Dec 11, 2016 3 min read

When thousands of union miners rallied at the Greene County Fairgrounds in April, they were hopeful the federal government could find a way to preserve the health care benefits and pensions that retirees were promised during their working years.

The troubled pension fund is bleeding money, and health care benefits for some retirees who worked for companies that later declared bankruptcy are set to expire at the end of the year.

Bankruptcy courts have relieved many companies from their obligations to pay into the union’s 1974 pension fund, which has drastically reduced the number of working miners contributing to the plan. The union’s pension plan could face insolvency within the next few years.

The solution, the United Mine Workers of America believed, was the Miners Protection Act, which would provide funding to the ailing health care and pension funds using excess money in the Abandoned Mine Land Fund. That proposed legislation would offer help to 120,000 former union miners and their families.

There was a glimmer of hope for these retired miners when the U.S. Senate Finance Committee voted – with the help of both Pennsylvania senators, Bob Casey and Pat Toomey – to move the bill to the full Senate for consideration. Even Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., assured the bill’s sponsors the legislation would be considered for a vote once it went through the normal vetting process, which happened upon successfully exiting the committee.

Nearly three months after that committee vote, the miners are still waiting, and UMW international District 2 Vice President Ed Yankovich is not happy.

“He went back on his word,” Yankovich said of McConnell. “We have the votes to pass it (the entire bill), but he reneged on his word.”

And now the Miners Protection Act appears to be in peril after the Senate, trying to stave off a government shutdown, instead approved Friday a short-term fix that would offer only temporary health care benefits for some of the affected miners until April.

This is not the solution the union was looking for, and it raises serious questions whether these retired miners, who already have earned their pensions and health care benefits, will be forgotten by the Republican-controlled Congress and incoming Trump administration.

Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, last week called this short-term proposal “horrendous” and “inhumane” as thousands of miners are left wondering how long they’ll have health insurance without a permanent solution. While Casey continued to fight for a long-term solution, even threatening to block other bills if the Miners Protection Act was allowed to whiter, Toomey was nowhere to be found, offering no comment on the situation after winning re-election last month.

While the UMW vows it will continue the fight, the lack of progress over the last eight months following that rally in Greene County is discouraging.

“We are not going away,” Yankovich told the Observer-Reporter last week.

That’s an important statement for the union’s retired miners, but if the past few months are any indication, they’re merely a political football being punted back and forth on Capitol Hill. The time has come for Congress to make a decision on the Miners Protection Act.

It’s not fair to the thousands of retired miners, whose futures depend on this legislation, to wait any longer.