Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 15, 1992 TAG: 9203150124
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS and DOUGLAS PARDUE STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
\ Eighty-one-year-old Raymond Bentley and his 79-year-old wife, Rachel, fear the future.
The Bentleys live in Norton, a small city between the Jefferson National Forest and a landscape of strip-mined ridges in the Southwest Virginia coalfields.
After working 48 years in mines, Bentley retired in 1974. He first went underground at the age of 16 and was assigned the sometimes crippling job of coupling cars that carried coal to daylight.
Bentley is hard of hearing and his health is "not too good." He and his wife visit the doctor once a month, except when an emergency takes them there sooner.
Now, the Bentleys could lose the health-care benefits they have depended on for so long. As a retired union coal miner, Bentley thought he was guaranteed those benefits for life.
The Bentleys are among 120,000 people nationwide threatened with the loss of health benefits from the 1950 and 1974 United Mine Workers Health Benefits Funds. They are retired miners, wives, widows and other dependents who find themselves at the mercy of economic and political whims.
The 1950 and 1974 funds have a $115 million deficit because of a drop in the number of contributing companies in the Bituminous Coal Operators Association, which represents 14 of the nation's largest coal companies in negotiations with the UMW. The administrators of the funds are independent of the UMW and the coal companies.
Union miners fought hard for their health benefits nearly half a century ago, sacrificing not only money that could have gone to wages but thousands of mining jobs, too. Retirees look at the benefits with the same reverence as they do the memory of the late UMW President John L. Lewis and old-time mountain religion. Losing the benefits would be a tremendous psychological blow.
The UMW health funds are set up by contracts between the union and coal companies but are run by trustees independent of the mine-workers' union. Because of a decline in the size and influence of the unionized segment of the coal industry, the funds are running out of money.
The future of the funds is being fought out in two different arenas - the courts and Congress. At stake could be labor peace in the coalfields and, perhaps, labor peace nationwide in this presidential election year.
A federal judge in Abingdon will hear a request Monday for a permanent injunction preventing the trust funds from cutting off benefits for retirees. An Abingdon law firm said it filed the lawsuit on behalf of Virginia retirees the firm refuses to name. The intention is to make it a class-action suit, representing all 120,000 beneficiaries, lawyer James Elliott said.
There are signs, however, that the suit is supported by a coalition of non-union coal companies. The coalition's interest would be either to head off federal legislation to rescue the funds - which would impose a tax on both union and non-union companies - or to avoid the possibility of wildcat strikes sparked by angry union retirees.
If they lose their benefits, many expect the retirees to picket union mines across the nation. There is little doubt that union miners would honor those picket lines and refuse to work, and it is expected that union supporters would try to stop the flow of non-union coal, too.
Retiree health care was a major issue in the 1989-90 strike by the United Mine Workers against the Pittston Co.; and, at its conclusion, then-Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole named a special commission to study the faltering coal-industry health funds. The commission's recommendations guided West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller's legislation to rescue the funds, which is now before Congress.
Under Rockerfeller's plan, coal companies would pay to ensure the stability of a fund providing health care for miners and widows under a provision of a tax bill passed Friday night.
It wasn't clear whether the provision would survive a House-Senate conference committee - and President Bush already has said he will veto the overall bill. The overall measure was approved 50-47.
"If the president vetoes this bill, he is saying these working people shouldn't have health care," Rockefeller said. "In my many years in the Senate, I have never been so moved by a group of people and so driven by an issue. . . . They spent years of their lives in the mines, and were promised health-care coverage for life. I could not stand by and see this promise broken."
Rockefeller's proposal is supported by both the Mine Workers union and the union coal operators' association.
Rockefeller's legislation would allow the transfer of $140 million from the UMW's overfunded pension funds into the failing health funds. And, to ensure the long-term security of the health funds, would impose a fee on each employee-hour worked in the nation's mines.
The fee would be 99 cents in Eastern mines and, by compromise, 15 cents in Western mines with lignite and sub-bituminous coal mines exempted.
Retiree health care was a major issue in the Pittston strike and at its conclusion, Pittston won the concession of the union to buy its way out of the 1950 health trust for a lump-sum payment. Critics have argued that this kind of arrangement is one of the reasons the funds are in trouble.
However, in a recent federal case in Washington, the trust funds forced Pittston and two other coal companies that had dropped out to resume payments into the trust funds. Pittston has appealed.
The non-union companies in the Private Benefits Alliance have waged an all-out lobbying campaign against the Rockefeller legislation. They argue that Dole's commission ignored non-legislative ways to solve the health-care problem.
The non-union companies say they never employed the union miners and should not be forced to pay for their benefits and the UMW and the union coal companies must solve the problem they created.
\ Health-care issue extends beyond coal industry
The coal industry's health-care crisis focuses attention on the tough problemof providing employee health care, which goes far beyond the coal industry. The major issue in labor contract negotiations in a variety of industries over the past several years has been health care.
Organized labor has pushed for a national health-care plan and could seize the Mine Workers crisis to advance its cause. AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland - who personally took part in the Pittston strike - said last November, "The 14 million union members of the AFL-CIO stand shoulder to shoulder with our UMW brothers and sisters to protect the health security of America's retired coal miners. This is a fight that must be won."
While politicians and lawyers wrangle over the failing trust funds, retirees and others who would be hurt by their collapse - such as coalfield doctors, pharmacists, and hospitals - anxiously await the outcome.
Vernon Williams, 69, of Norton, retired in 1984 after spending 35 years underground. In the late 1970s, the UMW allowed companies to start paying for health care through private insurance plans. But Williams' former company is no longer in business and, as an "orphaned" retiree, his and his wife's benefits are paid through the 1974 health trust fund.
Williams is a diabetic with high blood pressure and takes medication for both. His wife suffers from arthritis. He lives on Social Security and a small miner's pension and says he fully depends on his UMW health benefits.
Health-care providers expect that if the retirees lose their benefits, they will delay getting needed care. Most UMW beneficiaries would still be eligible for Medicare, but if they lost their UMW benefits, they would be responsible for the health-care costs Medicare won't pay, such as hospital deductibles and prescription medicines.
A retired miner serves on the Norton Community Hospital's board of directors, so administrator Michael Hughes hears a lot about the trust funds' problems.
Norton Community does about $300,000 a year in UMW business, Hughes said. Medicare requires roughly a $700 deductible for hospital stays, which retired miners would have to pay out of pocket if they lost their UMW coverage.
Prescription medicines and certain other medical expenses aren't paid for by Medicare. Ken Holbrook, a UMW official in Castlewood who works with retirees, said he knows of one retired miner and his wife who spend up to $1,500 a month on medicines.
The promise of lifetime health care for miners - which germinated in 1946 when President Harry Truman mediated a compromise between mine workers and the coal industry - was renewed over the following years, and miners sacrificed increases in wages for company payments into pension and health-care funds. But changing economics in the coal industry has put a large number of companies out of business or changed their ownership, leaving thousands of "orphaned" retirees in the trust funds.
Today, 300 companies pay into the fund - 1,700 fewer than there were four decades ago. For each dollar they pay toward their own retirees health benefits, the union companies still contributing to the fund have to pay $3 to provide health care for retirees whose companies are out of business or no longer contribute. The beneficiaries, whose average age is almost 75, live in all 50 states but are concentrated in the Appalachia region, Florida, Colorado and Utah.
The trust funds, headquartered in Washington, are over $100 million in debt. Their future is in doubt when new coal-industry contracts are negotiated next year.
The trustees planned to notify retirees earlier this month that their benefits would be suspended April 13, but the federal court delayed that notice, pending Monday's hearing in Abingdon.
Federal Judge Glen Williams will hear the injunction request that would prevent the cutoff of benefits. Williams is no stranger to the UMW health-care issue, having presided over federal litigation arising from the Pittston strike.
Williams made the BCOA a co-defendant in the injunction suit with the trust funds.
William Poff, an attorney for the BCOA, says Williams should reject the injunction. In documents filed with the federal court, Poff contends the injunction request is a "ruse."
Poff says that the suit is secretly backed by non-union coal companies who want to force the union coal operators to pay the full cost of the health funds. He says he suspects non-union companies rounded up a group of retirees and is "using them as fronts" to bring the suit.
If non-union companies are behind the suit, they are strangely allied with the Mine Workers union, which has joined the suit as a co-plaintiff on behalf of the retirees.
The non-union companies are attempting to use the injunction as "a tool to defeat pending federal legislation that would resolve the financial issues related to the benefit plans," Poff said in the court papers.
Poff also doesn't know who the retirees are because they were allowed to file the injunction request anonymously. They claimed their safety might be in danger if they were identified.
Williams said one of the issues he will have to decide Monday is whether the anonymous retirees have legal standing to seek a permanent injunction. He also said he doubts there is any real need for them to remain anonymous.
The trust funds themselves have a lawsuit pending in Washington against the union coal operators' association, which would force the companies to increase their contributions to the funds. A federal judge is to hear that suit in June.
by CNB