Gov. Jim Justice and Babydog sit with coal miners on Sept. 13, 2024. The miners were from the Tunnel Ridge Mine Rescue Team, which operates near Wheeling.
Trustees of United Mine Workers of America health and retirement benefit plans have sued one of current Gov. and U.S. Sen.-elect Jim Justice, R-W.Va.’s companies over what they say is its failure to make payments required under a collective bargaining agreement to support the funds.
The lawsuit is the latest in a long history of grievances alleging Justice’s business empire has neglected to honor agreements to take care of retired miners.
Gov. Jim Justice and Babydog sit with coal miners on Sept. 13, 2024. The miners were from the Tunnel Ridge Mine Rescue Team, which operates near Wheeling.
Courtesy photo
The trustees estimate in the federal lawsuit filed Tuesday the coal magnate governor’s Justice Energy Company has underpaid contributions by $158,525 in minimum principal, with $9,518 in interest due and accruing.
The principal amount is based on hours worked from July 9, 2023-Sept. 28, 2024 — the period in which the plaintiffs have determined Justice Energy underpaid its contributions, based on what they said were limited records the company made available.
The wage agreement requires Justice Energy to make monthly payments covering amounts due based on the preceding month’s hours worked by its collectively bargained employees, according to a copy of the agreement submitted by the plaintiffs as part of their complaint.
The trustees say the company failed to pay even after they demanded those amounts be paid in an Oct. 30 letter.
But company records must be reviewed to determine the exact amount Justice Energy owes the funds under the wage agreement and related memoranda of understanding from 2016 and 2022, according to the lawsuit.
The complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia notes the agreement requires the company to provide all records to verify the accuracy of sums paid.
The lawsuit asks the court for:
A preliminary injunction to stop Justice Energy from violating the collective bargaining agreement and related memoranda of understanding or disposing of any assets
A judgment in the minimum principal amount of $158,525.02 plus interest based on the estimated hours worked from July 9, 2023-Sept. 28, 2024
An order requiring Justice Energy to cooperate in a UMWA audit and to provide all records that auditors determine are necessary to complete the audit, including but not limited to all records pertaining to hours worked beginning Jan. 1, 2017, to date
The lawsuit says the three funds for which the company has failed to honor agreements are the:
1974 Pension Trust, which provides pensions to eligible mine workers who retire, those who become totally disabled due to a mine accident, and to eligible surviving spouses of mine workers
Cash Deferred Savings Plan of 1988, a 401(k) plan through which members may reduce their annual taxable income by deferring a portion of their compensation through payroll deductions
1993 Benefit Plan, which provides health benefits to certain eligible retired and disabled mine workers
Neither the Governor’s Office nor an attorney for Justice’s coal companies responded to requests for comment.
Justice’s companies have allowed intermittent lapses in prescription drug coverage that have endangered the health of retirees and their dependents in recent years.
The UMWA has said Justice’s coal companies have failed to provide contractually promised coverage intermittently in recent years for 250 to 300 recipients of prescription drug coverage.
The Justice companies’ mine safety fine debts — consistently among the nation’s highest such totals — have contributed to hundreds of millions of dollars in debt and other legal liabilities mounting across the governor’s personal and business finances.
Delinquent mine safety fines for mines controlled by the governor and his adult children totaled over $2.3 million and comprised roughly one-seventh of total debt nationwide as of Aug. 1, 2024, according to a Gazette-Mail review of federal Mine Safety and Health Administration data. The governor was listed as the controller for 16 mines owing $428,193.
Justice said he would put his adult children in charge of his family’s business operations upon taking office in 2017.
Justice-controlled mines received 20 federal citations for conditions unsanitary enough they could have contributed to coronavirus from March 2020-September 2021, according to Mine Safety and Health Administration data unearthed through a Gazette-Mail request under the Freedom of Information Act.
The most common violations cited by regulators were failure to maintain or provide sanitary toilets. Toilets often were full of waste, sometimes attracting flying insects, according to the agency’s citations.
As the Republican U.S. Senate nominee during the 2024 election cycle, Justice was noncommittal on whether he supports a rule finalized this year but targeted by GOP members of Congress aimed at protecting miners from inhaling toxic silica dust. The rule was in response to a sharp increase in black lung disease among increasingly younger miners in central Appalachia.
“We owe so much to our coal miners and to the mining industry, and absolutely, you can put this in stone, I’ll never waver,†Justice said during an August 2024 media briefing at which he alluded to that month’s death of a coal miner at a Taylor County mine. I’ll stand right with them, arm in arm, forevermore.â€
