Union rep says West Virginia governor late on paying worker health insurance bills, despite denials
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The family of West Virginia Governor Jim Justice is millions of dollars behind on payments to their employees’ health insurance fund. financially troubled hoteljeopardizing workers’ coverage despite U.S. Senate candidate claims to the contrary, a union official said Friday.
“The defaults are factual, tangible and documented,” said Peter Bostic, president of the Council of Unions at The Greenbrier, the historic resort owned by Justice’s family.
Justice dismissed concerns about at least $2.4 million in back payments to the insurance company at a press conference Thursday, saying the payments had been made “regularly” and there was “no way” workers would lose coverage.
But on Friday, Bostic said the situation is far from resolved.
“We continue to demand that The Greenbriers’ outstanding contractual obligations be met and remain hopeful that an agreement can be reached between the ANHF and The Greenbrier to continue payments into the future,” he said in a statement.
Justice’s comments came on the same day the Republican’s family announced they… an agreement reached with a collection agency to prevent The Greenbrier hotel, which has hosted presidents, royalty and members of Congress, from being foreclosed on over unpaid debts. The Greenbrier was set to be auctioned off on August 27 after Beltway Capital defaulted on a long-term loan on the Justice hotel after it was bought from JPMorgan Chase in July.
Bostic said Friday that given the cancellation of the auction, the Amalgamated National Health Fund had agreed to continue offering health insurance to union workers at The Greenbrier through the end of the month while they work to reach an agreement with the judges.
Earlier this week, as the auction date approached, about 400 employees of the Greenbrier Hotel received notice from an attorney for the health care provider Amalgamated National Health Fund saying they would suffer a loss on auction day if the Justice family did not pay $2.4 million in missing contributions.
The Justice family has not contributed to the employee health fund in four months, and another $1.2 million in contributions will soon be due, according to the letter the board received from Ronald Richman, an attorney at Schulte Roth. & Zabel LLP, the firm representing the fund.
The letter also states that contributions were withheld from employees’ salaries but never transferred to the fund. These were union officials.
Justice told reporters at a press conference on Thursday that “insurance payments were being made and were being made on a regular basis.”
“There is no way that the great union workers at The Greenbrier can go without insurance,” he said. “There is no possible way.”
Justice began serving the first of his two terms as governor in 2017, after buying The Greenbrier out of bankruptcy in 2009. The 710-room hotel hosted a PGA Tour golf tournament from 2010 to 2019 and has welcomed NFL teams for training camps and practices. A once-secret 112,000-square-foot (10,080-square-meter) underground bunker built for Congress at the Greenbrier in case of a nuclear attack during the Cold War now offers tours.
The auction, which was to take place at a courthouse in the town of Lewisburg, covered 150 acres of land, including the hotel and parking lot.
The Republican said that when he bought The Greenbrier, employee benefits were “stripped to the bone,” and that he restored them. He said that if the hotel had been seized, “there would have been carnage and devastation like you can’t imagine for the great people of The Greenbrier,” referring to jobs that could have been lost.
“What if we just threw it out the window, what would have happened to those workers?” he said. “I mean, it’s great to have health insurance, but if you don’t have a job, it would be pretty damn hard, right?”
Justice is running for U.S. Senate against Democrat Glenn Elliott, a former mayor of Wheeling. Justice, who owns dozens of businesses and had a net worth estimated by Forbes magazine at $513 million in 2021, has been accused of lawsuits of late payments of millions in debts of family businesses and fines for unsafe working conditions in its coal mines.