The union has some experience in fighting for miner rights and would continue that tradition for the Kemmerer workers, former workers and their dependents, he said at the time.

“We are not a bashful bunch of people,” Dalpiaz said. “We’ve dealt with more of these coal bankruptcies in the last 15 years than we want to think about. We will fight this every single step of the way.”

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Michael Duff, a labor law and bankruptcy expert at the University of Wyoming, said the Kemmerer case falls between two legal policies. There is the federal statute that governs employee benefits on the one hand. And then, sometimes in conflict with the first, there is bankruptcy law, which is structured to allow companies an avenue to emerge and continue as a viable entity.

“These two policies clash obviously and the question is what leeway does the company have in bankruptcy,” he said. “A lot of folks feel like the courts are much too employer-friendly in these situations, but what people forget is when a court is operating in that context, their real object is the survival of a company.”