UMWA Plans Rally to Protest Proposed EPA Regs

The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) is planning to make its objections to proposed EPA rules loud and clear. The union has a rally scheduled at the end of the month in Pittsburgh.

According to a release from the UMWA, the union plans to host a rally in Pittsburgh on July 31. The union says the EPA’s existing power plant rule will cost tens of thousands of jobs for UMWA, the union plans to host a rally in Pittsburgh on July 31.

The union says the EPA’s existing power plant rule will cost tens of thousands of jobs for coal miners, utility workers, boilermakers, railroad workers and others.

The release goes on to say the rule will have “no significant effect on global greenhouse gas emissions.”

The EPA is holding a series of public hearings regarding this proposed rule, one of which is scheduled in Pittsburgh the same day as the rally.

UMWA President Cecil Roberts points out in the news release that the EPA expects the rule to create other jobs, but he says they won’t be comparable in pay or in the coalfields.

The UMWA estimates the rule could take as much as $208 billion out of coalfield communities over the next 20 years. Roberts says the coalfield economy can’t take that kind of hit and survive.

Roberts says further details of the rally will be announced in the coming weeks. 

“The truth is that it will perhaps cut about 1 percent worldwide by 2030,” Roberts said in the release. “Meanwhile, we will be bleeding even more of the best American jobs to economic competitors like China and India who will continue to power their growing economies by expanding their use of coal-fired electricity, not shrinking it.

“Climate change is a global problem,” Roberts said. “I demands a global solution, not one that punishes American coal miners and their families after they have provided the means to power our economy for 150 years.”