Faith and Justice

As Mine Workers and their supporters prepare to descend on St. Louis Tuesday to again raise their voices outside the federal courthouse, they are bolstered by a new report by religious leaders that finds the miners’ battle against Peabody Energy, Arch Coal and the bastard child Patriot Coal to be right and just.

And they are heartened by their own sense of faith and hope that justice will be served – if not by the ruling by the bankruptcy judge sometime before May 29, then in the federal court in Charleston, W.Va., where the United Mine Workers of America has sued the coal companies for violating federal law, or in the U.S. Congress, where relief legislation has been introduced in both the Senate and the House.

But there are huge mountains to climb to preserve the health care coverage for coal miners and their retirees, and nobody knows that better than the union that has been fighting for the rights of these energy pioneers since 1890. It’s no secret that corporations increasingly are using the bankruptcy courts to dump retiree benefits.

“This has happened to steelworkers, airline workers, bakery workers, glass workers and now mine workers,” said Mike Caputo, a UMWA vice president and majority whip in the West Virginia House of Delegates. “Enough is enough. It’s time to take a stand.”

The stand by the Mine Workers has galvanized support not only from the labor movement, but also from consumer, civil rights, environmental and religious organizations. On April 29, at the last rally in St. Louis, UMWA President Cecil Roberts was joined in civil disobedience, and arrest, by 15 supporters that included CWA President Larry Cohen, National Consumers League Director Sally Greenberg, and Van Jones, executive director of Rebuild the Dream and a former Obama aide.

The support from the religious community has been consistent throughout the campaign, reflecting the fact that churches are the bedrock institution of mining communities throughout Appalachia and along the Ohio Valley, where Peabody and Arch have hauled away their fortunes.

Mine Workers and their supporters bow their heads in prayer during a candlelight vigil outside the federal courthouse in St. Louis April 29.

Two of the Mine Workers interviewed by the religious groups in their report, “Schemes From the Board Room,” released May 1, are also Free Will Baptist preachers, and they portrayed the dire straits faced by their coworkers in starkly religious terms.

“The Lord may have called me to open my big mouth,” said David McCloud, who retired from a Peabody mine. “Peabody defrauded workers at their mines. They made promises they didn’t mean to keep. They oppress the poor and working people. I know we are supposed to depend on the Lord to provide, but sometimes we need to speak out and do something ourselves.”

Another miner-preacher speaking up was Elbert Collins Jr., who noted, “Ninety-five percent of our church members are miners. Thank the Lord for life and health benefits. But now we’ve come to a time of crisis.” His wife is on the wait list for cancer treatment, Collins said. “If we didn’t have a health care, the bills would overwhelm us.”

The fact-finders heard from Shirley Inman, a diminutive woman who left a well-paying job in Chicago to return home to West Virginia to work in coalmines because of the guaranteed health care benefit. She worked for Arch for nearly 30 years as an equipment operator but was forced into retirement by injuries to her spine and neck. “A cancer survivor, she is now experiencing spinal deterioration and other health problems, and relies on multiple prescriptions,” the report stated.

The rigors of coal mining has been on display at the rallies in St. Louis and Charleston, as some marchers carried oxygen equipment and others were consigned to wheel chairs as they struggled to breathe through the ravages of black lung, the scourge of coal miners. “People know that coal dust is bad, but they tend to overlook it to keep bread on the table,” Dr. Dan Doyle of the Cabin Creek (W.Va.) Health System told the fact-finders.

It’s not just mining families but entire communities that stand to lose if the courts allow Patriot to walk away from some $1.5 billion in health care liabilities, benefits promised to the miners. Brian Sanson, the UMWA Health and Retirement Fund liaison and the union’s director of research, said coalfield communities could lose $1.3 billion a year in pension and health care dollars.

“In 2012, Patriot and the UMWA Health and Retirement Funds provided health care payments that totaled over $320 million to West Virginia, $107 million to Kentucky, $58 million to Illinois and $33 million to Indiana,” Sanson told the religious fact-finding mission. “The retirees, widows and dependents do not have the financial means to pay for these benefits.” Most would be forced into personal bankruptcy or forced onto welfare rolls, he said.

Religious Leaders for Coalfield Justice and Interfaith Worker Justice held hearings at St. Agnes Catholic Church in Charleston, W.Va., back in March, producing this report.

Of the 10,633 families receiving retiree health benefits from Patriot, 90 percent never worked a day for Patriot or Magnum, which Patriot absorbed from Arch, Sanson said. “Clearly, the primary motivation behind the Arch/Magnum transaction and the Peabody/Patriot spinoff was to avoid the liabilities to its former employees.”

The report, produced by Interfaith Worker Justice and Religious Leaders for Coalfield Justice, accuses Arch and Peabody of abandoning coalfield communities and their own families — people who have built their companies — for the sake of misguided notions of economic freedom. Quoting Psalms, the religious leaders urge people of all faiths to “stand with mine workers, their families and communities as they seek a just solution to their plight. And we invite prayers for them, as well as for owners and managers of Arch, Peabody and Patriot.”

You can read the full report here.

Meanwhile, miners continue their demonstrations to dramatize the unfairness of the scheme by the giant coal companies to steal their benefits, maintaining their faith in the U.S. justice system. They also are working to make sure that Congress gets the message. The Coalfield Accountability and Retired Employee (CARE) Act, sponsored by Sen. Jay Rockefeller in the Senate and by Rep. Nick Rahall in the House, would extend the federally guaranteed welfare and retirement system for coal miners and their dependents, in place since 1946.

The CARE Act would shore up the UMWA 1974 pension plan, undermined by the 2008 recession, and give union retirees who lose health care benefits because of company bankruptcy eligibility for the 1992 benefit plan and hold employers accountable for contributions.

For the time being, the campaign is playing out in the streets of St. Louis, but it will not stop there. Capitol Hill looms on the horizon. Federal Courts, the Congress, the President. The Mine Workers are prepared to leave no stone unturned in the search for justice. They say faith moves mountains.

If you can’t be in St. Louis tomorrow, you can follow the rally via live stream here.

Will There Be Justice?

Bankruptcy Court hearings begin Monday on Patriot Coal’s plan to effectively eliminate health care for retirees and impose severe cutbacks on pay, working conditions and benefits for active miners. Outside the courthouse in St. Louis, thousands of Mine Workers (UMWA) and their labor and community allies will call for justice.

They will bear witness to a scam by Peabody Energy and Arch Coal to dump long-term benefit obligations on a company, Patriot, created specifically to absorb those obligations and eventually to fail. That case is being heard in another federal courthouse, in Charleston, W.Va., but it’s an essential underlying factor in this bankruptcy.

Consumer, environmental and civil rights leaders will join labor and religious leaders in demanding justice for those men and women who gave their entire working lives to the success of rich companies like Peabody and Arch, only to be dumped, and for the mining communities that are being abandoned in the process.

Joining UMWA President Cecil Roberts onstage will be Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America; Sally Greenberg, director of the National Consumers League; Van Jones, president of Rebuild the Dream; St. Louis NAACP President Adolthus Pruitt; and UNITE HERE Vice President Bob Proto. And Steve Smyth, president of the Australian mine workers, is coming halfway around the world to pledge support from down under.

Prayers will open and close the gathering, and the congregation comes together again in the evening for a candlelight prayer vigil across from the Federal Building.

It will be the Mine Workers “largest rally yet in St. Louis,” Roberts said, after four previous excursions that drew thousands of miners and supporters. Two weeks ago, the miners planted 1,000 white crosses to signify the number of miners who have died working for the coal companies, or who stand to lose their lives if their health care is taken from them.

The union is running a new 30-second TV spot in the St. Louis metropolitan area that dramatizes the importance of the fight. If the bankruptcy court can allow contractual obligations to miners and their families to be offloaded and then discarded, then no worker’s benefit is safe from corporate thievery.

The Peabody and Arch bigwigs, after listening to the crowd chants during previous demonstrations, got far out of town as the bankruptcy hearings begin, both holding annual meetings in Wyoming. But they can’t get away from the Mine Workers. A delegation was in Wright, Wyo., April 25 to demonstrate at the Arch meeting, and plan to yell even louder outside the Peabody meeting April 29.

“These companies can run, but they can’t hide,” said Jody Hogge, a retiree from Peabody Energy who traveled to Wyoming. She is president of UMWA Local 9819, and retired from Peabody Mine #10 in Pawnee, Ill., with 13 years of service as a miner when the mine closed in 1994. “They moved their meetings more than 1,000 miles from St. Louis because they don’t want people to see what they’re doing to us. They prefer to operate behind closed doors; we’re here to keep those doors open and let everyone see exactly how these corporations behave.”

You can follow the live blog from the rally at http://fairnessatpatriotnow.blogspot.com/. The event also will be live streamed, beginning at 10 a.m. Central Time at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/mineworkers. For more information, check out http://www.fairnessatpatriot.org, and show your support by “liking” the Fairness at Patriot on Facebook.

We Need Robin Hood

A new report underlines the basic problem with the post-Great Recession American economy: the rich are getting richer while everyone else is falling further behind.

The study by the Pew Research Center finds that the average net worth of the top 7 percent of the U.S. population increased 28 percent in the first two years of the recovery.  The wealth of the other 93 percent declined.

From 2009 to 2011, the average net worth of the richest 8 million households jumped from an estimated $2.7 million to $3.2 million, according to The Washington Post report on the Pew study. For the 111 million households that make up the bottom 93 percent, average net worth fell 4 percent, from $140,000 to an estimated $134,000.

Sadly, this is not a recent phenomenon. The divide between the rich and the poor has been yawning progressively – or should we say, regressively – since the early 1970s.  A study last September by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington noted that the median annual earnings of a full-time, male worker in the United States in 2011, at $48,202, were smaller than in 1973.

Between 1983 and 2010, 74 percent of the gains in wealth in the United States went to the richest 5 percent, while the bottom 60 percent suffered a decline, the EPI calculated. Any way you figure it, the middle class is getting screwed.

Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton, offers a concise six-point plan to reverse the slide of the middle class and to build shared prosperity for the entire nation. It is not a soft scrub, by any means:

• Award tax cuts to companies that link the pay of their hourly workers to profits and productivity, and that keep the total pay of their top 5 executives within 20 times the pay of their median worker. And impose higher taxes on companies that don’t.
• Raise the minimum wage to half the average wage.
• Increase public investment in education, including early-childhood — especially in the poor and middle-class communities that now lack decent schools.
• Eliminate college loans and allow all students to repay the cost of their higher education with a 10 percent surcharge on the first 10 years of income from full-time employment.
• Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit.
• Add tax brackets at the top of the income tax scale, increasing the top marginal tax rate to what it was before 1981 – at least 70 percent.

The first and last of these proposals are key. We must use the progressive income tax system to level the playing field, to give the 93 percent a chance to get back in the game. The rich must pay more. But the rich have means, so we must beware. We must recognize the vicious nature of the reactionary campaign by corporate forces already underway. Consider this fractured fairy tale:

It should be simple math: the 99 percent should prevail against the 1 percent in a democracy, right? But our democracy is skewed by big money; corporations have bought politicians for years, with few fingerprints. Not just the inside-game glad-handing and lobbying, but also with well-funded public relations campaigns, trying to shape the message to hide the greedy corporate agenda.

The Koch brothers, authors of much of the disinformation during the last election cycles, reportedly now may buy the Tribune Company to help push their right-wing agenda – adding to the noise of Rupert Murdoch’s Faux News and Wall Street Journal editorial page.

While we fight this uphill battle against the anti-democratic forces that grease the palms of too many political leaders in the United States today, we can be cheered by an ongoing global campaign to rectify the inequality through a “Robin Hood Tax,” a levy on transactions of stocks, bonds and derivatives first proposed by the National Nurses Union and their international allies.

With 1,000 demonstrators calling for reform in the streets outside the International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington last weekend, finance ministers from the EU were reporting on their negotiations to impose a financial transaction tax. The proposal: a tiny 0.1 percent tax on stock and bond trades and 0.01 percent tax on derivatives trades. The return would be  an estimated $750 million to $1 billion over 10 years to plow back into their economies and create jobs through public works and other stimulus programs.

A Robin Hood Tax on transactions would be a small price to pay by the global financial giants that created the Great Recession in the first place with their risky speculation schemes. But it’s just a beginning.

Perhaps we cannot resurrect Robin and his merry men to shake up the power brokers in Washington, where money rules most ignominiously. But we can recreate the spirit of appropriating from the greedy, of which there are many nowadays. Let’s insist on policies and reforms that close the great divide between the rich and the rest of us.

Keep Weapons Off Planes

Slipping under the radar Monday, the same day the FAA laid off 1,500 air traffic controllers causing flight delays nationwide, the TSA announced it is delaying a decision to allow small pocketknives back on planes.

A federal game of chicken is responsible for the layoffs, with the Republican-controlled Congress forcing deep across-the-board government cutbacks through a timid and ill-advised act of non-governing, called a “sequester.” Keeping knives off airplanes, on the other hand, is the result of an aggressive and courageous campaign by the nation’s flight attendants to demonstrate dangers the TSA has been quick to dismiss.

Technically, the policy to allow the knives back on planes, announced by TSA chief John Pistole, is being delayed for a report from a committee representing the airline industry, passenger advocates and law-enforcement experts, but the reality is TSA blinked because of the unrelenting opposition from flight attendants and air marshals, who would be forced to deal with any knife-wielding assailant in a cabin.

The Coalition of Flight Attendant Unions, representing nearly 100,000 flight attendants at most airlines, “remains resolute: No Knives on Planes Ever Again,” Flight Attendants stated in a bulletin to members Monday night. The delay will allow them to continue making their very dramatic case for air passenger safety.

As flight attendants have pointed out, small knives and box-cutters were the weapons of choice by terrorists who hijacked four flights on September 11, 2001, turned first on flight attendants. While airlines have fortified cockpits to ensure that they cannot be broken into, the safety of passengers and crew in the cabin cannot be assured if knives are allowed back on planes.

Flight attendants have made this case in testimony before Congress and in numerous TV and newspaper interviews over the past six weeks. They’ve enlisted the help of survivors from the 9/11 attack, which killed 25 flight attendants among the air crews, to visit Washington and personally lobby their members of Congress.

“In the wake of the terrorist bombing in Boston last week … now is not the time to weaken transportation security,” said Sara Nelson, international vice president of the Association of Flight Attendants. “Flight attendants are breathing a sigh of relief that the weapons that led to the deadliest attack on U.S. soil in our nation’s history will not be allowed in the aircraft cabin this week.”

Nelson, a Boston-based flight attendant who lost friends in the 9/11 terrorist attack, says the TSA is making a mistake by focusing exclusively on international terrorism. In fact, as she points out in a New York Times op-ed, flight attendants all-too-often are terrorized by aggressive and out-of-control passengers, and allowing knives on planes will exacerbate the problem.

Even TSA agents are opposed to the proposal to allow knives back on planes, explains David Borer, representing the 25,000 employees for the American Federation of Government Employees at a Capitol Hill press conference.

While TSA chief Pistole says lifting the ban would allow the agency to concentrate on explosive devices that could take down an airplane, TSA agents themselves have formally opposed the policy change through their union, the American Federation of Government Employees. It’s not as if the screening for pocketknives takes any time away from the screening for explosive material.

Yes, the public interest demands that TSA thwart plans by terrorists to hijack and bring down aircraft. But it also demands that passengers not bring dangerous weapons on board planes, no matter what the knife lobby says. For the safety of passengers and crew, we should keep knives off planes.

It goes beyond terrorism to day-to-day propriety and order. Why arm passengers who may be unruly, or in altered states. Pistole has certainly not made the case that greater air security demands that we expose flight attendants and passengers to potentially dangerous knife-wielding passengers. As Veda Shook, president of AFA said in her testimony to Congress, “Why introduce risks into the air security system?” TSA should not allow knives on planes.

Getting to the Point

In St. Louis on Tuesday, Mine Workers and their supporters will plant 1,000 white crosses to commemorate miners who have died in Peabody, Arch and Patriot mines, or who stand to lose their lives if Patriot is successful in using bankruptcy court to dump its retiree health care obligations.

The event, across from Peabody’s headquarters, comes as the bankruptcy court prepares for an April 29 hearing on Patriot’s revised proposal to alter existing labor contracts – and drastically reduce retiree health benefits. It also comes just two weeks after more than 10,000 miners and their supporters rallied in Charleston outside Patriot’s headquarters in West Virginia, where mining families and communities stand to lose the most.

The rally by the United Mine Workers of America drew strong statements of support from both of the state’s U.S. senators, several U.S. congressmen, the governor, secretary of state, and other state and local officials. Teachers showed up on their spring break, part of a solid union showing that even included the Police, who politely handcuffed and hauled off 16 demonstrators who chose to be arrested.

There’s no question public sentiment in West Virginia is running strongly in favor of the union fighting for retired and active miners and against coal operators and corporate kingpins who are using the power of the purse to punish workers.

At the heart of this dispute is the willful and possibly illegal abandonment of contract obligations to retirees by Peabody Energy. Most of the miners who stand to lose their health care never worked for Patriot, which the union says was “created to fail,” strapped with obligations that would inevitably force it out of business.

The UMWA is suing Peabody in a separate federal suit, being heard in Charleston, charging that the company violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) by creating a shell company, Patriot, to offload its health care obligations to retirees. And Patriot agrees, and could take its own legal action to force Peabody to the table, according to Patriot CEO Ben Hatfield during a series of public relations forays over the past week.

Ben Hatfield

Hatfield’s public relations efforts included a newspaper editorial and several interviews, including with the influential “Decision Makers” host Bray Cary. Hatfield said he agrees with Roberts that Peabody appears to have created Patriot to fail, and that Peabody bears responsibility as the “manufacturer of this outcome.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Roberts and Hatfield may both be thinking about now, but the road is long and difficult. They’re a long way from agreement on a fair deal for Patriot retirees, but there is movement – a proposal by Patriot last week to give the UMWA a 35 percent stake in the restructured company after bankruptcy, which the union could leverage to help maintain a level of retiree health care above the $15 million the company offers to finance a health care trust fund (VEBA), not nearly enough.

Cecil Roberts

In a statement last week, Roberts characterized the proposal as “a step forward.” But the liability for the retiree health care is estimated at $1.7 billion, and a 35 percent stake in a company worth, say, $1 billion, would only amount to $350 million, a fraction of what is needed.

Meanwhile, the Mine Workers are not sitting back and waiting for the next step. They’re massing in St. Louis on April 16 to make a point: miners have died for the success of Peabody Energy, and Peabody owes them what they promised.

Stay tuned. You can check out live blogging of the event at http://fairnessatpatriotnow.blogspot.com/. It will also be livestreamed, beginning at 10 a.m. Tuesday, April 16. Check it out here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/mineworkers,

Last Line of Defense

Denny Pickens saw a good job at the Shoemaker mine outside Wheeling, W.Va., nearly slip through his fingers before he was able to reel it back with the help of his union, the United Mine Workers of America, which convinced Consol Energy that it should invest in revitalizing the mine.

Pickens, the president of the local UMWA union at the mine, was a key player in organizing a cooperative program that demonstrated to Consol that the mine could be profitable, saving hundreds of jobs and boosting a community that depends on mining families for its survival.

As the head of the march neared Patriot Coal headquarters in Charleston, demonstrators were still leaving the Civic Center 11 blocks behind. More than 10,000 miners and their supporters rallied for fairness.

That battle for the economic health of coalfield communities has boiled over as Patriot Coal and its sponsors, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal, are using the bankruptcy courts in an effort to dump their obligations to retirees and their families. That’s why Pickens joined more than 10,000 Mine Workers and their supporters April 1 as they marched to the Charleston headquarters of Patriot Coal, demanding a fair deal for the workers who built the companies’ fortunes.

After 45 years in the mine, Pickens would like to retire but he can’t afford to do it when retiree health care is hanging in the balance of this struggle. “If it could happen to our brothers down here, it could happen to us,” he said. “And if it goes past us, it could happen to anyone in this country.”

That is the considered view of a man who has spent nearly half a century in pitched battles with coal companies that have had little compunction about tossing workers and retirees under the bus if it helps to maximize their profits – and a man who understands the power that a union gives him when he goes to the table.

Denny Pickens

“It’s got to stop, and it’s got to stop now,” Pickens said. “If we’ve got to be the shock troops to do it, then I guess we’ll do it.”

It was easy to see the United Mine Workers as the leading edge of a defensive stand as they marched through the streets of Charleston, outfitted in their trademark camouflage garb. Many were veterans of wars, from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan, recognized from the podium by UMWA President Cecil Roberts.

“Every time this country has called on us … the Appalachian coal miners have been the first ones to answer that call,” Roberts said. “Now I say, these people stood with their country and it’s time for our country to stand with them.”

Among the nearly 11,000 marchers was a young family all in camouflage – Tim and Melissa Morris with their infant Hayley, asleep in Tim’s arms. They had come from southwestern Pennsylvania because “what they’re doing is not fair,” Tim said. “We’re sticking together and fighting back.”

That’s a spirit lauded by public officials who addressed the crowd, from senior U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (via video) to Rep. Nick Rahall and West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant. All sang the praises of the Mine Workers and their leadership.

Perhaps no one was as effusive in praising the miners as West Virginia’s junior senator, Joe Manchin, also a former governor. He said he enjoys telling people outside Appalachia just how important coal miners have been to American history, to the economy and to the defense of the nation.

“People don’t defend this country without you,” Manchin said. “I tell other people: These are the most patriotic people in the country. They’ve shed more blood and made more sacrifices than any other group of people I know.”

The irony of these patriotic Americans fighting for fairness from a company that calls itself “Patriot” was not lost on the congregation.

Here’s Sen. Manchin’s full remarks:

Roll Away the Stone

Over the past several months, Mine Workers have marched in the streets of St. Louis to protest Peabody Energy abandoning its former employees. On three occasions, miners have locked hands in the streets in a boisterous nonviolent protest, singing “Amazing Grace” as they waited to be arrested.

United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts greets the thousands of supporters rallying in St. Louis March 19. Expect a moving speech in Charleston April 1.

Invoking the words of Jesus and passages of scripture, they have asked why courts would allow workers to be persecuted, denying them the benefits they were promised. They are asking for fairness. They ask: If we allow corporations to use the bankruptcy courts to dump retiree pensions and health care, what kind of society are we?

The question will be raised again on Monday, April 1 in the streets of Charleston, W.Va., with more than 5,000 miners and their supporters rallying outside the downtown headquarters of Patriot Coal, the shell company that was created by Peabody and Arch Coal to take over their obligations to employees, and then fail.

I’ll be there and blogging live via http://fairnessatpatriotnow.blogspot.com/, and posting here about the rally later in the week. You can get more details at http://www.fairnessatpatriot.org, and at Fairness at Patriot on Facebook.

So much is at stake, not only for retirees and their families, and for active miners and their communities, but also for every retiree depending on company-provided health care and pensions. Too often in recent years, companies have sought to dump these obligations through the bankruptcy courts. It’s in everyone’s interest that we stop it here.

The Mine Workers are taking a valiant stand, invoking not only history but also a Christian spirit that they argue should infuse the court’s deliberations. This is about fairness, about human dignity, about respect for family and hard work. This is about faith, perhaps even resurrection for struggling mining families.

The Mine Workers have come home to Charleston, seat of the bustling coal mining industry for nearly a hundred years, to state this case clearly. West Virginians understand the sacrifices that coalmine families have made to support mining in Appalachia, to build prosperous and promising lives.

Listen to these stories, sung so well by Tom Breiding of Pittsburgh, about the fight for fairness against Peabody and its agents:

The Alligator Shoe Drops

As bankruptcy court hearings begin today in St. Louis on Patriot Coal’s petition to eliminate retiree health care and to make steep cuts in compensation for active miners, the United Mine Workers released documents showing that Patriot has paid more than $14 million in legal fees and expenses to the well-heeled New York law firm, Davis Polk and Wardwell.

While coal miners, retirees and their widows may be threatened with loss of their livelihoods – even their lives when it comes to their critical health care – the lawyers in Gucci Gulch are living high off the hog telling Patriot how it can shed human liabilities, reward executives and hoard cash.

Senior attorneys at the law firm are billing Patriot $985 an hour, junior attorneys bill $795 an hour and paralegals bill $400 an hour for such tasks as “coordinate duplication,” “assemble and revise hearing binder,” and “prepare FedEx labels for shipment.” The firm charged $21,951.78 in meal expenses from July 2012 to January 2013.

“This is a terrible irony that attorneys making $1,000 an hour and paid more than $14 million at this point, they’re billing $22,000 for take-out food when they work late,” UMWA President Cecil Roberts told a press briefing on Monday. “And yet they want to take away health care from 97,000 people, who pay for their own food, buy their own lunches.” See more details of the filing here.

“We have people who can’t afford their medicine,” Roberts said, “people who have literally broken their backs, who have been severely injured working for Peabody Energy and Arch Coal, the companies that then dumped their obligations into a company they created to fail, Patriot Coal.”

Roberts talked about getting a call from a 93-year-old widow who’s afraid she’ll lose everything if the company is able to walk away from its retirees. “She had lost her husband, and all of her friends had passed. She said, ‘I’ve got one friend left and that’s Cecil Roberts, because you’re trying to save my health care.’ Well, I’ll never give up trying. I’ll never sign an agreement with these coal companies that takes away health care from these retirees.”

Patriot has asked the court to replace its retiree health plan with “Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association” (VEBA), with a cash contribution of $15 million, about the same amount it has paid the lawyers thus far to shake down the former employees, and far short of what is needed. And the company also has asked the court to approve $7 million in bonuses for the genius executives that led them into bankruptcy court.

Mine Workers, retirees and their widows will be among the hundreds that gather on the streets of St. Louis today, demanding that the courts do their duty and provide justice for the miners and their families. Some will be arrested.

“We will not stop until we see that justice in our nation is for all the people, and not just the rich folks,” Roberts said. Meet one of the families whose lives are at stake here.

Bracketology

If you’ve watched the NCAA basketball tournament matchups over the past several decades, you will have noticed that the committee has a good sense of geography and history as it makes selections that end up serving as our March bracketological puzzle. And maybe the committee has a good sense of humor, too.

Consider Louisville, the No. 1 overall seed. Presumably the Cardinals are on solid geographical turf, as the No. 1 seed, opening in Lexington, 60 miles to the south, and then perhaps a second round in Indianapolis, 100 miles to the north. But those are perhaps the most inhospitable regional cities around, where fans of Kentucky and Indiana come to vilify Louisville, the outlier city.

And what of the mighty University of Kentucky Wildcats, the defending national champs? Disenfranchised. No bid to defend the title, given a paltry 21-11 record and disastrous losses, including losing their best player, Nerlins Noel, out for the season with a severe knee injury. In retrospect, it’s easy to second-guess Coach Calipari for playing the soft non-conference schedule.

Roy Williams, coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels could end up facing Kansas, the team he coached to many NCAA appearances, or perhaps UCLA, where three unhappy former Tar Heels migrated a few years ago. So many story lines, so little time!

Meanwhile, if the Cardinals get to Indianapolis, chances are they will face Duke, their future rival in the ACC, an improbable alignment beginning next year that combines Midwest teams Louisville, Pittsburgh and Notre Dame and upstate New York’s Syracuse into the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Anything can happen on the road to the Final Four, of course. Don’t count out Michigan State in the Midwest. The Spartans are defensive demons, strong inside and sometimes clutch. Some notable dark horses: Virginia Commonwealth, Florida Gulf Coast, Creighton, Montana.

The South is the strongest region, in my opinion, with Kansas, North Carolina, Michigan, Georgetown, Florida, UCLA, VCU and Minnesota. Any one of those teams could get to the Final Four, as they have in the past.

Big 10 teams are strong contenders for the Final Four. Indiana is a No. 1 seed, sitting pretty heading to Verizon Center in D.C. for the regional finals, maybe in a rematch with Butler or Illinois, but most likely a nail-biter against Jim Larranaga and the Miami Hurricanes.

It wouldn’t surprise me if either Ohio State or Wisconsin wins the West, although Gonzaga and New Mexico are worthy. Michigan could surprise Kansas or North Carolina, emerging from the South. Louisville, Indiana, Ohio State and Michigan.

Those would be my initial bets for a Final Four, sure to change tomorrow, once I’ve studied the teams a bit more. I’ve seen most of the contenders but confess I have no clue who will win between N.C. State and Temple, or Colorado State and Missouri. So many choices! “The Big Guessing Game,” my wife says. But she always picks the alma mater, Michigan State. And why not? The Spartans were the last Big 10 team to win the national championship, and that wasn’t the first time. A guy named Magic ruled the court when she went to school.

I myself am bound to Indiana by geography, history and emotion – the three seeds of human bias – so you will take my arguments with a grain of salt. But we all are bound to emotional attachments of one sort or another, so we share the best we can. Hoosiers do it better! I’ve seen it in the movies!

Let the games begin! Tell us what you think! How is this game going to go? Join the conversation on Facebook at Byrne’s Virtual Office Pool. If you’re coherent, you are invited to join other crack bracketologists at Byrne’s String Music, for the fine competition.

It’s a Fine Madness, March.

Patriot Drops the Bomb

Patriot Coal has asked bankruptcy court to terminate all retiree health care obligations and radically restructure its collective bargaining agreement with the United Mine Workers of America, essentially a nuclear option that promises to intensify the heat in the streets of St. Louis, where coal miners have come to demonstrate and go to jail if necessary to make their public case.

The bankruptcy court motions are “totally unacceptable, unnecessary and put thousands of retired coal miners, their dependents or their widows on the path to financial ruin, worsening health conditions or even death,” UMWA President Cecil E. Roberts declared.

The union stepped up its criticism of Peabody Energy and Arch Coal for using the Patriot shell company to dump their pension and health care obligations. Most of the miners affected are former employees of Peabody or Arch and never worked a day for Patriot Coal.

“Patriot is now the vehicle through which Peabody’s and Arch’s scheme to rid themselves of their long-term obligations to these retirees is playing out,” Roberts said. “But that does not absolve Patriot.”

The union has been negotiating with Patriot to reach a fair agreement and Roberts vowed that those talks would continue. “We remain on two paths in our fight for fairness and justice,” he said. “We will continue to meet with Patriot in the hopes that something fair for both sides can be worked out.

“But at the same time we will continue to make our case in the streets of St. Louis, in Charleston, W.Va., and anywhere else we need to be,” Roberts said. “Lawyers will do what lawyers do, courts will do what courts do. What working families do when they fight for justice is get out, get loud and demand to be heard. We will continue to do that.”

Expect the volume to rise in the streets of St. Louis next week. Here’s how the Mine Workers are making their case to the people of St. Louis in a new TV spot: