A partial victory for some Consol retirees, but an uncertain path for others who lost health care coverage
By Anya Litvak / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A few weeks ago, on the 10-year anniversary of Terry Prater’s retirement from Consol Energy, a district court judge in West Virginia handed him a partial win against his former employer and ordered Consol to reinstate the retirement health benefits it ended in 2015.
Mr. Prater was a coal miner at Consol’s Jones Fork mine in Kentucky for 14 years, having left a prior job for this one because of the prospect of lifetime medical benefits.
He understood what many of his peers took as a mantra: that non-union miners at Consol could retire at 55, with 10 years of service, and would receive medical, dental, drug, vision and life insurance benefits until death. And that the same would be available for their spouses.
That was part of the Cecil-based mining company’s strategy to discourage unionization at some of its mines, Mr. Prater and six other retirees argued in federal court. A former Consol human resources manager said the company’s “union-free strategy” relied on showing employees that their benefits would be at least as good if not better if they did not join the United Mine Workers of America. UMWA retirees got lifetime benefits.
There was always the fine print — a reservation of rights that said Consol could change or terminate benefits at any time.
But some of the miners in the lawsuit, which was first filed in 2016 following Consol’s termination of retiree health care, said they never saw the statement while others said they were led to believe it was a formality or “lawyer talk,” as one Consol-prepared script called it.
“Everybody heard the same thing,” Allan Jack, a Pennsylvania-based retired miner said during a deposition. “Nobody hunts through the book to see if they are going to get screwed somewhere.”
“Coal miners are hardworking people. They are resilient people. They are trustworthy,” he went on.
Bob Long, who lives in Peters and retired from Consol in 2003, said he knew about the fine print, but doesn’t believe that relieves the company of its promises.
“I guess any company can make that statement,” he said during the trial that took place over seven days in February 2021. “That doesn’t make it right.”
“Well, we are not here about what’s right, Mr. Long,” Consol’s attorney Joseph Torres said. “We’re here about what the documents provided.”
Judge John Copenhaver denied Mr. Long’s claim and found that while Consol did breach its fiduciary duty to Mr. Jack, his claim was filed too late to be actionable. Mr. Copenhaver ruled in favor of one other miner, Clarence Bright, and ordered Consol to reinstate his retiree benefits, but dismissed the claims of the remaining three miners in the case.
Despite this mixed result — and despite twice being denied class action status — the plaintiffs, except for Mr. Bright, this week filed for an appeal of the individual dismissals and the class action denials. They estimate there are some 3,000 other miners in the same shoes — those who expected lifetime health benefits, lost them, and were treated differently than active miners or more recent retirees, who received a lump sum transition payment after Consol canceled their plans.
Mr. Long, now 76, spent several years trying to marshal support and outrage from other Consol retirees after they lost their company health care benefits.
First, it happened at the unionized mines — Consol sold its last five organized mines, all in West Virginia, to Murray Energy in 2014. The retiree health plans went along with the deal. A month after the transaction closed, Murray cancelled the plans. Consol said it was surprised and disappointed by the move, but it didn’t stipulate anything about continuing those benefits in its sale agreement with Murray.
That same year, Consol told its remaining miners that it was ending retiree health benefits.
In a presentation to employees included in the legal case Consol showed a slide to illustrate the shrinking portion of large employers that offered such benefits — 66% in 1988 versus 28% in 2014.
“Most of our competition has dropped this benefit and left their employees high and dry,” the script said.
“Our company didn’t think that was right and that is why they have set aside $50 million for us.”
That’s a reference to the transition payments, lump sum amounts ranging from $2,500 to $100,000 and based on a worker’s years of employment, that were given to those still working.
For those who had already retired by that point, Consol said their health benefits would last another five years, through December 2019, at which point the vast majority of them would be old enough to qualify for Medicare.
But in June 2015, Kurt Salvatori, Consol’s vice president for human resources, sent a letter to retirees saying that “in order for Consol to remain competitive” in poor market conditions, that timeline had been moved up.
Retiree health and life insurance coverage would be gone by the end of that year.
Mr. Long organized rallies, he wrote to shareholders, he started a Facebook group. In 2018, he joined the West Virginia lawsuit as a named plaintiff.
“It’s been a rough eight years, you know?” he said this week, sounding more disillusioned than angry.
He and his wife are on Medicare and pay for supplemental insurance that covers the portion that Medicare doesn’t, plus prescription drug, dental and vision expenses. Mr. Long expected that Consol’s retiree benefits plan would be used for those costs, at a lower monthly premium than what he pays now.
That was the deal promised to non-union miners, he said: If they retired at 55, the company plan would pay for their health insurance until they were eligible for Medicare. Then, it became their supplemental plan.
“What we expected changed drastically,” he said. “What we were told isn’t what happened.”
Although the judge didn’t find in his favor, Mr. Long is keen to pursue the appeal.
Consol, which is in the middle of closing a merger with St. Louis-based Arch Resources, has said in its public filings that “while a loss [in this lawsuit] is reasonably possible, it is not probable.”
The company declined to comment citing an ongoing legal matter.