May 1, 2017 4 min read

A more than $1 trillion spending bill expected to be approved by Congress this week to fund the federal government through September includes a permanent fix for the United Mine Workers’ health care program.

Retired union miners from bankrupt coal companies, including about 2,000 in Pennsylvania, stand to lose health benefits at the end of the week if the matter is not addressed through the proposed legislation.

“The inclusion of permanent funding for the health care of 22,600 retired coal miners, their dependents and widows in the 2017 omnibus appropriations bill is tremendous news,” UMW President Cecil Roberts said in a prepared statement.

“Swift passage of that bill by Congress this week will mean that those senior citizens and their families will finally have the peace of mind about their future that has eluded them for years,” he said.

The health care fix is part of the Miners Protection Act, which UMW and coal field lawmakers were pushing to address funding issues regarding the union’s health care benefit program as well as its pension plan.

“Many people in Congress have worked very hard to bring us to this point, both Republicans and Democrats,” Roberts said, naming lawmakers, including Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa. who stood with the union in the more than yearlong fight to address the issue.

Roberts also lauded the efforts of the union membership, who marched, made phone calls and wrote letter in support of the bill. “Their efforts made the critical difference and to them goes the lion’s share of the credit for getting us to this point,” he said.

Union officials said last week that they didn’t expect the spending bill to address the pension plan, though that will be an issue that must be addressed soon as the plan heads toward insolvency.

Now that the union is close to securing health care benefits, it will “move on to preserving the pensions of 89,000 more retirees who earned them in blood and toil,” Roberts said.

UMW spokesman Phil Smith said the pension fund is in “critical and declining status,” and without action will become insolvent in 2022.

Casey, an original sponsor of the Miners Protection Act, said he, too, will continue efforts to address the pensions.

“While securing permanent health benefits for our coal miners is a strong step in the right direction, I won’t stop fighting until we’ve secured a pension fix as well,” Casey said in a release.

“Thousands of Pennsylvanian miners and their families are counting on us to keep our promise. We have a proposal to secure the pensions of nearly 13,000 Pennsylvania coal miners that is ready to go – I hope congressional Republicans get serious about this critical economic issue for Pennsylvania’s rural counties,” Casey said.

The health care fix is included in a spending bill agreed to by lawmakers Sunday. It is tentatively scheduled for a vote in the House on Wednesday.

Details of the funding for the health care fix were not immediately available. Initially, the Miners Protection Act was to be funded with excess money in the federal Abandoned Mine Land Fund.

In pushing the bill, the UMW has claimed it is only asking Congress to keep the “promise” the federal government made to union miners in 1946. That “promise” of lifetime pensions and health benefits was first made then during negotiations between the UMW and the federal government, which had seized the nation’s coal mines to resolve long-running strikes.

In recent years, however, health care benefits for many retired miners were adversely impacted when the companies they had worked for filed for bankruptcy.

In addition, the union pension plan, which was almost fully funded prior to the 2008 recession, now faces insolvency. The plan provides benefits to about 90,000 retirees and covers future claims for an additional 16,000 miners.