Retraining Employees from the Dying Coal Industry
As coal-fired power plants are shuttered due to the high costs of operation relative to renewables and natural gas, it is natural to worry about the financial well-being of the people formerly employed in the industry–even though we need to be happy for their now-extended life expectancies, given the recent surge of black lung disease. To put this into perspective, we’re talking about 174,000 people in the U.S., which represents a tiny fraction of one percent of overall U.S. employment; even in a coal-mining state like Pennsylvania, we’re talking about 0.08% of the total. Less than half (about 83,000) are coal miners.
OK, so what about retraining? There are many different dynamics affecting this process, including the one discussed in this article, “Awaiting Trump’s coal comeback, miners reject retraining,” that begins as follows:
WAYNESBURG, Pa. (Reuters) – When Mike Sylvester entered a career training center earlier this year in southwestern Pennsylvania, he found more than one hundred federally funded courses covering everything from computer programming to nursing. He settled instead on something familiar: a coal mining course. “I think there is a coal comeback,” said the 33-year-old son of a miner. Despite broad consensus about coal’s bleak future, a years-long effort to diversify the economy of this hard-hit region away from mining is stumbling.
Sir, how about a little honesty? How about treating the people who voted for you with a bit of decency? There is no need to be as cruel to your supporters as you are to the desperate refugees with toddlers seeking asylum at the southern border.
If anyone needed help establishing that you are a sociopath who, by definition, has no concerns for anyone but himself, here’s the give-away: you are just as likely to punish your supporters (coal-miners, soldiers, the working poor, and working class taxpayers burdened with a ballooning debt) as you are your opponents.
Craig,
Your comment is either massively ignorant, or incredibly arrogant and condescending, or both!
Your description of conditions in the coal mining industry seems to be frozen in about 1935! The same applies to health risks within the modern mining industries.
The coal mining industry in America supports millions of jobs. Like every modern industry, the actual number of employees directly involved in coal extraction is relatively small due to a high level of automation.
However, as you well know, the Coal industry supports a vast array of other industries, commerce and public facilities.
The US Department of labour estimates every Coal job as supporting over 100 ancillary jobs.
Sometimes Craig, you arrogance is truly breathtaking! Do you really imagine a 40 year old man, who has spent twenty years working in the Coal industry really wants to take up a career in “computer programming or nursing” ?
Nor does he wish to spend his days in creative macrame classes, studying yoga or how to knit his own macrobiotic yogurt!
Since you have absolutely no knowledge of “soldiers, the working poor, working class taxpayers, or even illegal migrants” (all of whom you describe as morons or deplorables) it might be best if you stopped trying to exploit these people for your own dishonest political purposes.
But I’m really curious about where all these new jobs exist in Coal mining areas ? Where is the call for “nurses’ in an area where all the hospitals and clinic have closed ? Where are all these “computer jobs” in a town which can barely afford a laptop?
Despite everything, under this President, blue collar workers are employed, prosperity has return to these working class communities and (what you hate most) working class pride has returned to working class communities. These folk now have hope and are no longer victims of welfare and patronizing supercilious democrats from the smug leftist enclaves in California.
Get of your cracker barrel pulpit, out of your comfort zone, fill us your little Prius at your local service station and take a road trip (as I have) to the Coal areas of America. There you you will experience first hand how your absurd assumptions and misconceptions are received among real blue collar workers.
You won’t find any characters from Deliverance, or Pete Seeger on every corner, but you may discover a lot more humility and understanding of your fellow Americans in your own heart.