UMWA miners at four Horizon-owned mines, Starfire, Marrowbone, Cannelton, and Ziegler No. 11 took one or two memorial days to protest the company’s maneuvers to gut their contract.

“The hall for the rally was jam-packed,” Darrell Keyes, president of UMWA Local 5890 at Horizon’s Starfire mine in Hazard, Kentucky, told the Militant.

Newcoal LLC, formed by billionaire Wilbur Ross and four other investors, wants to buy Horizon’s properties. But Newcoal doesn’t want Horizon’s union operations in Illinois, Kentucky, and West Virginia, according to a Horizon spokesman.

Horizon, the fourth-largest coal producer in the United States, operates 42 mines—27 surface and 15 underground—in Kentucky, West Virginia, Illinois, Indiana, and Colorado. The coal giant has been in insolvency proceedings for 18 months, and is now asking U.S. bankruptcy judge William Howard for permission to sell off its properties minus the contractual obligations the UMWA has won at the mines.

Horizon was created in May 2002, following the bankruptcy of its predecessor, Addington Enterprises Inc. (AEI), owned by the super-wealthy Addington brothers. Horizon went bankrupt six months later. It has proposed a corporate reorganization under which it would not be responsible for medical benefits for miners and retirees who had worked at Zeigler Coal and Old Ben Coal under an earlier reorganization.

Horizon claims it cannot sell its union mines so long as the successor clause remains in effect, under which prospective buyers would have to recognize the union and honor contractual obligations, said Keyes. “If the judge rules in their favor it will set American workers back a long way,” Keyes explained. “If they are able to do this, it’ll give other bosses the idea they can do the same thing.”

The July 20 rally follows on a similar protest of 600 on June 30.

Johnny Viars of London, Kentucky, a miner at the Starfire mine, said if UMWA contacts are not honored, the workers will lose health-care benefits. “All they want to do is cut, cut, cut,” Viars told the Louisville Courier Journal. “We’ve had all the cuts we can take.”

UMWA president Cecil Roberts said Horizon’s demands would leave 1,000 miners and 2,300 retirees without health benefits. Other cuts reportedly proposed by Horizon include the elimination of 22 vacation and paid contract days, a freeze on wages for the duration of the contract, and elimination of the UMWA Fund’s role in sick and accident benefits.

“People work hard all their lives to earn the benefits that will protect them later in life when they are no longer able to work,” Roberts said, “and in one fell swoop, a bankruptcy judge can just take it all away with the stroke of a pen.”

Attorneys for Horizon at the June 30 hearing did not ask to have union contracts voided in the bankruptcy proceedings, the Courier Journal reports. Horizon attorney Douglas Lutz said disclosure statements in the case file presented terms of the union contract so potential buyers will realize that collective-bargaining agreements exist with some mines. The paper did not report on the company’s plans for the Zeigler Coal and Old Ben Coal mines.

Roberts told the miners and their supporters that Horizon managers “ran this company into the ground” and that the miners are now being asked to pay for it. Thousands of other workers face similar attacks, he said, because the U.S. bankruptcy laws are written to favor the bosses.

The Louisville daily reported that “the federal government has stepped in to protect the pensions of more than 4,800 nonunion employees at Horizon.”

The U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. announced last week that is has assumed responsibility for Horizon’s pension plan. The coal company pension plan has $45 million in assets to cover nearly $132 million in benefit promises. Jeffrey Speicher of the government guaranty agency said the federal pension program would be liable for $75 million of the $87 million shortfall.

On July 6 Horizon gave 250 miners at its Zeigler No. 11 mine in Coulterville, Illinois, layoff notices effective September 4. Other than a unionized coal loading facility at Metropolis and a union mine in White County near the Indiana border, Zeigler No. 11 is the last UMWA-operated mine in southern Illinois, according to The Southern Illinoisan.

Jay Ressler is a member of UMWA Local 1248.  
 
 
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