ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, September 26, 1995                   TAG: 9509260066
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MIAMI BEACH, FLA.                                LENGTH: Medium


MINERS' BENEFITS SEEN IN PERIL

President Clinton must veto legislation that would eliminate health care for retired coal miners, Sen. Jay Rockefeller told delegates to the United Mine Workers convention Monday.

Rockefeller, D-W.Va., was instrumental in passing the 1992 law that requires coal companies to pay health benefits to their retirees.

A House Ways and Means Committee amendment to a budget bill would effectively repeal the law by exempting companies that have refused to pay the benefits voluntarily.

Clinton is scheduled to address the conference by satellite hookup today.

The health care trust fund was established in 1946. The law guarantees health insurance to about 100,000 retired miners in all 50 states.

Today, as in many ``mature industries,'' retirees far outnumber the active miners whose work supports their pensions and health care.

Over the years, as companies tried to shed the responsibility of paying into the fund, lawsuits resulted in conflicting court rulings. Some required the fund to continue paying benefits, while others let coal companies stop paying into the fund. Other rulings added beneficiaries to the fund without any source of funding for their benefits.

The result was what Rockefeller and the UMW began to call ``the last man's club,'' in which a dwindling number of coal companies became responsible for paying the benefits for all retirees.

The recent House committee amendment ``puts it back on the last man's club, the ... responsible coal companies who were paying for all of it before passage of the act,'' Rockefeller said.



 by CNB