Look at a graph of mining employment and you’ll question the
intelligence of anybody who thinks those jobs are coming back. Chances are if
they haven’t needed you in the last 96 years they probably don’t need you now. Mechanization,
a decline in the amount of coal remaining, a shift toward more productive mines
out west and the emergence of cheaper, cleaner natural gas are among the
contributing factors, but ask any miner who’s to blame for him losing his job and
he’ll tell you it was President Obama’s “war on coal.”
I know of people who used to be miners who have been laid
off for several years. Their fathers and grandfathers were probably miners and
it may go back farther than that. When they were working, they could make
$90,000 to $100,000 a year with seniority and overtime, and there are few jobs
in West Virginia that can provide that kind of paycheck, especially for people
who may not have finished high school and never went to college.
The problem is, their current salary is $0, so you can do
the math. A guy who made $100,000 four years ago and $0 for each of the past
three years actually has an average annual salary of $25,000. If he doesn’t
work for another year, it will drop to $20,000 and then to $16,666 so on. Yet,
a lot of these guys won’t take another job that pays $25,000 a year because
someone told them their mining jobs are coming back.
Revitalization of the coal industry would mean a lot to the unemployed
miners who could go back to work to support themselves and their families, and
if you have any empathy at all for people fighting through hard times then you
have to consider that a good thing. A significant increase in coal production would
put money in miners’ pockets which they would spend at stores and businesses in
fading West Virginia communities that really need the cash.
It would also increase the amount of coal severance taxes
and payroll taxes and other taxes paid into the state treasury which
theoretically should benefit me and my family (and all other West Virginians) through
the funding of better roads and schools and police protection and other
services, even though no one in my family has ever worked in the coal industry.
I just don’t see that happening.
You can blame Obama and new environmental regulations for
what’s happened to the coal industry, but he has only been president for eight
years. The Clean Air Act was signed by President Richard Nixon way back in 1970,
and if there actually was a “war on coal,” it probably started then.
You’d have to be blind or not paying attention to have missed
the fact that coal mine employment in this state has declined from 800,000 at
its peak to 14,000 now. Politics being what it is, I fully expect
Governor-elect Jim Justice – who owns coal mines – to hire a few people as soon
as he takes office and for Donald Trump to take credit for it.
But do I expect the coal industry to come back to life here?
No, not when coal companies are laying off workers and stripping retired miners
of their pensions and other benefits, and when electric utilities are
shuttering aging coal plants and investing in natural gas.
Don’t take my word for it. Call up Murray Energy and ask
when they plan to recall those tens of thousands of miners. Call Appalachian
Power or FirstEnergy and ask when they plan to reopen coal-fired power plants.
I suspect you’ll get a different answer than what Trump is out there selling.
Next in Part 2: The
environmental consequences of increased coal production.
You will find one good use for coal at Mia Margarita, a fine Italian eatery, in Bridgeport. They make amazingly tasty food in a coal-fired oven.
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