A judge has ruled that Patriot Coal can cut health care and pension benefits that were promised to coal miners through collective bargaining agreements with the union.Last summer, Patriot Coalfiled for bankruptcy. The company is a spinoff that included somePeabody Energy and Arch Coaloperations in Appalachia, and Patriot said it couldn’t handle the estimated $1.6 billion liability for retiree health care costs it inherited from the other companies.Arch and Peabody are still around, but this week’s decision by a bankruptcy court judge in Saint Louis means that about 23,000 coal miner retirees, spouses and widows could lose all of their health care benefits. Most of these people never worked for Patriot, but were covered under union agreements at Arch and Peabody mines.United Mine Workers of America spokesman Phil Smith says that’s what’s different about this bankruptcy case.“The companies who made these promises to these retirees, are not the ones who are in bankruptcy court,” he said. “The companies who made these promises are Peabody Energy and Arch Coal. They dumped those promises, frankly, and walked away from them.”Smith says the union is planning to appeal the decision, and wants Peabody and Arch to live up to their promises to union coal miners—many of whom are dependent on their health insurance to cover work-related diseases like black lung and musculoskeletal problems.“When you work in an environment like a coal mine, all sorts of bad things happen to you over a 30 year period,” Smith said. “That’s why these people negotiated these health care benefits, took less in wages, because they knew that when they needed these benefits when they retired, they wanted them to be there.”Coal miners who retired from Peabody or Arch before September 30, 1994 won’t be affected by the ruling. They fall under the Coal Act, which covers their benefits. But those who retired after that date will face cuts in both health care and pension.Here’s how Reuters summarized the agreement:
