TRIANGLE, Va. — Members of the United Mine Workers Union International Executive Board received sobering news Thursday. Trustees of the UMWA Health and Retirement Funds and the Patriot Voluntary Employee Benefits Act issued a report which largely said the funds are on a track to insolvency without intervention from Congress.
The funds were already struggling, but the downturn in the nation’s coal industry has accelerated the decline.
“The Trustees made it abundantly clear that there is no more time to wait if these funds are to be preserved,” United Mine Workers International President Cecil Roberts said. “With the current depression in the coal market the contributions to the 1974 Pension Fund have been cut by two-thirds from last year’s levels.”
Bankruptcy filings by Walker Energy, Patriot Coal, and Alpha Natural Resources along with other more recent filings have dried up much of the flow of money into the accounts. Officials say the only option now to save the funds is for Congress to act. Congressional action on a plan which has been on Capitol Hill for the last three years hasn’t been easy to come by according to union spokesman Phil Smith.
“There’s bi-partisan support for it. Senators Manchin and Capito have been very out front on it and all of the West Virginia Delegation has been very strong, but for some reason we just can’t seem to get it through the Senate and the House,” said Smith. “We just want to make sure folks understand, there is no more time to wait.”
The pension funds pay out $600 Million annually to 89,000 retired coal miners and their widows. Meanwhile, 21,000 retired miners and their widows in Appalachia and other coal producing states face the loss of their healthcare coverage by year’s end without Congressional action.
“These miners worked for 25, 30, 40 or more years, always believing that the federal government would live up to the obligation it made to them in the White House in 1946 to guarantee retirement benefits,” Roberts said. “But they are now confronted with the very real possibility that this will be the first Congress to abandon that obligation in 70 years, making them feel as if they’ve been kicked to the curb.”