s work.”
Allen said the union has a duty to these men to continue the fight to preserve safety in the mines.
“It can’t be a passive duty. It requires action, it requires faith, it requires fighting to preserve the rights these men fought for with their blood and with their lives,” he said.
Benninghoff said he has attended the service a number of times over the years and noted that for some years, the weather has been pretty bad. But, he said, he’s glad the service is always held.
During the ceremony, the names of the 37 men who died in the disaster as well as the names of two men who died in another explosion at Robena on Oct. 2, 1962 were read by Marlon Whoolery, Local 1980 president. Ed Yankovich, international vice president for District 2, served as master of ceremonies.
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