Mine Workers Square Off with Peabody Energy’s CEO
Robert McGarrah sends us this update from the Peabody shareholder meeting earlier this week.
It was a great showdown Monday, April 29, under very tight security in Gillette, Wyo., with the Mine Workers (UMWA) members and Peabody Energy CEO Gregory Boyce. Five armed Campbell County police officers guarded entrances to the meeting. All UMWA proxy holders were admitted to the meeting room at Gillette College, while six environmental protesters were forced to sit in an "overflow" room, watching on closed-circuit TV.
Twenty mine workers, wearing UMWA Peabody T-shirts, peppered Boyce for more than an hour with questions about Peabody's 2007 spin off of Patriot Coal. They demanded to know why Boyce and the board of directors saddled Patriot with enormous liabilities for retiree health care costs. Patriot Coal declared bankruptcy in 2012 and hopes to eliminate its retiree health care obligations. Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman has said:
The employees’ lives and livelihoods depend on the outcome of these cases. The retirees’ health and access to health care depend on the outcome of these cases. Indeed, without the dedication and sacrifice of the coal miners and their families, there would be no coal, and there would be no Patriot Coal.
At the Peabody Energy annual meeting, retired mine worker Jodi Hogge asked Boyce, "How can we now be Patriot employees, when we never worked a day for the company? I retired from Peabody in 1994. My father and grandfather worked for Peabody and the 500 retirees and 200 widows in my local expect Peabody to honor its promises."
UMWA retiree Larry Knisell made an electrifying address, shouting, "I worked for Peabody for 38 years. I served my country in Vietnam. One of my knees is permanently injured form Vietnam and the other in a Peabody mine. You people make me sick. I'm fed up. We worked hard for you people and it's a damned shame. I pray to God my wife doesn't get sick."
UMWA representative Bobby Gaydos presented the AFL- CIO Reserve Fund shareholder proposal asking Peabody to disclose its lobbying expenses, pointing to the risk when shareholders don't know how their money is spent. He also cited support for disclosure from New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. Boyce claimed Peabody simply spent money to promote coal.
Robert Butero presented AFSCME's proposal to split the positions of chairman and CEO, noting that Boyce has presided over a drop in Peabody's earning for more than three years, saying, "You have an inherent conflict of interest." Boyce countered by blaming the Obama administration's war on coal and argued that Peabody's lead director is a strong member of the board. Also present were Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis, two of the largest advisory services that analyze shareholder votes for large investors and make recommendations, who both disagreed and urged support for both proposals.
UMWA retiree Bill Deegan told Boyce it was a lie to say Obama's war on coal hurt Peabody. "It's gas, not the war on coal that hurt earnings."
Boyce said both proposals were defeated but would not provide numbers, until Peabody files results with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission later this week.
