[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 120 (Wednesday, July 17, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4891-S4894]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
American Miners Act
Mr. MANCHIN. Madam President, once again I am here to announce a
looming deadline hanging over the heads of our hard-working and
patriotic coal miners. It is a shame that we have to do this again, and
the reason is that we didn't fix it the first time.
If we don't pass the American Miners Act, there will be 1,200 retired
coal miners who will lose their healthcare by the end of this year.
Those 1,200 coal miners spent a lifetime underground, in part, digging
the coal that we needed to become the strongest and greatest Nation the
world has ever seen. They have always done the heavy lifting. They gave
up raises and bonuses year after year in exchange for the promise of
economic security when they retired. So they paid for this. They held
up their end of the bargain, and it is time that we held up ours.
Why is the healthcare of retired coal miners once again on the
chopping block? We have gone through this before. It is because of the
courts. Our court system has again allowed coal companies to break
their promises to their workers. Through bankruptcy, they were able to
shed their obligations to pay for these hard-earned healthcare and
pension benefits, and then they were able to reemerge from bankruptcy
as a profitable company once all the money was basically taken
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from them. This time around, it was Westmoreland Coal Company and
Mission Coal Company that both declared bankruptcy approximately at the
same time in 2018.
For those of you who think this is another big government program,
let me share a little history with you.
In 1946, due to the horrendous working conditions our miners faced
every day, there was a nationwide strike. It brought our Nation's
economy to its knees. President Truman dispatched the Secretary of the
Interior, Julius Krug, to meet with the president of the United Mine
Workers of America, John L. Lewis. They ended that strike by signing
the Krug-Lewis Agreement, which created a retirement fund and
healthcare benefits for our Nation's miners and their families that had
the full backing of the U.S. Government.
It was not coming from government tax dollars. It did not come from
the people of the United States paying for this retirement and pension
plan and healthcare. It came from every ton of coal that was sold. From
that time forward, there would be a certain amount of that set aside.
So they worked for it, and they paid for it. It was part of their
compensation. Unfortunately, over 70 years later, we are still fighting
to make good on that promise.
Then, in the 1980s, with the bankruptcy laws changing the way they
did, people were basically walking away. This money was there. Somebody
got it. Usually, through the bankruptcy, it was dispersed to the
creditors and not to the miners who had earned it. That is what we are
really talking about.
We have the chance today to pass my bill, the American Miners Act,
along with all of my colleagues who worked so hard with us on that, to
ensure that once and for all these coal miners and their wives and
children will not lose their healthcare and pension benefits and will
get them back. It is fully offset and will not cost the taxpayers a
dime. We are using money that we are not only borrowing, but basically
it is from abandoned mine land money, of which we have excesses, which
can still take care of the obligations we have to use it for those who
mine the coal.
The entire Democratic caucus cosponsored this bill when it was filed
on the National Defense Authorization Act last month. Everybody signed
off. If our colleague here, the Senator from Kentucky, would just put
it on the agenda, it would pass. It came out of the Finance Committee
last year in a bipartisan vote--a very strong bipartisan vote. We all
know we have made a commitment to the people who work so hard.
I am asking all of us to keep our promise the way we did when we
passed the Miners Protection Act, which saved the healthcare of 22,600
miners. We need to finish the job, but guess what. We still have 87,000
miners who are going to lose their pensions by no later than 2022 if we
don't do something. This adds another 1,200 who are going to lose their
healthcare by the end of the year. So the crunch time is here. These
people have worked hard.
Let me tell you about the pensions. The people who would receive the
pensions are mostly widows. Do you know what the average pension is?
Less than $600 a month--less than $600 a month for the people who have
worked for 20, 30, 40 years underground and have provided the energy to
keep the lights on in the country and have kept our country strong
enough to help us win every war.
I am happy that my colleagues have joined me here today. I am happy
that my neighboring Senator from the great State of Virginia is right
here beside me.
Senator Kaine has been a champion working very hard for the coal
miners in Southwest Virginia who have contributed so much to our
country and basically worked very closely with the miners in West
Virginia. We are proud to have him here.
So without further conversation from me, I am going to now turn it
over to my good friend and colleague Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I thank my colleague from West Virginia
because this is a matter of the heart for him. He has worked so hard on
this as a Governor of West Virginia and as a U.S. Senator. It has been
my honor to work together with him on this and so many other issues.
I will begin with a little bit of history. We are right in the midst
of Virginia's 30th anniversary of the Pittston Coal strike. It began on
April 5, 1989, in Southwest Virginia. The Pittston Coal Company, which
was headquartered in Pennsylvania, terminated all healthcare benefits
for approximately 1,500 retirees, widows, and disabled miners. That
anniversary is being celebrated right now. When these healthcare
benefits were terminated, it led to a strike. It lasted from April of
1989 until February 20 of 1990--nearly 10 months.
Then-president of the United Mine Workers Union, Rich Trumka, who is
now the president of AFL-CIO, was asked during this time period as the
miners and their families and the retirees made great sacrifices for
striking: How long can you hold out? They were seeing the benefits they
were getting as strikers--instead of a $600-a-week strike benefit,
which was the original plan, the funds had dwindled down, and they were
getting $200 a week. That was all they were getting during the strike,
and when Rich Trumka was asked ``How long can the miners hold out?'' he
said: We can hold out one day longer than the Pittston Coal Company.
That is, in fact, what happened. In February, they reached an
agreement. It was a historic labor strike that was because of
healthcare benefits and because of the need of the people who do one of
the toughest jobs in this country--a job that will rack its pain on
your body in a physical way, unlike any other kind of work. Losing
healthcare is tough for anybody, but for somebody working underground
in a mine, it is absolutely catastrophic.
As my colleague mentioned, we are here to talk about the American
Miners Act, which he is leading and I am proud to cosponsor. The UMWA
Pension Plan is projected, right now, to become insolvent by 2022, and
this could be advanced and come even sooner if there is another major
bankruptcy.
My colleague talked about the history of this pension plan. During
the Presidency of President Truman and in the aftermath of that strike,
there was an agreement that there would be employer contributions into
the pension plan based on every ton of coal that was sold.
The employer contributions have declined significantly in recent
years as coal companies have gone out of business and other companies
have creatively used the bankruptcy laws, as my colleague indicated, to
skate out of their obligations to these hard-working miners and their
families and retirees.
If we do not intervene, if we do not pass the American Miners Act or
something essentially identical, 87,000--87,000--current beneficiaries
and an additional 20,000 vested retirees could lose all or part of
their pension benefits.
The insolvency of the mine workers' pension would put further
pressure on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which is already
facing other shortfalls. And it is not just pensions; it is also
healthcare. Because of a recent bankruptcy of the Westmoreland Coal
Company, as my colleague mentioned, 1,200 miners and their families,
largely widows and others, are slated to potentially lose healthcare
coverage very soon. That would include 800 Virginians who could lose
health coverage by the end of the year.
I remember when my colleague was leading the successful effort in
2017. To fix one of the issues with healthcare benefits for these
families, I attended a roundtable session with many of them in
Castlewood, VA, at the UMWA field office there. I went in at a midweek,
midafternoon time when you wouldn't normally expect a lot of people to
attend a meeting, and the room was absolutely packed with people who
were so very, very frightened. They were slated, at that point, to lose
health coverage.
Remember, this was at the end of April. It was about April 20 when I
was there with them. They were looking at me with fear in their eyes,
asking what they should do: Should I go out and buy insurance on my
own? But who is going to cover me? Look at my age. Look at my physical
condition. Look at the conditions my wife is dealing with.
It wasn't uncommon to be dealing with a working or recently retired
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miner with a spouse who had cancer, and the threat of losing health
insurance in that circumstance was existential. I could look him in the
eye, and I couldn't really promise him anything except that we would
try.
We were able to get a fix at that point that saved healthcare for
thousands and thousands of miners, and we did that with our colleagues
in this body--Democratic and Republican--and in the House as well.
Well, it is time for us to step up again.
Here is what the American Miners Act would do. It would shore up the
pension plan to ensure that workers receive the benefits they have
earned. The bill would also safeguard healthcare coverage for workers
who are projected to lose their coverage because of the Westmoreland
Coal Bankruptcy. It builds on the bill that we passed in a bipartisan
way in 2017.
Lastly--and this is really important. I am so happy that in working
on the bill, Senator Manchin and I decided to do this. The bill is
going to ensure financing for medical treatment and basic expenses for
workers suffering from black lung because we are extending the Black
Lung Disability Trust Fund. Right now, that is also--because of a
revenue source that was sort of sunset--scheduled to be stopped, and
then the trust fund will dwindle down, and those suffering from black
lung will also lose the protections that they have. This American
Miners Act not only protects pensions and not only protects folks who
are having their healthcare bankrupted by Westmoreland but would extend
the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund that is so very, very important.
The best news is that the bill is fully paid for. We are not asking
to increase the deficit. We are not asking to increase tax rates. The
bill is fully paid for. We would simply extend an existing tax to
protect the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, and then we would utilize
an existing source of revenue that we used before--mine reclamation
funds that are currently oversubscribed and are not being used to help
backstop healthcare needs.
So this is a bill that would do an awful lot of good for an awful lot
of people, and we are not coming here just asking without paying for
it. We have a solution on the table so that we can pay for it.
My hope is that the body will come together the same way we did in
2017 to protect these hard-working people and their families and their
widows who have done the hardest work that just about anybody does in
this country and whose bodies have suffered as a result, and they need
to have us having their back.
With that, I yield the floor.
Mr. MANCHIN. Madam President, if I could, first of all, thank my
colleague from Virginia, my dear friend Senator Kaine. I just want to
touch on one thing before we have Senator Casey speak on behalf of all
the coal miners he represents in the State of Pennsylvania.
On the Black Lung Fund, a lot of people don't know, the House of
Representatives basically, 2 years ago, passed a bill reducing the fund
from $1.10 to 55 cents. I called over to my friends and colleagues in
the House, and I said: You would think we don't need the money anymore
because we have cured black lung--but it is just the contrary. We have
more diseases and more younger people getting black lung, and I will
tell you the reason why.
When mining coal, you are cutting through a lot of rock, and you get
silica coming out from that. We are cutting into more rock than ever
before. We have even more younger miners contracting black lung. We
need to fund more now than ever before, and this is not the time to cut
it. That 55 cents a ton makes a difference between solvency or not,
curing people or the Federal Government having to step in.
The coal miners have been proud to pay their own way. They paid for
their pension. They paid for their healthcare. They didn't take money
home because when they negotiated, this is how much stayed in the fund.
Basically, somebody received that money, the benefit, but not the
people who worked for it. Now they are willing to try to fix that with
the coal they mined from the abandoned mine land money. That is all we
are asking for. We will take care of our own problems.
We are begging the majority leader of this respected body to please
put this bill on the floor and let the body vote on it because we have
had good bipartisan support. Everybody respects the person providing
the energy who protected this country, and that is all we are asking
for.
There is no one who has fought harder and worked harder on this than
Senator Casey from Pennsylvania, and that is another State that borders
West Virginia that we are proud of and are very close with, and they
have given so much.
With that, I yield the floor to Senator Casey.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
Mr. CASEY. Madam President, I rise to discuss this urgent issue of
pensions and our legislative proposal to address this looming crisis.
I commend and salute the work of Senator Manchin, my colleague from
West Virginia, for his indefatigable work on this. There are probably a
few other words I could use for his determination over time, and not
just over months but literally now over years, as well as Senator
Kaine's, from Virginia, and Senator Brown's, who will follow me. We are
grateful for this combination of States coming together to stand up for
workers.
We know this discussion on the floor of the Senate takes place at a
significant time. The House Ways and Means Committee just passed the
bipartisan Butch Lewis Act, H.R. 397, on the 10th of July. The House is
taking much needed action, and it is long past time that the U.S.
Senate does the same.
In my home State, there is a whole group of workers. Obviously,
miners are a big part of this, the Teamsters, Bakery and Confectionery
Workers, all of whom, through no fault of their own, are seeing their
hard-earned pensions threatened. Failure to act could result in
devastating economic consequences to communities across both the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as well as throughout the Nation. Tens of
thousands of pensions of Pennsylvanians could be at risk, including--
and these are just some of the numbers--11,831 coal miners and 21,460
Teamsters.
Despite the challenges ahead, the good news is, we have bipartisan
legislation to deal with this pension crisis through the legislation
known as the Butch Lewis Act. The bill creates a loan program for
troubled pensions. It is a commonsense solution that brings the public
and private sectors together to address this crisis.
We must also pass legislation so we can address coal miner health and
pension benefits. Senator Manchin, as I referred to earlier, has shown
great leadership throughout this process. We want to thank all the
Senators who are with us today and others who are not with us on the
floor, necessarily, but are with us by way of supporting this
legislation.
We have a long way to go and a mountain to climb for several reasons.
There are a number of Senators around this Chamber who, on a regular
basis, when a multinational corporation needs help, will pull out all
the stops. They will overturn any stone. They will surmount any
barrier. They will fight through any wall of opposition or resistance.
That is the same kind of persistence and determination and resolve we
need for workers--in my case, whether it is a coal miner or a teamster
or a bakery and confectionery worker.
It is long past due that we bring the same sense of urgency to the
issues that involve workers as some here brought to corporate taxes.
Just by way of one example, we were debating the 2017--November 2017
and December 2017 tax bill. My God, there were lobbyists all over town
and people scurrying back and forth to make sure the corporate tax rate
came down, to make sure the rate a corporation was paying was lowered
substantially. In the end, they got more than they asked for, in my
judgment. What was supposed to flow from that was an abundance of jobs,
a rushing current of jobs, and wage growth was supposed to come from
that legislation. Of course, it didn't. Some of us are right about our
prediction--a prediction that we would not want to be right about, but
we were.
So if that kind of determination and concerted action and then the
legislative result that flowed from that can
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be undertaken to help huge, multinational corporations, I think the
same effort should be undertaken on behalf of workers who earned these
pension benefits.
This isn't something extra. This isn't something new. This isn't
something other than an earned benefit, and for some of them, they
earned it in the most difficult way possible, by going underneath the
ground to mine coal year after year and, in some cases, decade after
decade.
Stephen Crane, the great novelist, wrote an essay in the early 1900s
or just around the turn of the century, I should say, about a coal mine
in my hometown of Scranton. He described all of the horrors, all of the
darkness. He described the ways a miner could die. He referred to it as
the ``hundred perils''--life-threatening. He described the mine in a
very moving way. He talked about the mine being a place of inscrutable
darkness, a soundless place of tangible loneliness--loneliness because
you can't see your hand in front of your face and loneliness, of
course, if you were injured on the job, or if you had an injury that
debilitated you, or if you, in fact, lost your life. Tens of thousands
of people lost their lives in mines.
I know that is a long time ago. I know we have made advancements, but
it is still hard work just as it is to do the other jobs I mentioned,
whether you are a teamster or a bakery and confectionery worker. Just
pick your particular work area or union.
So we have some work to do here, and we are going to have to fight
through a lot, but we are grateful we have some momentum and some sense
of urgency that may not have been there only weeks ago.
With that, I will yield the floor to my colleague from the State of
Ohio.
Mr. BROWN. I thank Senator Casey for his work on behalf of workers
during his whole 13 years in the Senate and his work especially for
mine workers and teamsters with the Butch Lewis Act and with pension
and healthcare. That is so important.
Senator Kaine has been stalwart for these retirees and particularly
in southwest Virginia, where he has worked as Governor, and also
Senator Manchin who was speaking earlier.
We need to remind this body that 86,000 miners are facing a looming
threat of massive cuts to the pension they have earned. What people in
this body don't often understand is these miners and their widows
aren't getting rich from these pensions. These pensions are $500 or
$600 a month. Also 1,200 miners and their families can lose their
healthcare by the end of the year because of the Westmoreland and
Mission Coal bankruptcies.
The bankruptcy court can allow these corporations to shed their
liabilities. That sounds familiar. So often big companies go to court,
and these lawyers and judges don't really understand what collective
bargaining is and don't understand the sacrifices these workers made to
earn these pensions. Shedding their liabilities is a fancy way of
saying walk away from paying miners the healthcare benefits they
earned.
Two years ago, we worked to save the miners' healthcare. We have to
do it again. We can't leave these workers behind just because of the
date their company filed for bankruptcy. We have to make sure they
don't lose retirement security on top of that.
All 86,000 UMW union mine workers are facing crippling pension cuts.
They aren't alone. The retirement security of hundreds of thousands of
teamsters in Virginia and Ohio and Pennsylvania and ironworkers in
Cleveland and carpenters in Dayton and Cincinnati--so many retirees and
so many workers' pensions are at risk.
Congress tried to ignore these retirees, but they fought back.
Workers rallied. They called, they wrote letters, and they rallied
outside the Capitol on 90-degree days in July. They rallied outside the
Capitol in 15-degree days in February.
We have seen those Camo UMW T-shirts around the Capitol. They are
persistent. They don't give up. Many of them are veterans. They left
the mines to serve their country. They went back into the mines. Now,
as they fought for us, we need to fight for them.
It comes back to the dignity of work. When work has dignity, we honor
the retirement and security people earn. We honor work. We respect
work. The dignity of work is about their wages, about their retirement,
about their healthcare. It is about safety in the workplace. This is
why I wear this pin. It is a depiction of a canary in a birdcage. The
mineworker took the canary into the mines. The mineworker did not
always have a government that stood with them to protect their safety.
That is what the union did so many times.
People in this town too often don't understand the collective
bargaining process. This town is overrun with lobbyists up and down the
hall and in Senator McConnell's office. Lobbyists line up and get
favors from the Republican leader. Never ever does organized labor,
never do workers get these same kinds of favors when it comes to
support like this.
With regard to collective bargaining, what people don't understand is
that the people give up their wages today to put money aside for their
future pensions. We made progress with the bipartisan pensions
committee. I thank Senators Portman and Manchin and all the Members--
Senator Kaine and Casey--all the Members of both parties who put in
months of work in good faith on this.
I am committed to these miners. I know my friend Tim Kaine is
committed to these miners, to these workers, to these small businesses.
For their success and their livelihood, they depend on getting these
pensions they have earned.
We will continue to work for a bipartisan solution. If you love this
country, you will fight for the people who make it work--people like
these mineworkers.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. KAINE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cramer). Without objection, it is so
ordered.