Published: January 7, 2020 |

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin celebrates the signing of a federal spending package that includes funding for miners’ pensions.
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Standing in front of the United Mine Workers of America District 17 headquarters in Charleston Monday, U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., held one last celebration for the signing of a spending package that included funding for a union miner pension program.

“It’s a great day to say to miners and their families that you have your pensions for life. They’re not going to be cut,” Manchin said. “And for the 35,000 miners that have lost their health care, they have their health care for life. It’s a pretty good day. It’s really a Merry Christmas.”

President Donald Trump signed two bills Dec. 20 for fiscal year 2020 totaling more than $1.4 trillion. Included in spending package was the Bipartisan American Miners Act 2019, providing funding for the United Mine Workers of America’s 1974 Pension Plan.

The act funds existing pension obligations by using surplus monies from the Abandoned Mine Land Fund to fund pensions, as well as health care benefits for miners whose companies declared bankruptcy in 2018 and 2019, until the pension fund is fully funded.

The pension plan covers retirement benefits for 92,000 retired miners and health care benefits for 13,000 miners.

Annual benefits total more than $199 million.

“I think it’s the best Christmas present we’ve had for many, many years,” said Donnie Samms, at-large international vice president for the UMWA. “It’s been a battle like I’ve never seen in my 45 years in this union. This will go down in history as the biggest labor victory in the last 130 years.”

Manchin was in Fairmont and Matewan last week to celebrate as part of the “Promises Kept” tour. Levi Allen, UMWA International secretary-treasurer, made Manchin an honorary UMWA member for his work since 2013 to pass a fix for the miners’ pension fund.

“Right now, there are 78 miners who lost their lives in Farmington that are looking down on us right now, Joe, and they’re saying thank you for never forgetting where you came from right now,” Allen said. “Robert C. Byrd is up there playing a fiddle song for you and he’s saying, thank you for never forgetting where you come from.”

The plan was estimated to go insolvent by 2022 and would have caused retired miners, widows and other beneficiaries to lose an average of $600 per month in pension benefits. The announcement Oct. 29 that Murray Energy, the largest union coal mine company in the U.S., was filing for bankruptcy raised concerns with lawmakers that the pension plan could go insolvent at a quicker pace.

The pension plan is an offshoot of a 1946 agreement among the UMWA, coal companies and the U.S. government to provide miners with retirement benefits and health care.

“This is the only pension in the world, the only pension that has the backing of the United States government,” Manchin said. “It wasn’t that we were asking for the taxpayers to pay us. That wasn’t it. It was basically saying for every ton of coal to be mined from that day forward, there would be a certain amount of that money that went into a retirement and a health care fund.”

Versions of the Bipartisan American Miners Act have floundered in Congress over the years, including Manchin’s American Miners Act and the Miners Pension Protection Act, introduced by Congressman David McKinley, R-W.Va. In November, Manchin and U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., were able to get Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to co-sponsor the Bipartisan American Miners Act before its inclusion in the 2020 spending package.

“There’s no question that these coal miners have worked extremely hard for their pensions, and we’ve guaranteed that they are going to have them just in time for Christmas,” Capito said in a statement. “I was proud to stand alongside these hardworking men and women — as well as Leader McConnell, Senator Manchin, Congressman McKinley, and the UMWA — every step of the way. It’s because of their dedication and heart that we were able to reach this point, and I thank them for keeping up the fight until the very end.”

Manchin thanked Capito and McKinley for helping get the legislation across the finish line, calling it a bipartisan effort. The next goal for Manchin is bankruptcy reform.

The Stop Looting American Pensions Act, or SLAP Act, was introduced by Manchin Oct. 30. The bill would make workers a higher priority during bankruptcy proceedings, require companies to continue making contributions to pension and health care plans, put restrictions on executive pay, and require the sale of assets within 60 days of the bankruptcy filing.

“If we don’t change the bankruptcy laws in America, they’ll never be another worker that ever gets a pension or a benefit,” Manchin said. “We’re fighting for this. I can’t thank you enough. It’s been the honor of my life to be able to have this fight.”

Source: The Intelligencer

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