Some of you know I was posting updates about the Patriot Coal
situation. I stopped when they reached a settlement (which I posted),
but something about the whole situation bothered me.
Why did the
UMWA allow the other coal companies to transfer all their retirees to a
coal company that that they never worked for? It made no sense to me.
It
turns out that as part of the deal to transfer all the retirees to
Patriot Coal that the Peabody and Magnum Coal Companies made a deal with
the UMWA that it would be 1/3 owner of Patriot Coal.
So
essentially the Union sold out all those retirees to gain ownership of a
coal company. Seems like a huge conflict of interest to me. Of
course, the union had no idea that once all the retirees were
transferred that Patriot Coal would be deliberately bankrupted to
absolve not only Patriot but Peabody and Magnum Coal Companies of all
obligations.
There has been a settlement though and all those
retirees have had to take substantial cuts in benefits even though the
original companies they worked for posted record profits in the billions
of dollars.
I don't know who is lower.... the coal companies or the Union that sold them out.
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