People Before Profit blog

THIS WEEK IN LABOR

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:50:00 +0000

AFSCME, SEIU unite against cuts

Two of the nation’s largest unions of health care workers are joining forces to target 11 Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives in an all-out effort to defeat budget cuts passed last month by Congress (see related story, page 1).

The budget cuts would limit access to nursing home care and other vital health services for seniors in order to free up $70 billion in tax breaks for the wealthy, said Gerald McEntee, president of the State, County and Municipal Employees Union, and Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees, in a joint press conference Jan. 17. Getting the House to eliminate these cuts in the vote on final passage is the goal of the unions’ campaign. The vote is scheduled for Feb. 1.

The two unions will run a seven-day television ad campaign in the districts of Republicans Nancy Johnson, Rob Simmons, and Chris Shays of Connecticut, Jo Anne Emerson (Mo.), Sherwood Boehlert (N.Y.), Jim Nussle (Iowa), Mark Green (Wis.), Fred Upton (Mich.), Bob Beauprez (Colo.) and Mike Fitzpatrick and Jim Gerlach of Pennsylvania. See the ads online at actnow.org/press/.

No-raid pact

In another unity initiative, AFSCME has signed agreements with Unite Here and the Food and Commercial Workers not to raid where established collective bargaining relationships exist. The AFSCME agreement with Unite Here also establishes a joint committee to address issues of union density and jurisdiction. Union membership up

Union membership increased by 213,000 last year, according to numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Jan. 20.

“In a political climate that’s hostile to workers’ rights, these numbers illustrate the extraordinary will of workers to gain a voice on the job despite enormous obstacles,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. With the increasing size of the work force, union density remained steady at 12.5 percent, halting a decline in recent years. The DOL numbers also revealed what Sweeney called “the union advantage,” an increase in union members’ wages double the increase in non-union wages in 2005.

The number of workers who want to be union members — 57 percent — is five times that who actually enjoy union membership, said Sweeney’s statement. He renewed his call for Congress to restore workers’ freedom to form union by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.

AFA salvages pensions

Members of the Association of Flight Atttendants are slated to vote in February on a tentative pension deal reached with United Airlines. Months of protests by the union’s members scaled back the damage wreaked on their pensions via the company’s bankruptcy maneuvering. Despite cuts, flight attendants have succeeded in fundamentally preserving their retirement security, union spokesperson Sarah Nelson Delacruz told the World. “We got United to double its original proposal,” under which two-thirds of flight attendants would have lost over half of their pensions, Delacruz said. Now, with the combination of the benefit from the federal Pension Guarantee Board and a defined contribution plan funded by United, there will be about 77 percent income replacement for virtually all retirees.

“We maximized our leverage. We did better due to the fight we waged,” Delacruz said. “But the replacement of a defined benefit program with a defined contribution is a larger issue,” Delacruz explained. “This government is encouraging the collapse of retirement security and the defined benefit system so they can get the broker fees for their friends on Wall Street. It’s the same thing they’re trying to do with Social Security.”

Meanwhile, a U.S. bankruptcy judge overruled the objections of airline unions and approved United’s plans to offer $115 million in incentives to certain management personnel.

“It may well be that we have a culture in this country that overcompensates management,” said Judge Eugene Wedoff, in an unusual moment of candor. “But United is just one enterprise that operates in that general environment.”

This Week in Labor is compiled by Roberta Wood (rwood@pww.org).

Hotel workers issue wake-up call

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:26:00 +0000

Many-top-of-the-line hotels brag about their “heavenly beds.” But triple sheets, oversize mattresses, heavy comforters and five or six pillows make for a work load from hell for today’s hotel workers. And while global hotel chains are expecting heavenly record-breaking profits in 2006, the nation’s hotel workers are struggling in an industry plagued with poverty-level wages.

Hotel Workers Rising! is a campaign by Unite Here to join unionized hotel workers with those not yet unionized in a year when contracts will be expiring in 400 hotels employing 50,000 workers in the U.S. and Canada.

The campaign’s program is broader than the contracts expiring this year, says Unite Here’s President/Hospitality John Wilhelm. It aims to link union workers with their brothers and sisters who are not yet organized, taking on the multimillion dollar corporations such as Starwood, Hilton and Marriott that now dominate the industry in every city.

“Wages for the same jobs vary wildly from city to city,” says the union and workers find themselves struggling to keep important benefits like health care and retirement and their right to have a union.

That right to have a union is important to Angela Reed, a bartender at the Glendale Los Angeles Hilton who is fighting to “get the union into” her hotel where “it is definitely needed.” Reed described some of the pre-union workers’ tactics.” If something goes wrong for one employee, 40 others surround her and all go to the manager together,” she told a teleconference announcing Hotelworkers Rising!’s founding. “In four days we did a petition and 75 percent said ‘we want a union,’” she related. “If it wasn’t for us, the business would not run.”

A kickoff tour for the new movement will cover four cities in as many days, starting Feb. 15 in San Francisco and moving on to Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston.

Events will feature 2004 vice presidential candidate John Edwards and actor-activist Danny Glover as well as scores of both union and nonunion hotel workers who will introduce their goals and highlight the critical role of hospitality workers in the local economies.

The campaign will create opportunities for hotel workers to travel from one community to another, said Wilhelm, and allow workers from one chain to sit in on others’ negotiations.

Wilhelm pointed out the direct correlation between union density and wages. In New York and San Francisco, 90 percent of full-service hotels are organized, he said, and wages run $18-19 an hour. In Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles, where the union rate is about 50 percent, wages run about $12 or $13. In Seattle, with 20 percent, wages are down to $8 or $9. Emphasizing that wages are tied to organization rates, not room rates, Wilhelm cited the example of Scottsdale, Ariz., where the room rates are sky high but absence of union contracts leaves pay hovering around the minimum wage.

The largest group within the hotel workers is housekeepers who often make 20 or more beds per day. They frequently suffer physical injuries from the heavy workloads and must often work through their breaks and off the clock to meet quotas.

At this time Unite Here is not seeking a national contract, “but we are joining together to support one another,” said Wilhelm. There are some national issues the union is raising, however, including immigrant workers’ rights and the demand for the hotel industry to hire African Americans.

The hotel industry is the most rapidly growing industry in the country, according to Wilhelm. The union is focusing its energy on service jobs, which, it says, by their nature cannot be exported. It aims to transform them into “middle class jobs” that support a family just as sweatshop jobs were transformed by industrial organization 70 years ago. “No one has found a better, more effective anti-poverty program than unionization,” he added.

“We are hungry for a change here,” said rank and file activist Reed. “This should be a positive virus for everyone throughout the U.S. and Canada to catch.”

Ford to cut 25,000 to 30,000 jobs

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 08:58:00 +0000

DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — Ford Motor Co. plans to cut up to 30,000 jobs and shutter 14 plants in a sweeping restructuring of its North American auto business.

The cuts represent up to 25 percent of Ford’s North American work force of 122,000 people. Ford has approximately 87,000 hourly workers and 35,000 salaried workers. In addition, Ford plans to cut 12 percent of its corporate officers in the next two months.

Ford’s St. Louis plant will be the first plant idled, in the first quarter of this year. A plant near Atlanta will close at the end of this year and a plant in Wixom, Mich., will close in the second quarter of 2007, according to Ford Americas President Mark Fields.

Other plants to be idled and eventually closed through 2008 are Batavia Transmission in Ohio and Windsor Casting in Ontario. Ford will choose later this year two more plants to be idled. The company also will reduce production to one shift at its St. Thomas assembly plant in Ontario. All of the plant closings and job cuts are scheduled to be completed by 2012.

Under the company’s existing contract with the United Auto Workers, workers at the idled plants will continue to get most of their pay and benefits until a new contract is negotiated next year.

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and Vice President Gerald Bantom expressed disappointment over the plan.

“The impacted hourly and salaried workers find themselves facing uncertain futures because of senior management’s failure to halt Ford’s sliding market share,” they said in a statement. “The announcement has further left a cloud hanging over the entire work force because of pending future announcements of additional facilities to be closed at some point in the future.”

Fields said half the jobs Ford is cutting will be through attrition, while the rest will be through layoffs. He said the company plans to help workers using buyouts and possible placement in other plants.

In Wixom, 18-year veteran James Crawford said he is too young to retire and might not have enough seniority to get hired at another plant.

“This really hits me hard,” said the 39-year-old car painter, who listened to the announcement on the radio in a white Ford Probe parked across the street from the plant. “It looks like I’m starting over.”

The restructuring is Ford’s second in four years. Under the first plan, Ford closed five plants and cut 35,000 jobs.

Oakland teachers encouraged by fact finders report

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 08:40:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. — Teachers here are encouraged by a long-awaited arbitrator’s report, released Jan. 23, bolstering their contention that the Oakland Unified School District can afford to raise salaries by up to 2.5 percent and that new health care costs to teachers can be minimized.

“As we predicted, there is money in this district to settle a fair contract,” union President Ben Visnick said, as hundreds of teachers prepared to march protesting the district’s efforts to hire replacement workers.

The report, issued by the impartial chair of a three-person fact finding panel including representatives of the union and school district, found the district has benefited from increased revenue in the recent period. It also recommended that the district provide some preparatory time for teachers during regular school hours — periods during which students can receive specialized classes in the arts, science, physical education and other subjects.

Oakland teachers have worked without a contract since June 30, 2004. They have urged restoration of programs and services, including the arts and physical education, which were cut following a 2002 state takeover of the city’s schools under a financial bailout agreement. They have also called for restoration of a 4 percent pay cut they accepted at that time, and protested the district’s demand to cap its contribution to health coverage. Their union, the Oakland Education Association, has repeatedly emphasized that it is doing everything possible to avoid a strike.

Meanwhile, the school district has advertised for replacement workers in area newspapers, online, and with a telephone hotline, proposing to pay them nearly three times the current $110-per-day rate for substitute teachers.

Release of the fact finder’s report was preceded by a Jan. 21 rally outside the Marriott Hotel in downtown Oakland as teachers from around the state took a break from an education conference to support their Oakland colleagues.

Alluding to her organization’s role in the labor-led coalition that defeated Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ballot measures last fall, Barbara Kerr, president of the California Teachers Association, pledged support and added, “We do this not only with words, but with our resources. And let me tell you, after last year, you understand that when we take on a serious cause, we do it well.”

Joining the rally were teachers, CTA and National Education Association officers from all over the Bay Area and as far away as Los Angeles.

Calif. almond workers demand a voice at work

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 08:24:00 +0000

For the last year and a half, efforts by over 600 almond workers at Blue Diamond Growers’ Sacramento plant to join Local 17 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and gain the respect, raises and benefits they deserve have been stonewalled by what the company itself calls “an aggressive union avoidance campaign.”

Many of the 610 production and maintenance workers — down from nearly 1,600 a decade and a half ago — say that, between sharp rises in their health care costs and small pay hikes, they’ve lost ground since 1990.

During the same period, the company, which operates the world’s largest almond processing plant, has seen almond prices rise as production has gone up. California produces 80 percent of the world’s almonds, and BDG processes about one-third of the state’s crop. About half the workers are Latino, about 10 percent are African American, and 20 percent are from Asian countries including India and Pakistan. Almost half are women.

ILWU International Representative Agustin Ramirez said solidarity actions are growing around the country and internationally. Ramirez said a Halloween “Howl for Justice for Blue Diamond Workers” featured actions in seven U.S. cities as well as an Internet campaign with thousands of hits to the company’s web site, shutting it down. During a Nov. 21 International Day of Action, union supporters contacted BDG distributors and customers in India, South Korea, Japan, Spain, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, among other nations.

“We’re continuing to keep in contact with workers, especially dockers, in other countries, and we’re making dock workers in Oakland, Houston and Savannah — major ports for almond shipping — aware of the situation,” he said.

The BDG plant, a cooperative serving some 3,500 member almond farmers in the Central Valley, has been in Sacramento since 1910. It has never been unionized.

Besides conducting individual and small group meetings where workers were questioned about union support and bombarded with anti-union propaganda and threats, including threats to close the plant, BDG has fired five union supporters on the flimsiest of pretexts and tried to force a premature, immediate election.

Last October the National Labor Relations Board issued 28 complaints against the grower for violations of federal labor law, including three of the firings and its efforts to coerce workers with threats. A four-day hearing was held, and a decision is expected later this winter.

“It is our position that the boss has no place telling workers whether they can join a union or not,” said Peter Olney, ILWU’s director of organizing, at a Human Rights Week hearing in San Francisco Dec. 5. “We have argued with the growers that just as they should not be pressured by other growers or non-growers over their decision to join an agricultural cooperative, so workers should be free to choose whether to belong to a workers’ organization or not.”

For information about solidarity actions with the almond workers, including a Valentine’s Day activity, call Agustin Ramirez at (916) 606-4681.

Transit workers reject contract in close vote

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 08:04:00 +0000

NEW YORK — By a margin of seven votes, city transit workers rejected a tentative contract between their union, Transport Workers Union Local 100, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The main reason cited for the “no” vote was the provision that workers would for the first time have to pay for health coverage, but union leaders, members and elected officials point to disinformation in the media and interference by Gov. George Pataki.

The MTA is now pushing for binding arbitration. Local 100 wants to reopen negotiations, hopefully to win a better contract. Some say this may be possible, as the MTA announced following the earlier negotiations that it had $37 million dollars more than expected in real estate revenues, and another surplus of $14 million due to interest rates.

The tentative contract agreement was reached following a three-day strike just before Christmas by the city’s 34,000 transit workers, the first in 25 years. The strike was sparked by an MTA demand for a two-tier pension system, in which current workers would continue to contribute 2 percent of their salary, while new hires would pay 6 percent.

Local 100 President Roger Toussaint declared that the union would adamantly oppose any two-tier system, saying it would create “two hostile camps within the union.”

The union was seen as scoring a big win when the MTA finally pulled the two-tier plan off the table.

However, many workers expressed dismay over the new health care deduction, 1.5 percent of workers’ earnings, agreed to in the proposed contract.

“The medical contribution was the main problem,” a Brooklyn bus dispatcher told the World after voting against the contract. “Most bus operators work extra shifts, 50–60 hours. The one-and-half percent factored into the overtime adds up. We want a fixed figure. That would be fair.”

But a train operator in Jamaica, Queens, gave a “thumbs-up” sign indicating he supported the contract. “It was the best we could do under the circumstances,” he said.

“There was a lot of false information around the 1.5 percent being spread by some dissident groups and the media,” Charles Jenkins, chair of the TWU’s Line Equipment Section and a membership outreach organizer, told the World.

Jenkins said the 1.5 percent health care payment would have actually paid for a new perk: secured medical coverage from age 55 to 65, “something that our members had asked for.” Most TWU members today have the time on the job to retire before 65, but without guaranteed health coverage “they’re being held hostage because they’re waiting for Medicare to kick in.”

Local 100 spokesperson Dave Katzman noted that in the memorandum of understanding between the TWU and MTA, “you will notice that the 1.5 percent payments for medical benefits are in the same clause that adds full medical benefits for retirees.”

Union leaders and others blame Pataki for sowing confusion about the contract. Days after the agreement was announced, Pataki said he would veto a provision that would have given about half the membership an average of nearly $10,000 in pension payment refunds.

“That hurt and confused our membership,” Jenkins said. “We tried to let our members know that, in the event Pataki didn’t pass legislation, we were able to get reassurance from the MTA saying that it would foot the bill out of its operating expenditure.”

City Councilmember John Liu (D-Queens), who chairs the council’s transportation subcommittee, said in a statement, “Governor Pataki should leave it to the professionals, as he originally claimed to be doing in December, and not inject inflammatory statements into an already tense situation.”

The union says it should have done better in educating members about the contract. Some say that if the leadership had more fully explained the contract to members, it would have passed. “We have to go back to the basics of getting to our members,” Jenkins said. “It’s something that will not happen in weeks or months; it’s going to take a long period of time.”

Jenkins noted that although the health care cost would be painful to members, half the workers saw it as the best deal possible right now. “Part of the education should be that in these times and climate that we’re in, it’s rare that you come away with 100 percent in a contract on every end,” he said.

Union leaders say they would like to see the public press the MTA to negotiate in good faith, and demand the governor stop interfering.

Gabe Falsetta contributed.

UMWA to represent Sago miners in disaster probes

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 10:15:00 +0000

“Be assured that we will pursue every avenue as we seek to understand what happened at Sago, because the truth is that when it comes to safety, we represent every miner in America and Canada whether he or she chooses to pay dues to this union or not,” said United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts as a team of union safety experts arrived at the scene of the Jan. 2 explosion that killed 12 miners.

Surviving coal miners who work at the nonunion Sago Mine have authorized the union to represent them in the investigations of the disaster. UMWA officials accompanied miners in closed-door interviews, which began Jan. 17, conducted by the company that owns the mine — International Coal Group (ICG) — and federal and state representatives.

“This is a courageous act by these miners and, frankly, something they likely would not have done had they not been assured anonymity by MSHA [the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration] and the state,” said Roberts, a sixth-generation miner from Cabin Creek, W.Va. Both Roberts’ grandfathers died at work in the mines.

Both MSHA and the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training are investigating the explosion, the first in the state in nearly 40 years. But investigators have not yet entered the mine, which is closed because ICG is pumping out water that it says seeped into one section. The delay caused West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd to postpone a Senate hearing until Jan. 23.

Roberts hailed West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin’s appointment of Davitt McAteer to head up the state’s investigation and backed McAteer’s call for public hearings on the disaster. The union leader said he believed McAteer “has the determination to pursue this investigation wherever it may lead,” and said a public hearing “can be a beneficial part of this investigation.”

“But what is going to be most important for the public and for coal miners to know as a result of this investigation,” Roberts said, “is that mine safety and health regulations will be strictly enforced at every mine in the United States. MSHA and the state mine safety agencies must view these regulations as requirements for companies to follow, not mere suggestions.”

Fight to save Winchester jobs

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 10:12:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — When they arrived at work on Jan. 17, fresh from a holiday break, union workers at U.S. Repeating Arms were greeted with the announcement that the plant has been scheduled to close on March 31. The 186 workers, who produce Winchester sporting rifles, also discovered important machinery had already been removed by parent company Browning, part of the Belgium-owned Herstal Group.

The company had moved some production operations to a nonunion plant in South Carolina several years ago. It also produces Winchester rifles in Japan.

At a packed special meeting of Machinists Local 609 geared to fighting the closing, members were addressed by elected officials who pledged to do all they could to find a buyer and avert this tragedy for the workers and community.

“At a minimum, the scheduled plant closing must be delayed,” said Everett Corey of IAM District 25. “Workers and the community need time to work on plans for ensuring that manufacturing continues and the workers remain employed.”

The union will be reaching out and joining coalitions with the community, other unions, elected officials and anyone who wants to help, said Corey.

In a letter to the mayor and Board of Aldermen, the Citizens Ad Hoc Committee called for the city to explore seeking a court injunction to keep the plant open, initiation of eminent domain takeover procedures and revocation and recovery of tax benefits given to the company. The letter cited an amendment to a 1993 tax abatement agreement with the city that stipulates that work being done in New Haven will not be moved to other locations without the city’s consent.

“We don’t want another economic hole in the middle of our community,” said Craig Gauthier, chair of Citizens Ad Hoc, formed during a six-month strike at the plant in 1979. Gauthier urged a fight “to stop this bloodletting of our good, hard-fought-for union jobs.” The plant has been a major employer in the African American community for decades.

At a press conference following the union meeting, John Olsen, president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, and representatives of U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro joined state Sen. Martin Looney, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano and eight members of the Board of Aldermen to pledge that they will do everything they can to find a buyer that will continue production, including seeking resources from the state’s Department of Economic Development.

Phone calls to Gov. Jodi Rell were urged, to demand that she meet with the union and resolve the crisis.

Victims Son: W. Va. Miners Afraid To Speak Out About Safety Problems

Wed, 11 Jan 2006 06:27:00 +0000

TALLMANSVILLE, W. Va. --Workers at the non-union Sago mine knew the facility was unsafe, but were afraid to speak out, according to the son of one of 12 miners killed in the underground explosive accident there on Jan. 3. But while John Bennett said his father and the other miners were afraid to discuss the mine’s problems, AFL-CIO officials and federal reports counter that Sago, in rural West Virginia’s traditional coal mining area, was an extremely troubled mine. And a list published by Bush’s Mine Safety and Health Administration shows it dumped several rules four years ago that could have bettered safety at Sago.

The accident at Sago killed 12 miners underground and left a 13th in the hospital in critical condition. Lethal carbon monoxide was measured at three times the levels a person can safely breathe for a maximum of 15 minutes before succumbing. In the past two years, federal MSHA inspectors cited the Sago mine, whose present owner bought it two months ago, more than 270 times for safety violations. Many were serious—such as collapsing roofs, faulty tunnel supports, inadequate ventilation and dangerous accumulation of flammable coal dust.

“My dad would come home at night and tell me how unsafe the mine was,” John Bennett said during an early morning interview on NBC’s Today Show. His father, Jim Bennett, was among the 12 dead. John Bennett said the miners “can’t speak out about (safety problems) because the United Mine Workers is not protecting the workers anymore. We have no protection for the miners.” But that statement does not reflect that Sago is non-union. And UMWA President Cecil Roberts called the mine management’s failure to tell miners about conditions and violations at Sago “inexcusable,” the Associated Press reported.

Jim Bennett, who had worked in the mines for 30 years, was scheduled to retire in April, his son said. Several of those killed were veteran miners in their 50s and 60s. John Bennett said the families want answers and they want accountability. “A lot of us can’t understand how, in 2005, this mine could have 208 safety violations,” he said. Since October, MSHA has issued 50 citations to Sago, some as recently as Dec. 21, including citations for accumulation of combustible materials such as coal dust and loose coal. The agency said it would begin an in-depth investigation, including “how emergency information was relayed about the trapped miners’ conditions.”

Safety experts question whether an investigation will result in any change. And AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney says the accident points up the Bush administration’s lax regard for worker safety and health, in the mines and elsewhere. “Too many workers face dangers on the job every day—not just coal miners, but construction and factory workers, service workers and office workers,” he said. Citing MSHA safety reports, Sweeney said “we don’t know if the explosion was related to the cited conditions, but it certainly is another in a long line of wake-up calls for increased government and industry attention to workers’ safety on the job.”

Jordan Barab, a former special assistant at OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and health and safety expert for AFSCME and the AFL-CIO, said the federal government is doing little to protect workers. He also noted 90 percent of coal mining industry campaign contributions in recent years went to Bush and the GOP. “The fact is Bush has not requested budgets for OSHA or MSHA that even keep up with the rate of inflation and mandatory pay increases over the past several years while penalties for OSHA or MSHA violations remain laughably low,” Barab writes on his website, Confined Space. “The highest penalty of the…citations received last year by Sago was $878. But that was the exception. Most of the others were $250 or $60. At that rate, it’s hardly a good business decision to even bother fixing anything. And the administration has shut down any new worker protection standards in OSHA and MSHA,” Barab wrote.

Barab did not specifically cite it but Bush’s regulatory agenda, from the Federal Register, showed the Clinton administration proposed a rule for breathing devices for underground miners, to let them breathe when the carbon monoxide escalates, as it did in Sago. Bush’s MSHA dumped the proposal in Dec. 2001. “Self-contained self-rescuers (SCSRs) are closed-circuit breathing apparatuses that provide a source of oxygen and greatly increase a miner’s chance of surviving a mine emergency involving an irrespirable atmosphere,” MSHA said then. It said mine owners reported “recent experiences with SCSRs which did not function properly or were not donned properly, rendering them ineffective.” MSHA said it was time to update the rule, requiring more-frequent replacement of SCSRs and better training. Bush’s MSHA dumped the proposal “in light of resource constraints and changing safety and health regulatory priorities.” For that reason, the same day, it dumped a Clinton proposal requiring all mines to have two separate surface exits.