FAIRMONT, W.Va. — There were a lot of smiles, hugs and handshakes going around in Fairmont Friday afternoon as members of the United Mine Workers Union celebrated with U.S. Senator Joe Manchin this week’s passage of the American Miners Act that sets up a funding stream for pension benefits and health care.
Manchin is holding three victory celebrations. The first was in Fairmont. He’s scheduled to be in Matewan Saturday and Charleston Monday.
The funding, which will come from the federal Abandoned Mine Lands Fund will finance benefits for 13,000 retired coal miners and their families and nearly 92,000 others who were in danger of having their pensions stopped.
“After four long years of working hard through many uncertainties, Congress came together, Democrats and Republicans, to secure healthcare and pensions for our nation’s coal miners. We did our job. It was the coal miners of America that made us look beyond politics,” Manchin said. “And I want to give my sincere thanks to all of my colleagues for putting partisan politics aside and for rising above the divineness and tribalism in order to keep the promise we made in 1946. Over seventy years ago, President Harry Truman recognized the importance of the workers that produced the coal for this country and promised that the government would guarantee our brave coal miners’ benefits in return for their service.”
.@Sen_JoeManchin joins @DaveWilsonMN to discuss the house and the senate approving 1.4 trillion dollar funding package that included the American Miner’s Act. WATCH: https://t.co/wkudfIAoe1 pic.twitter.com/FYNZIEkE44
— MetroNews (@WVMetroNews) December 20, 2019
Retired miner Jack Frazier and his fellow retires made several trips to Capitol Hill over the past several years to make their case to members of Congress.
“I was there seven years ago, eight years ago now, and they didn’t know who we were,” Frazier told MetroNews at Friday’s rally. “But, they knew who we were when we left.”
Frazier said Cecil Roberts, Joe Manchin, Shelley Moore Capito and the congressional delegation, including Rep. David McKinley, fought hard for them every step of the way.
“It’s really sad to me that we had to put all this effort, manpower and money into it,” Frazier said. “It’s something that we worked for, it’s not something we were being given and the companies ran off with our pensions basically.”
Frazier said passage of the measure is just in time the employees of Murray Energy and other companies that declared bankruptcy.
“These guys(Murray Energy), probably by the end of March or April when their bankruptcy is done they would have been out of their pension and healthcare both, so it’s really good for them” Frazier said,”Plus the Mission and Westmoreland people their healthcare was ending at the end of this month, so it’s a god send for them.
During an appearance Friday on MetroNews “Talkline,” Manchin praised the rare bipartisanship that got the act passed as part of the bill that continues funding for the federal government.
“We got it done. It was just unbelievable to have type of gathering come together,” Manchin said.