16 arrested in Charleston, WV

Charleston,West Virginia. April 1, 2013.  They boarded buses and cars before dawn, some the night before, coming from the coalfields of Illinois,Pennsylvania,Kentucky,Virginia,Ohio,Indiana, and all acrossWest Virginia.  By10:00 AM over 7,000 had packed into the giant Charleston Civic Center to voice their support for the 23,000 miners and their families who face the loss of their lifetime health benefits in a bankruptcy scam.

In a series of mergers and deals, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal transferred their contractual health benefit obligations to Patriot Coal.  InSt. Louis,Missouri, in March, 2013, Patriot Coal filed in bankruptcy court seeking to terminate the United Mine Workers (UMWA) contract and set up instead a Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA) for the retirees and families. 

Patriot seeks to put only a pittance into the VEBA, vastly underfunding it.  UMWA President Cecil E. Roberts has said this plan would “put thousands of retired coal miners, their dependents or their widows on the path to financial ruin, worsening health conditions or even death.”

The UMWA pioneered in healthcare benefits and pensions when they battled coal operators and the American Medical Association to establish the UMWA Health & Welfare Fund.  John L. Lewis and the union defied accusations of socialized medicine to set up miners’ clinics and built the miners’ hospitals that serve today as the backbone of health care in Appalachia.  The UMWA won early retirement with family coverage for miners who retired before they were 65.  These achievements of the miners’ struggles are under attack by Patriot, Peabody, and Arch.  Most unions, following the lead of the UMWA, have negotiated early retirement with employers picking up the cost of health care until Medicare kicks in.  The attack on UMWA retirees is a snapshot of what employers have in store for union negotiated early retirement plans.

The miners’ fight is winning political support.  The West Virginia state Senate and House of Delegates have passed resolutions calling on Patriot Coal to meet its commitment to provide pension and health benefits to miners.  Elected leaders are feeling some heat, judging by the number of the powerful who appeared at the Civic Centerto express their support. 

West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin greeted the crowd.  “I’m fromLogan County the heart of coal mining…I’m honored to stand shoulder to shoulder with you for the benefits of our retired miners.”

Dan Kane, UMWA Secretary Treasurer spoke.  “To cast aside those who earned benefits through decades of back breaking labor is like taking money—it’s theft.” 

Kane called for a Congressional investigation.  “Who’s looking into this conspiracy?  We will fight to protect our health care no matter what it takes.  We will follow these robber barons and we will shine the light of truth on these evil deeds.  We are on the right side of history.”

West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller appeared through a video.   ”We must hold Peabody, Arch and Patriot to the promises they have made,” Rockefeller said.  He spoke of the introduction of the Coal Accountability and Retired Employee Act.

Representative Nick Rahall of West Virginia declared that “In 1912 Mother Jones said that the labor movement was a command from God Almighty.”  He said that the promise to the miners must be kept.  “No white flag…this is an uphill battle, but everyone here knows how to walk uphill.”

West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant described herself as a union member and said that this is an attack on all American workers.  “It happened at Century Aluminum to steelworkers.”  Tomorrow, she said it will happen to many more until we stop “these fraudulent transactions.”

“We can’t let this stand.  This is an attempt to take away the health care that was won on your broken backs, on your black lungs and on the memories of your fellow miners who took their last breaths in the coal mines,” Tennant said. “What’s worrisome is that tomorrow it can be an attack on construction workers, nurses, secretaries, teachers; who knows where it stops?”

West Virginia’s Junior Senator, Joe Manchin spoke against Patriot’s attempt to have retirement obligations dismissed in bankruptcy but also condemnedPeabodyand Arch for shifting their liabilities.

Manchin said he knows and talks to the owners of these companies.  “I’ve told them, where I come from, you can’t make wrong right. You can’t, no matter how hard you try.  You can’t shine crap, and by God, this is crap. You can’t make this stuff look good, you can’t make it smell good and you sure as hell can’t make it taste good.”

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka brought support from 12.5 million members of theAFL-CIO.  He said that when they dumped all the legacy costs onto one little company they knew it would fail.  He said that we’ve been “living and working under the threat of vulture capitalism.”  He addressed Patriot,Peabody, and Arch, “You can’t use the courts to steal because we won’t let you.”

UMWA President Cecil Roberts concluded the indoor rally.  He said that 42 have already been arrested inSt. Louiswhere the bankruptcy court is convened.  That includes all of the members of the International Executive Board of the UMWA.  He spoke of the broadening of this movement with faith leaders from the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, and the Catholic Church who would be joining today in non-violent civil disobedience and arrest in protest against this moral outrage.  He recognized the Teachers, CWA, USW, UAW, and the many unions that were in the hall.

Roberts said “We know who did this –they are wearing $10,000 suits and Gucci shoes.  We know where they are.  We are going to be like Jesus who threw the money changers out of the temple.”

At the conclusion of his speech people moved in orderly fashion to march to the headquarters of Patriot at Laidley Towers.  When the front of the march arrived, the streets were still packed all the way back to theCivic Center.  Many workers cheered from the steps of their office buildings.

Moms and dads sheltered the babies from the light rain and kept walking.  The camouflage UMWA shirts read “We are Everywhere” and “No Health Care, No Coal.” 

A brief rally continued across from Patriot.  Doris Crouse-Mays, President of the VirginiaAFL-CIO, said that this will be the “first time that I’ve ever gone to jail in my life and I can’t think of a better reason.”  She was joined in being arrested by KentuckyAFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan and West Virginia AFL-CIO President Ken Perdue.

Three religious leaders were among the 16 arrested, Father John Rausch, Director of the Catholic Committee on Appalachia,  Rev. James Lewis, Episcopal priest, and Rev. Donald Prange, St. James United Church of Christ, Lovettsville, VA. 

Before leading the group to sit down on the steps of the Laidley Towers, Cecil Roberts paid tribute to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King who taught non-violent resistance to unjust laws.  Roberts said we must build a movement that is more powerful than all of their money.  “We are over 7,000 today and we will be back with 20,000 and then 30,000.  If we can’t get justice in the court house, we will take it to the state house.  If we don’t get justice there, we must take it to the streets.” 

The powerful march and rally made the news not only inWest Virginia but also in the Wall St. Journal, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and across the country.    

Throughout hours of speeches about health care, neither politicians nor labors leaders mentioned the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as Obamacare, the health care reform that was passed in 2010.  Clearly the ACA provides no remedy for the health care crises that workers and retirees face. 

Only a national single payer plan, HR 676, Expanded and Improved Medicare for All, can provide the needed care.  By removing the private for-profit health insurance companies and hospitals through HR 676, the nation can save $400 billion a year yet expand care to all.

HR 676 makes the wealthy pay a larger share and stops non-union employers from being able to underbid unionized companies.  With HR 676 there will be no more profiting from the denial of care. 

Until we can build the movement that can pass HR 676, everyone should join the battle to preserve the health care won through union contracts.  So do something to help the miners.  Ask your senators and congressperson to support the UMWA demands.

Sign the petition for the UMWA.  Check out the UMWA on facebook.  Watch for more demonstrations to come.

Distributed by:

All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care–HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217

Email: nursenpo@aol.com

4/4/2013

Coal execs deserve “a cell next to Bernie Madoff” 

Peabody Coal Mine

St. Louis,MO. February 13, 2013.  Shirley Inman was arrested for peaceful, civil disobedience as she protested at the Peabody Energy headquarters against the corporate threat to rob miners and their families of the health benefits they have earned.  Inman, a member of United Mine Workers of America Local 2286 in Madison,West Virginia, spent 18 years driving a coal truck.  Head held high, Inman faced arrest with a determination much greater than her petite stature.  She is serious about this fight.

“If I can’t get my medication for my heart disease, I won’t be around much longer,” said Inman. “I’m a breast cancer survivor and I have coronary artery disease. Health care isn’t an option for me; it’s what I need to survive. I’ll do whatever it takes to make these corporate executives keep the promises they made – and if that means going to jail, so be it.”

Inman was arrested with nine of her union brothers, including UMWA Secretary Treasurer Dan Kane.  This was the second set of arrests at Peabody Energy, and it looks like there will be more to come.  On January 29 UMWA President Cecil Roberts was arrested with the first group, but he was not present for this rally because of negotiations.

In 2007, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal spun off a large chunk of their health care and retirement obligations to a new entity called Patriot Coal.  In a financial and bankruptcy transaction that UMWA Vice President from Alabama, Daryl Dewberry, described as “nickel slick”, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal are trying to wash their hands of responsibility for the health benefits for which they had signed contracts.

There was an air of militancy as more than 1,000 miners and supporters marched to the park and rallied between the St. Louis arch and the Peabody headquarters prior to the arrests.  There was emotion also.  Health care hits close to the heart.  The union has challenged the theft of benefits in court, and the case has been moved to St. Louis.  Concerned that bankruptcy law may not be adequate to protect these benefits, the miners say they will win this battle by appealing to a higher moral law.

Dan Kane, UMWA Secretary Treasurer explained.  “They intentionally put Patriot in the position for bankruptcy.  They want this in the bankruptcy court—they don’t want it in the court of public opinion.  This is about every man and woman who works for a living.  Health care and pension are not gifts.  You paid for it.  But these companies are using bankruptcy more and more.  Lawyers will get paid.  Million dollar bonuses will go to executives.  The heads of Patriot won’t suffer.  Those who did the work walk out with nothing.  That has to stop.  We don’t want their sympathy.  What we want is justice.”

“We want what we’ve earned,” said Kane.  “They want to go to their palatial homes—but they deserve a cell next to Bernie Madoff.  I’m tired of an economy that walks all over the workers.  I look for a day when we win the fight so every person who wants to can be in a union without interference.  And next, I look for a day when each and every one drops their tools and sits down for a day and tells the executives here’s what it’s like without us.”  The protesters roared approval.

Dewberry said the UMWA was founded in 1890 “when it was not popular to have all creeds and colors together, but we did it and we’ve been doing it for over 100 years.”  He said that miners are “used to adversity and we are all our brothers’ keepers. Peabodyleft scars in Alabama.  Arch left scars in Alabama.  They left black lung.  Miners took less benefits to assure health care.”
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 In his recent proposal, President Obama included a change in the cost of living adjustment (COLA) that will make cuts in Social Security benefits.  Ugly, hurtful cuts. 

This COLA cut is called Chained CPI.  It would do real damage by changing the formula used to calculate the COLA. 

It’s a real and harmful cut to the Social Security benefits you have earned.

The Chained CPI COLA cuts benefits more every year.  After 10 years, your benefits would be cut by about $500 a year for the average retiree.  After 20 years, your benefits would be cut by about $1,000 a year. 

Switching to the Chained CPIwould hurt both current and future beneficiaries.

Social Security should not be part of any such deal anyway.  By law, it can’t contribute to the budget deficit.  It’s only permitted to spend money from the Social Security trust fund, as affirmed by Clinton’s Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.   

Speaker Boehner and President Obama are tussling over a deal that would save around $1 trillion over 10 years.  Yet Bill Clinton has admitted that the U. S.could save that amount, $1 trillion,–in one year and each and every year, not 10 years–by adopting the health care system of any other advanced nation.   

Astounding, but true.  To end the deficit and bring care to all, Congress could simply pass Congressman John Conyers’ bill, HR 676, national single payer health care.  No cuts, no agonizing, no problem. 

In the meantime, only an uprising can persuade President Obama and Congress that we will not stand for these social security cuts—nor any other cuts to Medicare or Medicaid—the programs won through generations of struggles for a better life.

Tell President Obama that the Chained CPI is unacceptable. 

Call the White House (202) 456-1111. 

Call your Senators and representative with the same message:  202-224-3121.  

You can put in your zip code and find them here. 

“I’m telling you this so that everyone is very clear:  if you want to save Social Security from serious benefit cuts that will cause seniors to go hungry and have their utilities shut off, you have to act. You have to rise up and raise hell, because otherwise this train is going down the tracks — it won’t be stopped unless a lot of people get in the way NOW,” said Mike Lux, author of “The Progressive revolution:  How the Best in America Came to be.”  

He asks everyone to make the calls, then adds:

“But it is going to take people doing more. Make sure your parents, grandparents, and everyone else you know does something. Talk to people at work and at church and everywhere you go….  Show up at your congressperson’s office and let them know what you think. Organize a picket outside that congressional office.

“Do not hold anything back if you care about this issue. And maybe, just maybe, if enough of us raise some hell, this train headed down the track to cutting Social Security benefits, to taking money out of the hands of vulnerable innocents who had nothing to do with the deficits, will be forced to stop.”   

This message is brought to you by:

All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care–HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217

Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayer.org

Detroit Diesel has been around since April 1937, a few months after the Flint sit down strike that won union recognition. 

This year, 1,100 retired auto workers at Detroit Diesel suffered a giant cut in company provision of health benefits because their Voluntary Employees Benefits Association, VEBA, went belly up.  Workers who retired between 1993 and 2004 will have to pick up an increasing share of the premiums that were once fully covered by the company.  Some retirees will have to pay as much as $4,000 per year, or even higher, just to keep their health coverage.

VEBAs are spreading.  Many companies seek to shift their liability for future health costs to the workers or the union through establishment of a VEBA.

So how do unions and workers, who are in danger of losing health benefits for which they worked for decades, fight back?  Educate and organize for national single payer health care, HR 676, an improved Medicare for all.  Build a movement that demands it.  Spread the word.  March for it. 

With HR 676 what happens to locked out workers?  Health coverage continues.  To workers on strike?  Coverage continues.  To early retirees?  Coverage continues.  To laid off workers?  Coverage continues.   

“Our struggle is not for more or better VEBAs.  That was the condition we faced in the last decade.  In this decade, we only have one choice, National Health Care (HR 676),” says Al Gladyck of the UAW Local 7 Retirees Chapter and former Chief Steward at Chrysler’s Jefferson Assembly Plant.

“HR 676 would make this situation a thing of the past” Gladyck said, referring to the Detroit Diesel retirees’ loss.

Gladyck is one of the leaders of Retirees for Single Payer Health Care which meets regularly at UAW Local 22, 4300 Michigan Avenue in Detroit.  He has written three articles on Detroit Diesel, VEBAs, and the solution.  They are well worth reading.

Detroit Diesel:  The Death of a VEBA and the Cost to Retirees

Part I 

Part II

Part III

To find the ongoing activities of Retirees for Single Payer Health Care in Detroit, click here.

_______________________________

Kay Tillow

All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care—HR 676