ST. LOUIS —It’s getting to be a regular thing. Every month, thousands of unionists, led by the Mine Workers, gather in St. Louis, or West Virginia, or New York City, to protest the bankruptcy proceedings involving Patriot Coal Co., the underfunded spinoff of giant Peabody Energy. Peabody deliberately set up Patriot to (a) dump retired miners’ health care costs on […]

WASHINGTON —Deaths and injuries in the nation’s mines, including its coal mines, fell in 2012 to some of their lowest recorded levels, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) reported. MSHA released its preliminary data on the eve of the third anniversary of the worst recent disaster, the April 2010 explosion and fire that killed 29 coal miners at West […]