“The country must not turn its back on coal miners,” right-wing Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell told constituents in eastern Kentucky last week.
Yet coal miners—many “facing a slow death” from black lung and other deadly illnesses from a lifetime of mining coal—say that McConnell and other Senate Republicans are doing exactly that, the Associated Press reports.
McConnell has been repeatedly blocking a bill that would provide a pension plan and health benefits to about 13,000 retired coal miners in his home state.
By doing so, McConnell places his allegiance with coal barons, and not their workers.
Click Here: COLLINGWOOD MAGPIES 2019
As coal has declined, the ailing industry has been attempting to “jettison all pension obligations to miners” while still giving multi-billion-dollar bonus packages to executives, as Kelly Mitchell of Greenpeace noted earlier this year.
But the legislation in question, the Miners’ Protection Act, “would make certain that union retirees who lost healthcare benefits after the bankruptcy or insolvency of an employer are eligible for the benefits,” writes West Virginia’s Register-Herald.
Because McConnell refused to allow the bill to come to a vote before the October recess, it will not be considered until after the November election.
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT