Pa.’s Bob Casey touts Senate legislation to improve coal miners’ access to black lung benefits

It’s been difficult for Tony Kodric to breathe since an injury a decade ago ended the Uniontown man’s 36-year career as a coal miner.

He’s seen specialists, repeatedly measured the oxygen in his blood and battled coal companies. Despite Kodric’s efforts, the federal government won’t grant him monetary benefits for black lung, or coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, which occurs when miners chronically inhale coal dust.

Black lung has killed more than 76,000 American coal miners since 1968, and officials say it is debilitating coal miners at its highest rates in 50 years.

“Sometimes, it’s frustrating,” Kodric, 66, said as he stood next to his son, Ed, in a United Mine Workers of America building in Fayette County on Tuesday. “They tell you, ‘It’s not bad enough.’ But, you’re out of breath. ‘It’ll go away,’ the last doctor said.”

Kodric joined several dozen Pennsylvania coal miners, many of them retired, in a UMWA District 2 hall to tout new black lung legislation that Sen. Bob Casey, D-Scranton, introduced this month in Congress.

Known as The Black Lung Benefits Improvement Act of 2023, the Senate bill updates a 1969 black lung law by improving miners’ access to medical information so they have a fairer shot at receiving benefits. It also aims to address a backlog in federal benefits that are due but still unpaid.

The bill is cosponsored by Democrats in the Senate including Casey and U.S. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, both senators from Virginia, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, records show. The bill was referred Nov. 15 to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

“We can’t just throw up our hands and lament and say, ‘That’s terrible!’” Casey said. “We’ve got to get this bill passed. It’s about fundamental justice to those who’ve given us so much.”

Rates of black lung have more than doubled in the past 15 years, and incidence of the disease’s most severe form are at the highest levels in more than a generation, according to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.

Today, 1 in 5 veteran coal miners in central Appalachia will be diagnosed with black lung, experts said.

It’s difficult to say how many Pennsylvanian coal miners have black lung, because there is no central federal database for such statistics. More than 2,100 mines across Pennsylvania employ about 11,000 people, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection.

During his Fayette County stop, Casey said that his grandfather, Alphonsus Liguori Casey, began working in the coal mines in 1905 when he was 10 or 11 after his father died. His time there played a role in Alphonsus Liguori Casey going on to college and becoming a labor attorney.

“Coal miners have kept their promises over and over again. We’ve got some work to do to keep our promises to you,” he said to the group of miners in Fayette County. “This is a disease that’s haunted us since the 1800s, since we started mining coal here. We’re going to fight and we’re going to win this.”

UMWA President Cecil Roberts asked union members to get behind the legislation.

“Sen. Casey is your friend, that’s a fact,” Roberts said. “I find him to be passionate about what we have done and I find him to be compassionate. And you don’t always find that in Congress.”

Kodric said he is tired. He toiled for decades at Maple Creek Mine in New Eagle, Washington County, and the Cumberland Mine near Waynesburg, Greene County, before tearing his rotator cuff and bicep on the job in 2013 when he was 56.

Then came more breathing problems.

Two years ago, Kodric went to a UPMC black lung facility in Altoona to be evaluated. A doctor there said the oxygen levels in his blood weren’t low enough to merit benefits.

“Do you want him dead before you give him benefits?” his son Ed, 37, remembered shouting.

Kodric is not stepping down from what he feels is owed to him. He estimated that he’s gone to Washington, D.C., at least 15 to 20 times to try to sway legislators or take part in protests related to coal miner benefits. He’s marched for pensions and health care in Missouri, West Virginia and Kentucky.

He thinks Casey’s new law, if passed, could secure his black lung benefits and help him pay for bills stemming from health issues created in the mines.

“I hope this makes some impact,” Kodric said.