Peabody Coal closed its last union mine in Illinois, the Marissa mine, on October 23. The company also announced it will suspend operations at two Indiana mines at the end of this year, resulting in a loss of more than 600 union jobs. The Arch Coal Co. and the Brushy Creek Coal Co. have also announced the closing of their mines in Illinois. Consolidation Coal (Consol) intends to seal its Ohio No. 11 mine in western Kentucky as early as November.

Many of the mine closings are blamed by both the companies and UMWA officials on the Clean Air Act. New limits on sulfur dioxide emissions, which contribute to smog and acid rain, go into effect on Jan. 1, 2000. Companies burning high-sulfur coal are required to install pollution controls to meet these new limits. Most Illinois coal is high in sulfur.  
 

Coal can be clean

Coal can be burned cleanly by installing scrubbers to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions. Rather than doing so, which would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and cut into energy company profits, many of the power companies are switching to low-sulfur coal from other mines in the area and from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. In the case of the southeastern Illinois utility, AmerenCIPS, scrubbers were actually removed from their Newton Power Station to make way for a multimillion dollar conversion to be able to burn western coal.

The state and federal governments, however, are expected to contribute $57 million to the estimated $127 million costs to build a new power plant in central Illinois to burn coal from a nonunion mine owned by Turris Coal Co. The power plant, to be build across from the Elkhart mine, plans to test a new low-emission boiler system to burn the 300,000 tons per year of high-sulfur coal it will get from Turris. This means an expansion for the mine, including hiring 50 workers.

The average price of electricity is much higher in Illinois than in neighboring states. This is not because of scrubber installation or the Clean Air Act, but because of the state's expensive nuclear plants. In 1997 Illinois had 11 nuclear units, more than any other state in the nation. One of them, Clinton, built in 1987, was slated to cost $500 million but came in at over $4 billion. Expenses at Clinton caused Illinois Power to become one of the most expensive suppliers of electricity in the Midwest. The power plant has been inoperable since 1996 due to safety problems, and is a current net user of electricity.

Illinois Power, the Marissa mine's biggest customer, refused to install scrubbers at its Baldwin and Hennepin power plants, saying they would cost too much. Peabody said it will provide low-sulfur coal to the power company from a mine in Wyoming. All of Peabody's operations in Wyoming are nonunion. In the context of the Marissa closing, workers at the preparation plant at the mine shut down that facility for five days by calling in sick, in response to company attacks on seniority.  
 

Bosses expand nonunion mining

Meanwhile, Peabody has actually expanded its coal reserves in the Midwest by acquiring an 82 percent interest in the Black Beauty Coal Co., which mines high- and low-sulfur coal. Black Beauty has nine mines in Indiana, making it the largest coal producer in the state, as well as three in southern Illinois, and has announced the opening of another mine in Illinois. Several miners have noted that Peabody seems to find contracts for high-sulfur Black Beauty coal, but not for the union-organized Marissa mine.

All but one of the Black Beauty mines are nonunion. Workers at the company's Eagle Valley mine are organized by the Boilermakers. Labor for that mine is contracted out to Coal Miners Inc. Other mines owned by Black Beauty also contract out the labor. Contracting is widespread in the Powder River Basin and is even spreading into traditional UMWA strongholds like southern West Virginia. The expansion of contracting out of work, often at substantially lower pay, is part of the offensive by the coal barons to squeeze more out of miners through speed up of production, extension of working hours, and elimination of job classifications.

At the Eagle Valley mine, wages for bathhouse workers start at just over $7 per hour and underground miners start at $9 per hour. At UMWA mines, miners' starting pay is $16–18 per hour, and bathhouse jobs go to top-seniority workers.

Brushy Creek Coal Co. announced the closing of its mine in southern Illinois in September. Western Fuels, the energy company that owns the mine, also promotes coal from its reserves in Wyoming. About half of the 143 workers laid off at the Brushy Creek mine, which opened in 1979, are just short of the 20 years needed to qualify for company-funded lifetime medical coverage for themselves and their spouses, as well as for a pension. Between 30 and 40 workers at the Marissa mine face the same situation.

In 1946 union miners won the right to full lifetime health coverage. The funds for these benefits have recently been under assault from coal companies trying to chip away at health care for miners and retirees. More than 1,000 UMWA retirees and others were meeting in Evansville to discuss these attacks on the fund when Brushy Creek announced the mine closing. The chances for these laid off miners to get hired at other UMWA mines to complete their 20 years of service is slim.  
 
 
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