Union officials led gatherings in Charleston, West Virginia and Evansville, Indiana late Wednesday to outline the details to about 2000 of its members. The tentative deal was settled last Friday and is up for a UMWA vote August 16.

The deal restores all wage cuts but $1 per hour, versus previous plans for cuts as high as $7.53 per hour for some job classifications.

Workers, if the vote is approved, will get annual wage increases of 50 cents per hour beginning January 1 2015, and monthly premiums for health care benefits will be eliminated.

Patriot will remain in the UMWA 1974 Pension Fund under the agreement, so current retirees will not suffer an impact on pension benefits. Additionally, active members will continue to earn pension credit.

The UMWA-Patriot deal would also have a 60% cut in annual out-of-pocket maximums for health care benefit, from $4000 to $1600, and the membership would have its life insurance benefits, vision care benefits, dental insurance and accidental death and dismemberment insurance restored.

Finally, a Voluntary Employee Benefit Association, funded by initial contributions from Patriot, would be formed as a way to pay retiree health care benefits going forward.

UMWA will also have a 35% to 38% stake in the producer.

Once that interest is sold, the funds will go back into the VEBA along with an ongoing 20-cent-per-ton coal royalty from Patriot mines.

UMWA said the provisions were “significant improvements” over what was ordered by US bankruptcy judge Kathy Surratt-States May 29 in St Louis, Missouri.

“We were able to significantly modify and improve upon what the judge ordered in this settlement,” union president Cecil Roberts said.

“I told Patriot management that I could not recommend that our members work under the judge’s order, and they understood that we would not.

“That understanding enabled us to work out this settlement over the past months since the order came down.”

Roberts added that the day and the document were those “I believe Peabody Energy never thought would come”

“When they devised the scheme to spin off Patriot and dump all Peabody’s legacy liabilities – along with some significantly underwater coal supply contracts – Peabody executives had to know they were setting up Patriot up to fail,” he said.

“They thought it was only a matter of time until Patriot was a goner … but they were wrong.”

Peabody, Roberts said, did not count on the union’s willingness to fight back and do whatever it took to preserve its membership’s earned benefits and keep its current members working.

“I believe that current Patriot management – which is no longer dominated by former Peabody executives – truly wants this company to survive and were willing to work with us to make that happen,” he said.

The ratification vote is scheduled for Friday at the various Patriot subsidiary workplaces in West Virginia and Kentucky.

Ballots will be counted by local union tellers, and the results will be reported to the UMWA international auditor/tellers.

The results will be released Friday evening once the total vote is finalized.