Unions representing about 400 employees at The Greenbrier resort say there’s a short reprieve on the possibility of losing healthcare coverage.
Citing past-due payments for health insurance coverage by The Greenbrier Hotel Corporation, attorneys for the Amalgamated National Health Fund had said coverage would lapse by this coming Tuesday. That was the same day The Greenbrier Hotel had been set for a foreclosure sale because of other debts. The owners of the hotel, Gov. Jim Justice and his family, announced this week that they have secured financial support to satisfy the hotel debt, at least for now, halting the foreclosure sale.
Because the auction of the hotel is now off, the Health Fund will continue to provide health care benefits through the end of this month, just one week away, according to a new statement by the Greenbrier Council of Labor Unions.
“However, the delinquencies are factual, tangible and documented,” the union organization said in the news release from Peter Bostic, chairman.
“We continue to demand that The Greenbrier’s delinquent contractual obligations be met and remain hopeful that an agreement will be reached” between the Health Fund and The Greenbrier to continue the benefits coverage.
The Health Fund says the owners are delinquent on $2.4 million in health premium contributions, with another $1.2 million in premiums soon due. Those are the numbers that Ronald Richman, an attorney representing the Health Fund, told MetroNews remain accurate at this time.
The insurance company alleged The Greenbrier collected premiums from employees but did not pass the money along. The health insurance payments collected from employees of The Greenbrier but not remitted to their insurance company total $612,000, according to Bostic of the Greenbrier Council of Labor Unions.
The Greenbrier on Friday evening countered that “without exception every penny of money collected from our nearly 2,000 employees for health care coverage has been timely paid to either the union health care fund or the non-union health care provider.”
The statement from the hotel continued, “To demonstrate the payments of our employee’s withholdings for health care, we have provided this information to the union health care fund today.”
And the statement said, “The Greenbrier’s management and accounting staff monitor and make payments for the health care. Governor Jim Justice has never been consulted, nor has he directed any of these payments since 2017.”
Governor Justice, whose family owns The Greenbrier, publicly promised employees at the resort won’t go without health insurance.
“There is no way that the great union employees at The Greenbrier are going to go without insurance. There is no possible way,” Justice said in a statewide administration briefing.
“And I’ll promise you to the good lord above that insurance payments have been made and were being made on a regular basis just like we’ve done in the past in many ways.”
Justice addressed the insurance matter on the same day The Greenbrier Hotel Corporation announced a deal holding off the foreclosure sale of key pieces of the resort, including the main hotel building. Under the agreement, Beltway Capital will receive a specific amount to be paid in full by October 24, 2024, according to a statement distributed by the Justices. That announcement did not actually say how much the specific amount is.
Justice gained goodwill and steps toward statewide name recognition when he bought The Greenbrier out of bankruptcy in spring of 2009. Justice, a two-term governor, is now a Republican nominee for U.S. Senate and is considered the frontrunner because of his broad name identification and West Virginia’s recent voting trends.
When asked questions by West Virginia reporters during this week’s briefing, Justice described his family’s history of financial involvement at The Greenbrier, characterizing it as supportive of workers, and then said “What if we absolutely just threw up our hands, what would have happened to those employees. I mean, it’s great to have health insurance, but then if you don’t have a job it would be pretty daggone tough, wouldn’t it?”
He continued by saying, “I promise you with all in me, we will not miss one step with regard to people’s health insurance and we’ll move on down the road.”
Clinton Mora is a reporter for Trending Insurance News. He has previously worked for the Forbes. As a contributor to Trending Insurance News, Clinton covers emerging a wide range of property and casualty insurance related stories.