When
They Retire ...
Will They Have
Health Care? |
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Photo ©2000 Rick
Reinhard, Impact Visuals |
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| Coal
miners go to the mat to keep what they won back in 1946: the
right to health care for themselves & their families.
Like the rest of us, miners need Just Health Care. |
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It took a strike and a government takeover of
the coal industry, but in 1946, union coal miners finally got
what they were after: a health fund, drawn from a five-cent
royalty on every ton of coal workers produced.
The Truman administration, desperate to
resolve the massive strike by the United Mine Workers of
America and get the coal moving again, had tried to intercede
and push the coal operators to an agreement. When they refused
to budge, Truman issued an executive order directing the
Secretary of the Interior to take possession of every
bituminous coal mine in the U.S. and to negotiate with the
union over the "terms and conditions of employment."
The product of those negotiations was the Krug
Lewis agreement, which created a welfare and retirement fund
to aid miners, their dependents, and survivors.
The United Mine Workers of America is now in
the midst of a fight to hold employers to the commitments they
made to workers in that 1946 agreement. The fight to preserve
the "Coal Act," which guarantees health coverage for
some 68,000 retired coal miners and their families, was a
centerpiece of the UMWA’s national convention in March.
TOO MANY BATTLES
"There are so many betrayals like this
one," comments Labor Party organizer Tony Mazzocchi, who
attended the convention. "So many workers who think they
have a good health care plan later find out that it’s been
altered somehow or that they will lose the benefits because of
some congressional or judicial action. We need to support
struggles like the Mineworkers’, but we also need to fight
for a health care plan that covers everyone so that we settle
this issue once and for all — and stop having to fight these
battles one by one."
Back in 1946, the Krug Lewis agreement
committed the federal government to conduct a comprehensive
survey of the state of health care in the coalfields. What
this survey found came as no surprise: coal miners, almost
universally afflicted with black lung disease by retirement
age, had been deprived of decent medical care. Many of the
hospitals and facilities, the investigators charged, were a
"disgrace to the nation."
The UMWA funds established through the new
agreement paid for ten regional offices throughout the
coalfields to see that miners received the "highest
standards of medical service at the lowest possible
cost." A major new rehabilitation program was set up to
help disabled miners. Ten new Miners Memorial Hospitals were
established in the coalfields.
In the past half century, miners have had to
go to the mat again and again to defend their unique health
fund. In the 1980s, the coal companies were determined to slip
out of their obligation to cover health care for retirees. A
series of conflicting court decisions gave the companies lots
of room to maneuver. The issue came to a head in 1989, when
Pittston coal miners waged their famous strike, in part over
the company’s refusal to continue participation in the UMWA
funds.
As in 1946, the government intervened. As part
of the Pittston agreement mediated by then Labor Secretary
Elizabeth Dole, a Coal Commission was created to make
recommendations about how to resolve the dispute over the UMWA
funds. The Commission ultimately found that the coal companies
should honor their commitments. This finding was made into law
in the form of the Coal Act of 1992. Under the Act, all
companies, including those that had abandoned their retirees,
were required to pay for the cost of retirees’ health care.
COMPANIES DO IT AGAIN
Now the coal operators are at it again. In the
years since the Coal Act was passed, says UMWA’s Bill Banig,
"there have been over 60 court challenges to that
legislation, questioning it from every possible constitutional
angle." Fortunately, he says, the union prevailed in all
but three cases. "But those three cases are starting to
unravel the financing mechanism that Congress put in place to
finance the retirees’ health care benefits."
A suit by what is now the National Mining
Association reduced the companies’ share of health care
premiums by 10 percent. Then, Eastern Enterprises successfully
argued that it was now totally out of the coal business, and
so had no liability. This, says Banig, "let not only
Eastern off the hook, but also every other company that hadn’t
signed a contract since 1974." Then, the same judge who
had ruled in favor of the National Mining Association rendered
another decision forcing the trustees of the Fund to rebate
some $40 million. "And these three things combined
actually put the funds, late last summer, into negative net
assets," Banig says. It’s estimated that the funds are
now running an annual deficit of about $50 million.
STAKES ARE ENORMOUS
For coal miners and their families, the stakes
are enormous.
"You’re talking about a group of people
whose average age is 78," says Banig. "Two-thirds of
them are widows, and they planned their lives around these
health benefits. Their pensions are not very large. They
desperately need their health care benefit."
Last year, the union organized hard to get
Congress to pass an emergency, one-time appropriation of $68
million to keep the funds solvent. More organizing helped
persuade President Clinton to allocate $346 million for the
UMWA funds in his 2001 budget. It’s "great news,"
says UMWA President Cecil Roberts.
Now it’s up to Congress — and the
mobilizing power of UMWA members and allies — to ensure that
this pot of money stays in the budget.
"If we’re going to keep these benefits,
nobody is going to hand them to you," Roberts said at a
rally of Pennsylvania coal miners last fall. "You’re
going to have to fight to keep ‘em like they struck to get
‘em."
— Laura McClure
For more information on the Coal Act
struggle, contact the UMWA, 8315 Lee Highway, Fairfax, VA
22031-2215; tel: 703-208-7200; or visit their website at www.umwa.org.
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