Mine Workers union facing uncertain future

Martha Bryson Hodel

Sunday, March 5, 2000 | 10:36 a.m.

It's a middle-aged worker's nightmare.

Representatives of the United Mine Workers of America - average age 50, job prospects uncertain - are trying to prepare for the future of a coal mining industry that is changing rapidly under economic and environmental pressures.

"Who knows where the coal industry is heading?" said UMW President Cecil Roberts. "We are being attacked on every front: global warming, the Clean Air Act, mountaintop mining in West Virginia, (mine) subsidence in Pennsylvania. It's something everywhere you look."

During a four-day convention that begins Monday, union officers will ask about 700 delegates to approve an early start to contract negotiations with the Bituminous Coal Operators Association, and to make improved pension benefits the focus of those negotiations.

"We are going to fight for our members' jobs," Roberts said. "But if they can no longer work in the industry, they should at least have a dignified retirement. The industry owes them that."

The contract with the employers' group expires in 2002 and covers employees at the unionized subsidiaries of the nation's four largest operators: Peabody Group, Arch Coal Inc., CONSOL Energy and Zeigler Coal Holding.

The American coal industry has undergone major changes as mechanization has reduced the need for workers.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal industry productivity - the amount of coal produced per worker per hour - more than doubled from 1986 to 1997, from 3.01 tons per man-hour to 6.04 tons per man-hour.

Over the same period, production rose by less than a quarter, from 890 million tons to 1.09 billion tons.

The industry isn't producing anywhere near its capacity, and average coal prices have fallen from $29.52 a ton in 1986 to $16.14 a ton in 1997.

"These increases in productivity have led to a lot of layoffs, and they threaten the jobs of those miners fortunate enough to still have one," Roberts said.

The union itself goes into the convention a much leaner organization than it was in 1995, when Roberts became president, but on a more solid financial footing than it has been in years.

Its strike fund stands at $105 million, its pension fund is estimated at $8 billion, and last year, the UMW sold its longtime Washington headquarters, moving to the suburbs and adding $8 million to its general treasury fund, now at $27 million.

Despite the infusion of cash, the union still faces serious problems in the trust fund that pays health benefits to 68,000 so-called "orphan" retirees, UMW members whose last employer has gone out of business or can't be traced.

Health care costs are rising, and enrollment in the plan has swelled as coal companies have ceased to operate, industry analysts say.

The UMW does not release membership figures. But while coal industry employment is dwindling, the union has been trying to pick up new members in its traditional geographic strongholds.

It just won a representation election for city employees in Butler, Pa. Other new locals include police officers in Wyoming and health care workers in West Virginia. But it is hard for these organizing drives to outpace the decline in membership in the mines, and few of the new non-miner union members earn the $18 an hour, plus benefits, that a top-scale miner earns.

As still-working miners see job losses down the road, some of those with at least 20 years on the job are taking early retirement, Roberts said.

"At least 3,000 people have made application for benefits or are already receiving benefits under the '20 and out' provision," Roberts said. "We have some people as young as 39 receiving a UMWA pension because of this program.

"That gives them an opportunity to stay in the coalfields and raise their families in the coalfields, even if they can't find another job as good as the one they had."