Union official says West Virginia governor delaying paying workers’ health insurance bills, despite denials

CHARLESTON, West Virginia — West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice’s family is millions of dollars behind on payments to their company’s employee health insurance fund. hotel in financial difficultyjeopardizing workers’ coverage despite the U.S. Senate candidate’s claims to the contrary, a union official said Friday.

“The crimes are factual, tangible and documented,” said Peter Bostic, president of the Board of Trustees at The Greenbrier, the historic resort owned by Justice’s family.

On Thursday, the judge dismissed concerns about at least $2.4 million in outstanding payments to the insurer during a news briefing, saying the payments had been made “regularly” and there was “no way” employees would lose their coverage.

But on Friday, Bostic said the situation was by no means resolved.

“We continue to demand that The Greenbriers’ outstanding contractual obligations be met and remain hopeful that an agreement will be reached between ANHF and The Greenbrier to maintain benefits going forward,” he said in a statement.

Justice’s remarks came the same day the Republican’s family announced it had reached an agreement with a debt collection company to keep The Greenbrier, which has hosted presidents, royalty and congressmen, from being seized due to unpaid debts. The Greenbrier was scheduled to go up for auction Aug. 27, after Beltway Capital declared a long-standing loan on the Justice Hotel in default after buying it in July from JPMorgan Chase.

Bostic said Friday that in light of the auction cancellation, the Amalgamated National Health Fund has agreed to continue providing unionized employees at The Greenbrier with health insurance 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 health care provider Amalgamated National Health Fund that they would lose the day of the auction unless the Justice family paid $2.4 million in missing contributions.

The Justice family has not contributed to the employee health fund in four months, and an additional $1.2 million in contributions will soon be due, according to the letter the board received from Ronald Richman, a Schulte Roth attorney. & Zabel LLP, the firm representing the fund.

The letter also said some contributions were taken from employees’ paychecks but never transferred to the fund, involving union officials.

The judge told reporters at a news conference Thursday that “the insurance payments were made and were made regularly.”

“There is no way that the employees of the Greenbrier, a large union, are going to be left without insurance,” he said. “There is no way.”

Justice began his first of 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 hosted 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, to be held at a courthouse in the small town of Lewisburg, covered 60.5 acres, including the hotel and parking lot.

The Republican said that when he bought The Greenbrier, employee benefits were “slashed to the bare essentials” and that he restored them. He added that if the hotel had been foreclosed, “there would have been unimaginable carnage and devastation for the great people of The Greenbrier,” referring to the jobs that could have been lost.

“And if we had just given up, what would have happened to those employees?” he said. “I mean, it’s nice to have health insurance, but if you don’t have a job, it would be really difficult, right?”

Justice is running for the U.S. Senate against Democrat Glenn Elliott, a former mayor of Wheeling. Justice, who owns dozens of businesses and whose net worth was estimated at $513 million by Forbes magazine in 2021, has been indicted legal affairs of being late in paying millions in family business debts and fines for dangerous working conditions in its coal mines.