
Kentucky Miners Blocking a Coal Train, Demanding Their Stolen Wages - howard941
https://labornotes.org/2019/07/kentucky-miners-are-camped-out-railroad-tracks-blocking-coal-train-demanding-their-stolen
======
nimbius
I work as a diesel mechanic for a chain of midwest shops and was immediately
"triggered" by this article because its been an on-and-off part of my career
for 15 years now.

Ive had shops where I wasnt paid, and told to just 'take it out as vacation.'
ive also had shops that cut me a check that bounces, and shops that cut me a
check only to issue a "stop payment" a few months later because well, the shop
got taken to court for secretly running a car theft ring. "evaporating"
paychecks are caused by a judge telling the accountants to quit paying
everyone ASAP. I only got that paycheck 4 years after we were all fired, and
only because the state labor board stepped in. For around 3 years I only
accepted cash for my work, which is a legal request to make in most states
despite what the boss tells you.

now for coal companies...thats a weird beast in itself. We had a contract last
spring to service a fleet of XDE240s and showed up with everything we needed.
cranes, hydraulics, an entire mobile shop for maintenance and transport, and
were told 2 months into the work that they never authorized the work. we
presented our bill of lading, contracts, and signed invoices and they never
responded. We decided this must have been a mistake, so we completed the work
and returned the vehicles expecting payment. The entire company was run by a
paranoid elderly southerner who had died that year in a gun accident, and the
work site was basically _abandoned_. We waited 3 months for a judge to start
liquidating his assets before his kids returned from Europe and demanded his
estate. Long story short we got about 70% of the payment, and ended up with
the rest after the trucks and most of the old mans estate were auctioned.

~~~
danans
> We waited 3 months for a judge to start liquidating his assets before his
> kids returned from Europe and demanded his estate.

Sadly, this is the only part of the story which stuck out to me as unusual,
but then again, I'm not an heir to a coal fortune, so what do I know about
such families.

Do you know what they were doing in Europe? My bias makes me think that they
were coasting on the family fortune, but I suppose they could just as well be
doing productive and industrious things over there. Either way, from what you
write, it sounds like they weren't around for many months after their father's
tragic end.

------
thinkcontext
Not getting last paychecks is just one of the ways coal workers can expect to
get screwed. Bankruptcy courts have been letting companies get out of pension
and retiree health benefits, government will wind up picking up the tab in
many cases. Same with reclamation work secured by insufficient bonds. The
Black Lung fund has an exploding deficit while numbers of workers coming down
with it are going up because of higher silica content due to declining seams.

This is of course on top of the air pollution killing thousands and sickening
millions, the CO2 emissions, and the toxic coal ash poisoning waterways that
we get from burning it.

Coal is in a death spiral in the US, unfortunately there's quite a bit more
misery for it to cause before its gone.

~~~
mrguyorama
Yet those same workers the industry loves to poison will fight tooth and nail
to keep working in the mines, up to and including voting for someone who will
work to remove any and all benefits that would try to cover for that coal
mine's negligence

~~~
whenchamenia
They are just fighting for a living. If you give rural virginians an option
they will be all ears.

~~~
atomi
$30 billion [https://www.npr.org/2016/05/03/476485650/fact-check-
hillary-...](https://www.npr.org/2016/05/03/476485650/fact-check-hillary-
clinton-and-coal-jobs)

------
goatinaboat
_Unfortunately, federal bankruptcy law puts workers far down the list of who
gets paid, after business creditors and legal fees for the bankruptcy itself_

It’s funny how the receiver’s fees always add up to exactly however much money
is left in the company.

~~~
ci5er
It does?

When I had to wind down a company in Austin, Texas, pretty much everyone in
arbitration and court on all sides of the table recognized that workers got
paid first.

I wonder if that is local?

I seem to remember that just about everyone was terrified of contingent
WARN_Act violation related claims that could take up to 4 years to trickle in,
and that was definitely federal.

~~~
bluGill
Workers generally have everything except the last paycheck already. No sane
business (don't take that as any claim that most businesses are sane) doesn't
pay their people first. If you don't get a paycheck on a regular basis you
won't come back, so even when things are going bad employees are getting their
money while suppliers aren't getting anything. When it finally gets to
bankruptcy employees aren't really owed much, so it shouldn't matter.

Of course there are a lot of assumptions above. If any of the violations
happen to you get ready to run before your good time is traded for more bad
money.

~~~
ci5er
Fair enough. Thank you.

I was mostly addressing the regulatory environment. I do not believe (unless I
am very mis-informed) that employee paid wages are at the back-of-the-line in
a liquidation procedure.

------
kevin_b_er
They're staunchly anti-union, anti-worker, and pro-corporation by vote. I
think those workers are seeing the result of their votes.

------
evolve2k
> Their second-to-last paycheck, already deposited, evaporated out of their
> bank accounts.

Wait how is this possible? Doesn’t your own bank represent you? On what basis
can bank transfer he reversed. Here in Australia the employer generally can
never reverse funds out. If say someone gets double paid you’d just have to
leave it there and adjust what you pay in the next pay run.

~~~
situational87
Yeah if it's suddenly possible and legal for employers to start withdrawing
from their employees accounts via direct deposit or something else then we
have much bigger problems.

Your bank doesn't represent you, where did you get that naive idea from? I'd
think a decade of Wells Fargo actively trying to rob their entire customer
base in a blatantly illegal and out in the open scheme would shatter any of
those illusions.

~~~
SantalBlush
My public accounting prof. did a lot of consulting for smaller banks. Early in
the semester, he made the entire class raise their right hand and repeat
"Banks are not my friend" three times. He then advised us on things like
keeping our checking account in a separate bank from our mortgage, etc. That
lecture alone made the class worth the price, imo.

------
musicale
Maybe the reporter got it wrong, but in any case the song should obviously be
"I Want My Back Pay," which fits the meter and maintains the original single-
syllable word impact of the original Backstreet Boys/Max Martin song refrain
and title.

Once you have the refrain, the rest of the song practically writes itself. ;-)

------
js2
[https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/kentucky](https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/kentucky)

Harlan county voted 85% for Trump. Kentucky has sent McConnell to the Senate
in every election since 1984. I'm not claiming Democrats are perfect, but
Clinton at least had a plan to help miners based on the reality that coal jobs
aren't coming back:

[https://static.politico.com/b8/90/cbbc9c59413089d87e8d6340f1...](https://static.politico.com/b8/90/cbbc9c59413089d87e8d6340f13d/clinton-
releases-30-billion-strategy-to-help-coal-communities.pdf)

> Unfortunately, federal bankruptcy law puts workers far down the list of who
> gets paid, after business creditors and legal fees for the bankruptcy
> itself.

Warren has a plan to address that:

[http://www.wicz.com/story/40877414/elizabeth-warren-wants-
to...](http://www.wicz.com/story/40877414/elizabeth-warren-wants-to-change-
the-bankruptcy-code-heres-what-that-could-mean-for-american-workers)

------
ryanmercer
>Both men said they are owed nearly $4,000 in their last two paychecks.

Wow! Either they're getting paid once a month or they make a LOT of money.

>Their second-to-last paycheck, already deposited, evaporated out of their
bank accounts.

Uh, no. The checks were deposited and did NOT clear as they bounced. Because
they were bankrupt. Omitting relevant facts to push a narrative is bad
journalism at best. It makes it sound like the company removed funds from
their accounts, instead they wrote bad checks.

>and their paychecks from the end of June bounced, leaving many with negative
bank account balances.

[https://www.heraldcourier.com/news/local/resource-session-
he...](https://www.heraldcourier.com/news/local/resource-session-held-for-
blackjewel-employees-impacted-by-
bankruptcy/article_9cd4a479-2459-524d-8587-d7757e69654a.html)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
$4k/month is only $48k, bi-monthly it is $96k, which isn’t unheard of for
people working in natural resource extraction.

~~~
ryanmercer
Ok? That's still surprising to me not knowing a single human being that's
worked in a mine and constantly hearing about how poor mining towns are...

48k$ is a LOT of money to those outside of the Bay Area.

~~~
azinman2
48k is less than the median income in the US [1]. Miners also make generally
around 100k, which is why they want to keep those jobs so hard. It’s rare to
find high paying jobs in low cost areas that don’t require much education.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States)

~~~
ryanmercer
>48k is less than the median income in the US

Yet nearly half of workers in the United States earn less than $30,000[1]
(people earning less than $30,000 accounts for 48.06% of the population[2])
and 1% of the country makes more than 250k a year[2]. Four states have a
median HOUSEHOLD income under 48k[3].

The vast majority of people on HN seem to think that everyone is drawing a 6
figure software dev salary, federal minimum wage is 7.25 an hour. 13 years
into my job and I'm one of the best paid people in my position and I'm around
36k now I think, new hires make considerably less than that at a fortune 500
company with 425k employees.

[1] [https://howmuch.net/articles/how-much-americans-make-in-
wage...](https://howmuch.net/articles/how-much-americans-make-in-wages)

[2] [https://wallethacks.com/average-median-income-in-
america/](https://wallethacks.com/average-median-income-in-america/)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
That might be true, but you aren’t working a drill site in North Dakota or a
mine in West Virginia. Natural resource jobs have always been like that.

