Vol. 77/No. 15      April 22, 2013

The union is calling for miners and others to join in demonstrations in St. Louis on April 16 and again when bankruptcy hearings begin there April 29. More than 6,000 miners and supporters marched in Charleston, W.Va., April 1, the largest mobilization of miners in many years.

Peabody Energy Corp. — the largest privately owned coal company in the world — created Patriot Coal in 2007 by spinning off all its union operations east of the Mississippi.

Patriot took on 40 percent of Peabody’s pension and health care liabilities, but just 13.3 percent of its coal reserves.

“Spin-off Creates Multiple Benefits for Peabody,” reads a headline in one of the company’s financial publications in 2007, referring to the company’s jettisoning responsibility for pension and health benefits for some 8,400 retired miners and their families.

In 2008 Patriot bought Magnum Coal, a spinoff from Arch Coal, the second-largest U.S. coal company. Now, more than 90 percent of “Patriot” retirees never worked for Patriot Coal.

In July 2012 Patriot filed for bankruptcy.

On March 14 Patriot filed motions with the federal bankruptcy court “To Reject Collective Bargaining Agreements and to Modify Retiree Benefits.”

“‘Modify’ is their word,” UMWA spokesperson Phil Smith said in an April 8 phone interview. “What it really means is ‘eliminate.’”

Patriot, like other coal companies where the UMWA has contracts, pays into union-administered funds for retiree health and pension benefits. This multi-employer fund covers 93,000 miners and family members. Patriot has asked the court to allow it to withdraw from the funds.

For health care, Patriot has proposed putting $15 million in a UMWA-run trust, with vague promises of later adding up to $300 million based on projected profits.

“The $300 million is a lot of ‘buts,’ ‘ifs’ and ‘maybes,’” Smith said. “We will be asking the judge not to take these steps. If there is going to be some sort of alternate way, it needs to be fully funded.”

The Charleston Daily Mail reported April 3 that Patriot is also going after the benefits of its nonunion employees, including asking the court to allow it to halt all medical benefits for nonunion retirees.

The UMWA is working with other unions and community and religious groups to build the upcoming protests. “We’re not going away,” Smith said. “We’ll be back and back again, until we get justice.”

“It’s just wrong the way Peabody has gone about making a new company Patriot Coal, then putting their pensioners in it, and now wanting to dump all their miners and retirees and health care by going bankrupt,” Peggy Vondrasek, a retired miner member of UMWA Local 1740, said by phone from Corydon, Ky., April 9. “If Peabody and Patriot can get away with this, who’s to say when the rest of the companies will stop paying into the funds?

“The working people of this country have been messed with enough,” she said. “It is time all blue-collar workers come together. Solidarity. An injury to one is an injury to all.”
 
 
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