Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 19, 1992 TAG: 9203190304
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Glen Williams said in Abingdon that he planned to issue an injunction forbidding the cutoff of health benefits for 120,000 union retirees and widows and forcing union coal operators to increase their payments into two trust funds that provide the benefits.
United Mine Workers President Richard Trumka said there is not a coalfield family that depends on the benefits that won't be resting easier because of Williams' ruling.
Trumka was joined in that praise by the Private Benefits Alliance, a coalition of non-union coal companies and electric utilities. "Judge Williams' decision is good for the entire coal industry," said Scott Kiscaden, a Kentucky coal operator and spokesman for the alliance.
But Trumka said now it's time for President Bush to get behind Democratic West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller's legislative plan to rescue the health benefits. Kiscaden's group was organized to fight the Rockefeller plan, which would tax both union and non-union companies to help pay for health care.
"In 1978, the Bituminous Coal Operators Association guaranteed to fund the plans," Kiscaden said. Williams' decision ensures that they will continue and averts a potentially dangerous strike, he said.
The union and the union coal operators' association have charged that Kiscaden's group was behind the lawsuit in Abingdon, seeing it as a way of blocking the Rockefeller legislation. Attorneys for retirees who brought the class-action suit admitted in court that it was being paid for by non-union coal companies, at least one of which is a member of the alliance.
The Rockefeller legislation, which Labor Secretary Lynn Martin has said shouldn't become law, was included in a Senate tax bill that Bush has threatened to veto. Wyoming Sens. Alan Simpson and Malcom Wallop, both Republicans, spoke out against the legislation Wednesday.
Simpson called the Rockefeller plan "a wholesale subversion of the principle of collective bargaining." Wallop said the plan protects a lucrative benefit for a privileged class and forces others to pay the cost.
The legislation, which now is in a conference committee, would permit the transfer of assets from overfunded union pension plans into the ailing health trusts, and would impose an industrywide tax on domestic and imported coal. The plan is based on recommendations of a special commission named by former Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole to study health-care problems in the coal industry.
Trumka said the court order this week is only a "stopgap" measure and the legislation is needed to solve the health-care crisis once and for all. A Bush veto will not keep the union from fighting for the legislation, he said.
The two health trusts, which are established under terms of the UMW's contracts with union coal operators, are running a $140 million deficit. The trusts provide about $30 million a year in health care for 7,000 Virginia beneficiaries.
The trustees of the funds had decided in January to suspend health benefits in mid-April, but Williams' decision will stop notice to the retirees of a suspension until June 22. That's when a federal court in Washington will hear a lawsuit in which the trustees are trying to get the coal operators to make good on a guarantee to keep the funds solvent.
The crisis arose as the number of companies paying into the plans has declined because they've either gone out of business or have escaped payments in other ways, leaving their retirees as "orphans."
Williams rejected the union coal operators' claim that forcing the remaining companies to increase payments into the funds would lead to mine closings and layoffs, further reducing payments into the funds.
The Associated Press contributed information to this story.
by CNB