{Charleston, West Virginia}...During a meeting Thursday at the Charleston Civic Center, United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts told a crowd of 3,000 Patriot Coal miners, retirees and their families that the company, which filed for bankruptcy in July, won't get away with cutting benefits. Roberts says Patriot Energy was "set up to fail" when it was created in 2007 by Peabody Coal. He says the company's unionized mines were spun off into Patriot Coal with below market coal contracts and large legacy obligations, and it's a tragedy that this has happened to people who gave their lives to the industry. Roberts predicts Patriot will offer a proposal for massive cuts, more than likely in pensioner's health care coverage or elimination of pensioner's health coverage and changes in the working conditions of the active miners. Patriot Coal employs 2,000 union workers in several states, and more than 10,000 retirees receive health benefits from Patriot as well as thousands of their dependents. In all, 22,000 people would be impacted if Patriot health care benefits were cut, and Roberts says many of them never worked for Patriot Coal, but they were employees of Peabody or Arch Coal and are victims of the combination efforts over the years. Roberts says the union is ready to fight any way it has to.
