Published: December 27, 2016 |

[Click image to enlarge]

The United Mine Workers of America will waste no time in renewing its fight to guarantee health insurance and pension benefits for retired coal miners after the 115th Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3, said UMWA spokesman Phil Smith.

“We are already working with our congressional allies on language to be reintroduced the first week Congress is back,” Smith said, adding, “We intend to have legislation introduced that week, if not that day.”

The UMWA was hopeful that Congress would take action prior to the end of the year. To draw attention to the cause, thousands of retired coal miners traveled from coal states to Washington in September for a rally on the U.S. Capitol lawn. Nine buses carrying several hundred Southern Illinois retirees and their family members left from various points across the region.

On. Dec. 9, Congress agreed to a stopgap spending bill that averted a government shutdown. The deal included $45 million for four months of health insurance benefits for the roughly 16,500 miners and their spouses and widows who faced a loss of health care benefits on Dec. 31. Their benefits will be extended through late April.

Approval of the spending plan was pushed an hour shy of Congress’ deadline to avoid a shutdown as lawmakers wrangled over the issue of benefits for coal miners affected by a rash of company bankruptcies.

There are about 3,500 affected miners in Southern Illinois whose benefits were anticipated to run dry at year’s end or in the spring of 2017, according to the UMWA.

While the four-month benefit extension buys some time, the UMWA leadership and regional retired coal miners expressed disappointment with the lack of a long-term deal.

“This is an issue that is a lifetime issue for these folks, not a four-month issue,” Smith said late this past week. “What we don’t need is to be kicking this can down the road every four to six to eight months and not providing them with the mental security they need.”

After Patriot Coal emerged from its first bankruptcy proceeding in 2013, a Voluntary Employees’ Beneficiary Association, or VEBA, was created to provide for continued payments for health care benefits. It was funded by Peabody and Patriot.

That deal fell apart after Patriot emerged from a second Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2015. Peabody struck a deal with the UMWA in early 2016 to provide another $75 million to the trust in installments, but that represented roughly half of what was owed under the original plan.

Bill Rodgers, who lives just outside of Thompsonville, is among those who would have lost benefits on Dec. 31 without the extension. “I guess four months is better than nothing,” he said. “I think we’re at the point now where we’ll take anything.”

Rodgers began working for Peabody Energy in 1969 at Eagle No. 1 mine near Shawneetown. His career with Peabody ended around 1993 when Peabody shut down Eagle No. 2, also located in Gallatin County, he said.

Rodgers said he is in a better place than some others because his wife worked for the U.S. Postal Service, and the two took the necessary steps while she was still working to make sure he could be transferred onto her plan if he lost his. Recently, he said, the couple filled out the paperwork to put him on her plan, and then sought to undo that after Congress struck a deal on a four-month extension. Rodgers said that while the uncertainty has created headaches, he’s far more worried about those who have no options.

“Some of these guys, I don’t know where their next meal is coming from really if they were to shut off everything,” Rodgers said.

Jim Miller, who lives near Sesser, is among a group of coal miners whose benefits are slated to expire later in the spring of 2017. He was not directly helped by the four-month extension Congress approved, but could soon face the same predicament as those retirees whose benefits were scheduled to be cut off at year’s end. Miller retired from Alpha Natural Resources in 2007. He last worked at the Wabash mine in Keensburg. Alpha filed bankruptcy in August 2015.

“It’s frustrating and it’s mind-boggling and everything all combined,” Miller said. “I can deal with it. If I have to be on the street without nothing, I can get on.” But Miller said he’s worried about his wife, as trying to figure out what to do if the benefits evaporate has consumed her, he said. “My wife is a nervous basket case. I don’t know what to tell her.”

As the fight continues, Jack McReynolds, a retired coal miner from West Frankfort and president of the UMWA Local Union 2420, District 12, said “the one we have to deal with is that Mitch McConnell.”

We’ve got all kinds of people on our side and he’s the Senate majority leader and standing in the way” McReynolds said. McConnell has been dogged by accusations from UMWA members that he held up passage of the measure because the union supported his opponent in a recent election. McConnell has said, according to multiple media outlets, that he has been committed to attempting to ensure the retirement security of coal miners and other retirees whose pension funds are unstable.

Source: (December 27, 2016) The Southern Illinoisan

Be in-the-know when you’re on-the-go!