For more than four years, coal-state lawmakers joined miners in raising political pressure on Congress to shore up union pensions amid a crisis of coal industry bankruptcies and layoffs, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. Each time legislation was advanced by West Virginia Sens. Joe Manchin (D) and Shelley Moore Capito (R) — with vocal support from Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) — the measures died without a vote, despite Capitol Hill rallies, public hearings and searing statements. This month, they finally got the elusive endorsement they had been waiting for, one that helps move the pension fix forward. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) signed on to the American Miners Act, a bill that transfers excess funds from abandoned mine reclamation to shore up a United Mine Workers of America retirement plan, which is projected to go broke by 2022. McConnell said that there were a “startling” number of miners on pension plans that had gone bankrupt. He said that he had personally raised the issue with President Donald Trump last week. “The drastically underfunded pension plan presents an urgent crisis for entire communities of miners, retirees, and their families,” he stated. The coal miners’ fund is among many multi-employer pension funds managed jointly by employers and labor unions that have faced steep declines. The 2008 financial crisis eliminated a chunk of workers’ retirement savings and falling employment in some industries have eroded the fund’s ability to pay for benefits for a ballooning number of retirees. Earlier this year, the Western Pennsylvania Teamsters and Employers Pension Fund in Pittsburgh, facing insolvency in the coming years, received federal approval to cut pension benefits by 30 percent.
