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Walter Energy Inc. can scrap its union obligations to facilitate a sale, a move that will affect multi-employer funds covering health and retirement benefits for thousands of former miners but may allow the company to keep operating.
After two days of hearings, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Tamara O. Mitchell in Birmingham, Alabama, found that the company’s assets can be sold without the liabilities associated with union benefits. She rejected objections by funds that are responsible for paying retiree and health benefits to former miners from Walter and other companies.
“This court finds that maintaining the coal operations as a going concern, keeping the mines open, offering future job opportunities and continuing to be a productive member of the business community all require this court to overrule” the objections, Mitchell said in an opinion filed Monday. She said that she assumed an offer to buy the company wouldn’t go forward without such a ruling.
Walter Energy filed for bankruptcy in July and is set to put its assets up for auction Jan. 5. As an opening bid, lenders who banded together as Coal Acquisition LLC have offered to exchange $1.25 billion of debt and pay $5.4 million in cash.
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my comments
my comments
stealing employee funds and benefits is getting to be an old story. I guess widows and orphans have already starved to death.
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