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Miners lose in court, stall in Senate
By CARL GREENCorrespondent
St. Louis – Retired coal miners, many of them battling work-related health issues, have got to be wondering if anybody is on their side anymore.
A federal bankruptcy judge in St. Louis has ruled that Peabody Energy could spend up to $3.24 million on bonuses averaging $65,000 a person to salaried office employees in an effort to keep them on the job. Attorneys for retired miners had opposed the bonuses, saying they would come out of the money available for pensions and health care.
Meanwhile in Washington, the Senate was dawdling on advancing a simple plan that would go a long way toward keeping the miners’ pension plan solvent and heading off a much more expensive public bailout.
“What do they want these people to do? Get out of their wheelchairs and go back to the mines?” railed United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts at a June 14 rally of 3,500 members in Lexington, KY.
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