The $2.2 trillion Build Back Better Act is stuck in the U.S. Senate, where after months of negotiations, West Virginia’s Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin opposes the bill, along with all 50 Republicans. The stalled legislation deprives the Biden administration of a major win that would have established programs to provide critical support to working families, and promote policies to begin the transition to a clean energy economy.
It’s been reported that the 80,000-member United Mine Workers of America split with Manchin over the bill, but a conversation Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus had with Phil Smith, the union’s director of communications and government affairs, reveals a much more nuanced perspective.
Here Smith explains that the union favored passage of the bill, but did not support everything in the legislation, while Manchin has said the bill’s paid parental leave program, child tax credit and improvements to the Affordable Care Act would create dependency on government programs. Smith says his members would probably have liked to see those provisions in the bill passed.
PHIL SMITH: It is correct that we came out saying that we wished it had passed. But what is incorrect is that we are avidly in support of everything that’s in that act. When we made our statement before Christmas, we pointed to three specific things that weren’t going to get passed because the act itself was not going to get passed.
That’s not to say that we wouldn’t have liked our members to get the child tax credit. That’s not to say we wouldn’t have liked some of the other things in the legislation, but that’s not why we supported the bill.
We supported the bill because it would have extended the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund for a certain period of time, that’s the tax the companies pay. We supported it because it contained language that perhaps would have made it more likely that manufacturers in the renewable supply chain would locate their plants in areas where we’ve already had dislocated coal miners. Let’s remember there are already about 45,000 coal miners who have lost their jobs in the past six or seven years. Those people need good jobs, too. And we’re not just anticipating what may happen in the future, but we’ve got to figure out how to make up for what didn’t happen in the past, in terms of there being jobs available for those folks when they lost them. And then of course there were components of the PRO Act, with respect to making it more likely that workers could organize in a free and fair way.
MELINDA TUHUS: Were there elements of the bill that the union absolutely opposed?
PHIL SMITH: We would be just as happy to see some of the renewable tax credits that were in there be applied across the board when it came to energy production. But look, we fought a pretty large battle last fall to ensure that language that would have pretty much eliminated the use of coal to generate electricity in this country within just a couple of years, was not included in this legislation. The CEPP – the Clean Energy Performance Program is, I think what it was called – would not have provided enough time to develop the kind of jobs we felt are needed, even with the tax credits that are included in the Build Back Better bill. If there’s going to be a true transition, we need to be sure that people don’t fall into poverty while they’re making that transition, because they’re never going to come out of it, if that’s the case.
MELINDA TUHUS: Phil Smith, would the union support coal production to the bitter end, even though, besides its terrible impact on the climate, it also has a terrible impact on the communities where it’s produced or those who are downwind of coal power plants?
PHIL SMITH: The union believes that you can use coal to generate electricity in a carbon-neutral way, in a way that does not have downstream particulates, in a way that does not have a lot of the things you mentioned. Look, the kind of coal-fired power plants you mentioned that have those very bad environmental impacts within communities around those plants are old. They probably do need to be shut down, because there’s no way you can remediate them to eliminate some of the things that come along with burning coal.
That’s not to say, however, that that has to happen everywhere. The new super-critical coal-fired power plants that are being built by other people in the world don’t emit those kind of particulate matter. If you attach carbon capture storage technology to these plants that capture all or almost all of the carbon emissions, then all of a sudden you’ve got a carbon-neutral fuel that you can use.
MELINDA TUHUS: Could you describe the difference between the union’s position and Sen. Manchin’s on the Build Back Better Act?
PHIL SMITH: Well, sure, and I think we made that clear. We had wished for it to be passed, and obviously he didn’t wish for it to be passed. That said, as we move forward I think people who still cling to Build Back Better need to start clinging to something else. That bill is dead. That bill’s not going anywhere. So folks need to figure out what’s going to happen to the pieces of it they wish to see passed, and the pieces they may wish not to see passed. I think from our perspective we want to look forward, we want to see the things we’re concerned about get passed, and by the way, they are all things that Sen. Manchin supports. So, we think there is a way forward – we hope there is a way forward for some of these things – and we’re going to work together with whoever we can work with to get that done. Working people need to get a better shake than they’re getting now, and any way we can move to that and make that happen is something we’re going to be in favor of. Like I said, some of the things that were in the Build Back Better bill would have done that, but from our perspective, let’s figure out ways to still make that happen.
For more information, visit the United Mine Workers of America at UMWA.org.
