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Company-Sponsored Welfare Plans in the Anthracite Industry before 1900
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2012
Extract
A recent survey by the U. S. Chamber of Commerce reported that so-called “fringe benefits” are now taking 16.4 per cent of the payrolls of American industry as a whole. Probably the best-known of these welfare programs is the United Mine Workers Welfare and Retirement Fund, which was started in May, 1946, by agreement between the union and the Department of the Interior, then operating the mines, and which was accepted by the operators when the industry returned to private hands. The Fund is financed by a royalty on every ton of coal produced. The royalty was originally 5 cents a ton, but it has risen every year until it is now 50 cents a ton. The revenues of the Fund up to June 30, 1952, were $476,000,000; its expenditures in the same period were $387,000,000. These disbursements went to finance several different types of benefits—pensions for retired miners, hospital and medical care, rehabilitation of the disabled, maintenance of men who were permanently and totally disabled, and death benefits and maintenance aid for miners' families. The Fund is administered by three trustees: one named by the United Mine Workers, one by the operators, and one designated jointly.
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- Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1953
References
1 Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, News Notes, Oct. 31, 1952.
2 United Mine Workers Welfare and Retirement Fund, Four Year Summary and Review for the year ending June 30, 1951 (Washington, D. C., 1951)Google Scholar; idem, Report for the year ending June 30, 1952 (Washington, D. C, 1952). Additional information was kindly provided by Lorin E. Kerr, M.D., Assistant to the Executive Medical Officer of the Fund. The material in the text applies only to the bituminous coal industry; a similar plan exists for the anthracite industry at the present time.
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14 U. S. House of Representatives, 50th Cong., 2nd Sess., Report No. 4147, Labor Troubles in the Anthracite Regions of Pennsylvania, 1887–1888 (Washington, D. C., 1889), pp. 481–482. Whereas the information taken from the Proceedings of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission of 1902–3 was provided by the companies concerned, the following data is based on testimony before a partisan committee of Congress by a member of the Pennsylvania legislature from the Lehigh district. As noted below, however, this witness did offer documentary exhibits, consisting of company pay vouchers, for some of his testimony.
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