CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice's family is behind on millions of dollars in payments to the employee health insurance fund at his struggling hotel, jeopardizing employee coverage despite claims by the U.S. Senate candidate, union officials said Friday.
“The delinquencies are real, they're specific and they're documented,” said Peter Bostic, chairman of the labor council at The Greenbrier, the historic resort owned by Justice's family.
At a news conference Thursday, Justice denied concerns that at least $2.4 million was behind on payments to insurance companies, saying payments were being made “on a regular basis” and it was “not possible” that employees would lose their insurance.
But on Friday, Bostic said the situation is by no means resolved.
“We continue to demand that Greenbriar's past due contractual obligations be met and remain hopeful that an agreement can be reached between ANHF and Greenbriar to continue benefits into the future,” he said in a statement.
Justice's comments came the same day that his family, a Republican, announced it had reached a settlement with a debt collection firm to prevent the Greenbrier Hotel, a former vacation home for presidents, royalty and congressional officials, from being foreclosed on for unpaid debts. The Greenbrier had been scheduled for auction on Aug. 27 after Beltway Capital, which bought it from JPMorgan Chase in July, declared its longstanding loan to the Justice Hotel in default.
With the auction canceled, Bostic said Friday that Amalgamated National Health Fund has agreed to continue providing health insurance to Greenbriar's union members through the end of the month while it works through a settlement with the Supreme Court.
Earlier this week, as auction day approached, about 400 employees of The Greenbriar Hotel received notice from lawyers for health care provider Amalgamated National Health Fund that unless the Justice family paid $2.4 million in outstanding contributions, they would lose on auction day.
The Justices haven't contributed to the employee health fund for four months, but an additional $1.2 million in contributions will be needed soon, according to a letter the board received from Ronald Richman, an attorney with Schulte, Roth & Zabel, which is representing the fund.
The letter also said that some contributions had been deducted from employees' salaries due to concerns from union leaders, but were never deposited into the fund.
“The insurance payments have been made and will continue to be made periodically,” Justice told reporters at a news conference Thursday.
“There's no way that the fine union workers at Greenbriar could go without insurance,” he said. “No way.”
Governor Justice purchased The Greenbrier out of bankruptcy in 2009 and began the first of his second term as governor in 2017. The 710-room hotel hosted a PGA Tour golf tournament from 2010 to 2019 and has hosted training camps and practices for NFL teams. A once-secret 112,000-square-foot (10,000-square-meter) underground bunker built for the U.S. Congress at The Greenbrier in case of a nuclear attack during the Cold War is now a tour site.
The auction, to be held at the courthouse in the small town of Lewisburg, is for 60.5 acres of land that includes a hotel and parking lot.
The Republican said employee benefits were “stripped to the bone” when he bought The Greenbrier, but he restored them. Had the hotel been foreclosed, he said, “it would have brought more devastation and destruction than the fine people of The Greenbrier can ever imagine,” referring to the jobs that might have been lost.
“What would have happened to those employees if we had just thrown our hands up?” he said. “I mean, it's great to have health insurance, but if you don't have a job, it's pretty tough, right?”
Justice, a former Wheeling mayor and Democrat running for U.S. Senate against Glenn Elliott, has owned dozens of companies and had a net worth estimated at $513 million by Forbes magazine in 2021, but he has been accused in court of falling behind on payments on debts from his family business and fines for dangerous working conditions at his coal mines.
