In a complaint filed this week, the trustees allege that Justice Energy underpaid wage agreement contributions to the funds by more than $158,000, with an additional interest balance approaching $10,000.
Trustees of union coal mine worker health and pension plans have sued a company owned by Gov. Jim Justice.
The trustees for three United Mine Workers of America health and retirement plans have sued Justice Energy Company in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia.
In a complaint filed this week, the trustees allege that Justice Energy underpaid wage agreement contributions to the funds by more than $158,000 with an additional interest balance approaching $10,000.
The complaint says the trustees asked Justice Energy to pay those amounts on Oct. 30, but no payment was submitted.
The trustees asked Justice Energy three times this year, most recently on Oct. 30, to conduct an audit of its books and records as required by the wage agreement, but the complaint says the company has not done so.
The lawsuit is one among many involving Justice-owned coal companies in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky and Alabama.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting has reached out to an attorney for Justice Energy.
Charleston Area Medical Center, or CAMC, will host a showcase Wednesday for high school students to explore health care career options.
There are a myriad of professions in the health care industry and Charleston Area Medical Center (CAMC) wants West Virginia high school students to consider each of them when choosing a career path.
CAMC invited more than 35 high schools to its eighth annual Annual Healthcare Career Showcase on Wednesday, Oct. 23 at the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Representatives from more than 55 CAMC departments will talk to students about career opportunities in a hospital setting.
While most think of doctors and nurses when they consider a profession in health care, many people work in other healthcare settings like IT, human resources, supply chain, finance, law and more.
Several West Virginia colleges and universities that offer academic programs for many of those jobs will also have displays and information at the showcase.
According to a press release, students will receive a “road map” book that will guide them through the showcase, explaining the education, minimum requirements, licensure, and certification required to work in a particular field.
Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Marshall Health.
Nurses working overnight at the Martinsburg VA Medical Center (VAMC) crossed paths with their morning-shift colleagues Friday at the crack of dawn. Sporting red shirts and handmade signs, they exited the facility’s front gates and joined their peers across the street on the picket line.
Nurses working overnight at the Martinsburg VA Medical Center (VAMC) crossed paths with their morning-shift colleagues Friday at the crack of dawn. Sporting red shirts and handmade signs, they exited the facility’s front gates and joined their peers across the street on the picket line.
Just outside hospital grounds, staff members affiliated with the National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC) gathered to call attention to scheduling practices they say are unsustainable. As they chanted on the roadside, passing drivers blared their horns in support.
A typical nursing shift in the United States lasts 12 hours, according to the American Nurses Association. This can mean entering a hospital before the sun rises, and leaving after it has already set. Nurses generally work six of these shifts in a two-week period, for a total of 72 hours on the clock.
But a typical work week in the U.S. is 40 hours. Some hospitals, like the Martinsburg VAMC, require nurses to pick up an additional eight-hour shift to round out the pay period. Nurses on site say these shifts can even require overtime.
Beverly Simpson is an acute care infection prevention coordinator at the Martinsburg VAMC. She said working several day-long shifts in a single week is a tall order.
“We continually lose ourselves in the service of our vets,” Simpson said. “All that we’re asking is to help us care for ourselves.”
Nurses on the picket line are pushing for a form of scheduling flexibility known colloquially as “72/80.” It allows nurses to drop their additional eight-hour shift, maintaining full compensation and benefits for working 72 hours per pay period.
The policy is not without precedent. Title 38 of the United States Code outlines federal policies on veterans’ benefits. Under the title, health care facilities administered by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) are eligible to implement 72/80 with the department’s approval, although they are not required to do so.
United States Navy veteran and registered nurse Jack Tennant leads his colleagues in a chant alongside Charles Town Road on the outskirts of Martinsburg.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The Martinsburg facility already practices the policy in its intensive care unit (ICU). But nurses across the hospital’s departments say they want it expanded.
U.S. Navy veteran Jack Tennant has served as a registered nurse at the Martinsburg hospital for 32 years, and helped organize Friday’s picket. He said eight more hours out of his scrubs each week would greatly improve his quality of life.
“Nurses work really grueling shifts,” Tennant said. “It’s really hard to take care of ourselves and take care of our families when we are working so many hours.”
The 72/80 policy is practiced more widely at some VA health care facilities, even in West Virginia.
At the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center in Clarksburg, three departments have implemented the policy, according to a statement from VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes emailed to West Virginia Public Broadcasting by a representative.
This includes the ICU, the medical surgical unit and the float pool — a department of nurses who alternate between different sections of the hospital each shift.
According to Hayes, VA health care facilities adopt the 72/80 model “wherever possible.” He said the policy “remains in effect” for the Martinsburg VAMC ICU, and “will continue to be considered should recruitment or retention issues for inpatient registered nurses arise.”
But Hayes said the VA has already taken significant steps toward improving recruitment and retention, with current staff in mind. Currently, the VA employs 122,000 nationally, “the largest nursing workforce in the country and in the history of [the] VA,” he said.
Hayes added that the VA’s nurse turnover rate outperforms the private sector.
Many drivers passing the Friday morning picket outside the Martinsburg VA Medical Center blared their sirens in support of the hospital’s nurses.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Still, on the ground at the Martinsburg VAMC, nurses like Simpson and Tennant say they feel overworked, and struggle with work-life balance. This can make it difficult to attend doctor’s appointments or fulfill family obligations, they said.
Plus, Tennant said nurses working overtime after long shifts can be a safety issue, making flexible scheduling more important.
“They’re already fatigued,” he said. “Fatigued nurses are at a much higher risk of making mistakes.”
Christle Young, an ICU nurse at the Martinsburg VAMC, has experienced the 72/80 scheduling model firsthand. She said the extra time helps her better serve local veterans.
“I work nights. That extra day coming in, it’s not a day off,” she said. “I sleep that day, and then I only really have one day off.”
Young said expanding the 72/80 policy across the Martinsburg VAMC would help other nurses better care for themselves and boost morale.
“We want to watch our kids grow up. We want to care for our elderly patients. We want to play bingo on Tuesday, whatever it is,” she said. “But the facility doesn’t allow us that flexibility.”
In his statement, Hayes agreed that evidence shows the 72/80 model “reduces burnout, improves satisfaction, improves retention of experienced nurses and also decreases turnover [and] the use of unscheduled leave and overtime.”
He said the VA plans to expand it to the Clarksburg hospital’s emergency department, but additional expansions will be considered on a case by case basis.
Nurses at the Martinsburg VA Medical Center typically work six 12-hour shifts and one eight-hour shift every two weeks.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Meanwhile, Martinsburg members of the NNOC say they have been pushing for change at their own facility for more than a year. They began surveying their fellow nurses in September 2023 and found widespread dissatisfaction over current scheduling practices, Tennant and Young said.
Young said the nurses collected a petition with more than 200 signatures from coworkers in favor of implementing the 72/80 policy, and drafted a “mock schedule” with plans for how to implement it.
When the nurses brought these documents to hospital administrators, Young said no commitment to reconsidering current scheduling policies was made.
“It is still falling on deaf ears,” she said. “So we’re outside today to make some noise.”
Hayes did not directly address any previous scheduling policy discussions between the VA and the NNOC-represented nurses. But he said the VA continues to support staff members and their union representatives, including National Nurses United, the NNOC’s larger-scale affiliate.
“We greatly value our collaborative working relationship with our union partners and remain aligned in our goal to strengthen our nursing workforce,” he said. The VA “deeply appreciates our partnership with National Nurses United and will continue to work with them directly to resolve their concerns.”
Martinsburg nurses with the NNOC, however, say the hospital has not taken enough effort to reevaluate scheduling policies. Tennant said Friday’s picket marked the first union action taken at the Martinsburg VAMC since it was founded in 1944.
And, until changes are implemented, he said it is unlikely to be the last.
“We’re willing to do whatever we need to do,” he said.
Pre-existing initiatives to revitalize the economies of Montgomery and Smithers have come together under the direction of the national group Dynamics Advisors. The president and CEO of the group, Scott Keller, said the goal is to make a health care centered model that provides jobs for working age individuals and health care for an aging population.
Located along the Kanawha River, 10 miles downstream of the confluence of the Gauley and the New River sits Montgomery and Smithers. The towns have been disinvested over the years as educational institutions moved out, and coal mines closed.
There are multiple pre-existing initiatives to expand the local economies, which have been independently working to develop things like tourism, health care and housing.
Now those initiatives have come together under the direction of the national group Dynamics Advisors. The president and CEO of the group, Scott Keller, said the goal is to make a health care centered model that provides jobs for working age individuals and health care for an aging population.
“The idea is that a senior can be in, or come to this community, and age in place,” Keller said.
To do that he said there needs to be a labor force that can take care of that aging population. For that, he said, you need housing, recreation, and other things to support that working population.
“In this country, we need to train a whole new generation of health care workers to take care of seniors. And so that is the other idea that is workforce housing, affordable associated with that,” Keller said.
He said this will position the localities for the wave of baby boomers who will be relying on a robust health care industry.
“This strategy will help them build their niche in the global United States economy in terms of how it thrives into the future,” Keller said.
The group said Montgomery and Smithers are ideal places to implement this plan due to its affordable housing and proximity to both Charleston and the New River Gorge.
As fentanyl overdose deaths rise nationally, West Virginia health care providers are looking for new ways to support veterans struggling with substance use disorder or mental health issues.
As fentanyl overdose deaths rise nationally, veterans face new challenges overcoming historic barriers to health care.
Mark Mann, chief of staff for mental health services at the Martinsburg VA Medical Center (VAMC), said that West Virginia’s veteran community has been no exception to this struggle.
“The VA is doing a good job of curbing that, but we still are losing veterans every year to poisoning from fentanyl and other things that are mixed into the drugs,” he said.
Veterans have long faced bureaucratic difficulties and stigma when seeking support for substance use disorder. But the rising prevalence of fentanyl has also tested current mental health resources for veterans, requiring new strategies.
In response, health care providers at the VAMC are working to expand current resources to better serve veterans struggling with substance use disorder and other forms of mental illness.
On Friday, medical professionals and members of the local community gathered at the facility for a summit on substance use disorder among veterans.
The event featured discussions from both national and local medical professionals, who discussed substance use disorder among veterans at large and specific services at the VAMC supporting veterans’ mental health needs.
Those resources include traditional medical resources, like residential inpatient services, intensive outpatient programs and medication-assisted therapies, Mann said.
But it also includes providing a full “continuum of care,” supplementing medical services with social interventions and support.
In 2022, Mann said staff members at the VAMC helped advocate for the creation of a three-digit hotline number for suicide and mental health crisis intervention, 988.
Joseph Liberto, national mental health director for substance use disorders at the Department of Veteran Affairs Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, answers audience questions.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Some veterans who contact the hotline are put in touch with the VAMC, who can then provide follow-up services and ensure they are safe.
Mann said providing a simple and remote resource like this has helped the VAMC provide more immediate support to veterans in need, and keep lines of communication open once patients step off the facility’s Martinsburg campus.
The VAMC has also created on-campus resources that provide counseling, like a chaplain assigned specifically to support veterans with difficulties surrounding mental health or substance use.
Roosevelt Brown, chief chaplain at the VAMC, said that the creation of this position allowed the VAMC to directly help local veterans, and point them to resources specific to their mental health needs.
“Part of what we’re doing now is trying to say, ‘Hey, how can we make sure we open the door and let them know that we have services available for them?’” he said.
As chaplains, Brown said that he and his colleagues offer spiritual or emotional guidance to patients at the VAMC, and also encourage them to access specific resources that could support them through periods of difficulty.
Brown said that fewer people used the VAMC’s chaplain services during the COVID-19 pandemic, but that turnout has returned to pre-pandemic levels with the creation of these new resources.
He added that he hopes this trend will continue, and that the VAMC will be able to further support veterans struggling with substance use disorder.
“We’re motivated to do something about those who need help,” he said. “My hope is that what we can do is [bring] a better quality of life [to] veterans.”
