In Second Coal Rush, New Mind-Set in the Mines

"I have three pictures side by side in my house: John L. Lewis, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Jesus," said Jack McReynolds, 70, a retired miner eating lunch recently at Lola's Uptown Restaurant in West Frankfort, once home to seven coal mines, all now closed. "I draw Social Security on account of FDR. I draw a pension on account of John L. Lewis, and I'm going to Heaven because of Jesus."

Minutes later, in walked an embodiment of the rupture in the union culture. Carl "Bubba" Vincelette, 27, another Gateway miner, was in grade school as mines closed and once-proud union men clamored to be janitors. His father never mined coal. "A lot of the young guys see all these places were union before and they all closed, so it's all part of what went wrong," he said.

If older miners say the union made them middle class, Vincelette credits Peabody, which he sees as a progressive firm that pays four times what he made at his previous job and invests heavily in safety and training. In two of the past three years, Peabody mines have won the Mine Safety and Health Administration's top award for safety.

Bobby Townsend, 46, one of the youngest union supporters at Wildcat Hills, a strip mine 80 miles southeast of here, sees Peabody very differently. He speaks with outrage about a company whose stock soared with energy prices and rewarded its departing chief executive with $46 million last year but won't pay for the health insurance of miners like him when they retire.

"It's out of balance between the corporate world and the workers, and we have to make a stand," he said. "We work ourselves to the bone and they go to a gym to get exercise. They look 50 when they're 70. We look 70 when we're 50. We spend our life making these people millions of dollars; we ought to at least have pension and medical."

Not Quite Golden

A dozen men in miners' boots filed into a meeting hall in Harrisburg, Ill., after their 10 1/2 -hour shift at Wildcat Hills. All had publicly pledged to support the UMWA, and all were over 50 but Townsend, his dark hair a striking exception among the gray and the bald.

"Nobody younger than me is up for the union," Townsend said. "They're buying houses and motorcycles. They think it'll run forever."

"It won't," said Larry Robbins, a miner for 26 years. His last union mine closed in the 1990s, three months before he would have logged a golden 20 years -- golden because that's when union miners qualify for lifetime retiree health insurance. Every year worked in a UMWA mine counts toward the 20. Time in a nonunion mine does not.

Around the room, one after another miner said he needed only a year or two or three of union time to hit the 20-year mark. All had voted as young men to limit wage increases in favor of retiree benefits -- only to see the clock stop before their time came.

Gary Wheeler, 53, had 17 years when his mine closed in 1994. Danny Droit, 59, said he had "roughly" 20, but worried that his total time would fall just short of the mark. Dick Bearden had 17 years.

"That medical card is worth its weight in gold," Townsend said. "My father-in-law retired with it, and he didn't have to worry what the doctor or the medicine cost. My father is in construction and is still working at age 76 to pay for health insurance."

The former union miners were among thousands east of the Mississippi River whose mines closed after Congress mandated acid rain controls in 1990, shattering demand for high-sulfur coal. To comply, utilities switched en masse to low-sulfur coal from the vast Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming.