AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker and United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts were among 30 arrested at a rally in West Virginia Tuesday while protesting Patriot Coal's attempts to abandon its commitments to retirees, most of whom worked for Peabody Energy and Arch Coal before those companies created Patriot. Roberts and others say Patriot specifically was created to fail so the original companies could eliminate retiree health care and pension costs.

Before the arrests, Roberts headlined a group of speakers with a rousing message:

We're standing for those afflicted with black lung. We're standing with those who are in hospice care taking their last breath with their priests and ministers and families all around them. We're standing with those who have cancer. We're standing with the afflicted because the Bible tells us, 'Honor your mother and your father.' [...]

Holt Baker underlined the AFL-CIO's support for miners in the Patriot fight. Of the steady rain that came down throughout the rally, she said: "That is just the tears of the righteous trying to wash away the injustice of Patriot Coal."

Both of the state's U.S. senators sent letters of support for the rally and the retired workers. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D) said:

Today's rally should remind us all of people like Shirley Inman, who left a good-paying job in Chicago for a mining job at home in West Virginia, with the promise of a lifetime pension and health care benefits. Now, after years of on-the-job injuries and a courageous fight with cancer, that promise is gone. This is an unconscionable outcome for Shirley and the thousands of miners and their families who gave of themselves to the mining industry for decades on end. It's heartbreaking and shameful, and I won't stand for it.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D) added:

Our miners worked their fingers to the bone every single day to provide the fuel that powers America, and these companies made a promise to them—a promise they earned and deserved.

Watch video of today's rally at the Mine Workers' UStream channel. 

Last week, hundreds of Australian workers rallied on behalf of their U.S. brothers and sisters. The West Virginia legislature also got involved in the story, with the House of Delegates passing a resolution supporting the retirees and calling on Patriot to honor its commitments. Roberts said he was pleased with the legislature's action. "It shows that the support for our struggle for justice is growing and broadening, and that these coal companies’ concept of ‘business as usual’ will not be tolerated in West Virginia.”

A concurrent resolution was introduced in the Senate, but didn't emerge from committee before the legislature adjourned.

For more details on the specifics of the Patriot story, Roberts wrote an op-ed explaining the situation and Fairness at Patriot produced the following video: