Delay in payout to miners causing hardship, union says

Workers who lost their jobs when a Tumbler Ridge coal mine was shut down will have to wait awhile longer before receiving their shares of a $13-million payout secured by their union through a lengthy court battle.

Originally expecting to get their cheques by the end of this year or in early January, a deadline of Feb. 28 was subsequently granted and then, the day before that date, a judge allowed a further extension to April 16.

In April 2014, some 280 workers at the Wolverine Mine were put on layoff without receiving 60 days notice and United Steelworkers Local 1-2017 took the mine’s owner, Walter Energy Canada, to the Labour Relations Board and won adjustment pay for improper closure.

But the matter was put in doubt when the U.S. parent company, Walter Energy, went bankrupt and a major American creditor tried to go after the assets of the Canadian subsidiary.

The United Steelworkers took the issue to B.C. Supreme Court and in May 2017 won a decision that protected the claims of its members.

But the process has since become bogged down with the company asking for more time, in part to prepare a “plan of compromise and arrangement that can be put to creditors.” A sale of the company’s United Kingdom assets and litigation of a claim from a creditor are also playing roles.

According to an affidavit, USW Local 1-2017 business agent Dan Will only reluctantly agreed to the most-recent extension and only with the provisos that Walter Energy give a date by which it must file the plan and provide a written explanation in “plain and accessible English” for the delay.

“The Steelworkers are not a party to the current issues causing delay and for that reason I do not have sufficient knowledge to explain to the former employees why their distributions cannot be made at this time,” Will said.

Will said his office regularly receives 20 calls per week from frustrated and disappointed workers.

“Many of the former employees have expressed to me that they are in difficult circumstances with respect to employment, housing, health and family issues and that they require their distributions to deal with impending and significant matters,” Will said.

Examples include a worker who is on disability with no income and needs the distribution to supplement his payments. Another has had to hold off on buying a house because of the delay, according to Will. Also of concern, according to a posting Facebook page set up to keep workers up to date on the matter, is how much in Employment Insurance overpayments they will have to return once they get their distributions.

Walter Energy Canada had bought the Wolverine, Brule and Willow Creek mines in northeast B.C. for $3.3 billion in 2010 but closed them in 2014 and 2015 when coal prices collapsed. Conuma Coal bought them in 2016 and Wolverine and Brule have since been put back in operation.