Consider it from their perspective. If they leave a job as a union-protected coal miner, their options are garbage, trained or not. They'll be going from a situation where they can expect and get reasonable compensation which grows faster than cost of living increases, pensions, etc to being treated like a cost center to be manipulated and reduced, forced to hop jobs every 4 or 5 years to even remain at market rate for their skill level, etc. You really can't expect them to not be defensive of their position, especially considering the history of open flagrant abuse and violence they've faced in the past.
I'd try to consider it from their perspective, but I get confused by the part where they vote overwhelmingly Republican to protect their union jobs and government subsidies.
Perhaps you get confused about the long history of Appalachian Coal Miners voting solidly Democratic, 100 years of such, only to see their votes taken for granted and their livelihood disappear.
West Virginia, despite being as far from Cosmopolitan as you can get has been a Democratic stronghold until the last election cycle
100 years ago, the Dems were still the party of southern pride. I think the shift is about more than "economic anxiety"
Also, West Virginia isn't all of Appalachia. SE Ohio, rural Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina are coal producing regions that are also very conservative.
Except that has nothing to do with why they voted as they did going back to before the 20th century as rural America has never been about today's Democratic ideals. The Miners and their Unions have been supportive of Democrats since before FDR.
Edit could the downvoter parked here show their face, literally five seconds after posting and you're downvoting have to assume you've gone down the thread downvoting everything, so just say hi
The coal industry employs fewer people than Arby's.
Their votes are "taken for granted" because they're a tiny constituency, and their livelihood was always going to disappear. Mines have become progressively more automated (like everything else) and between natural gas and renewable energy options, it's simply no longer the economic home run it used to be.
Yep at the moment they do, and they will continue to, but that has nothing to do with the fact that historically those in the industry voted Democratic not Republican.
The lack of reality among some around here does amaze me
And historically those miners had jobs. However the loss of their jobs had nothing to do with sanctuary cities, abortion, second amendment rights or any other wedge issue but their party switch did.
However you do realize that sanctuary cities, abortion, second amendment rights or any other wedge issue those in Appalachia did not stand with the Democratic party on and voted for their own interests when it came to employment
edit @CalChris
Because your reading comprehension is not the best. They voted for their own economic interests by voting Democratic. You do realize in 2008 both of WVs Senators were Dems and so was their governor. Since the Depression the vast majority of West Virginia's Senate seats have been filled by Dems
Perhaps you can explain how WV voted for their own interests when it came to employment. Their unemployment rate rose dramatically with W's 2008 Great Recession and then steadily fell during the Obama years.
Looks more like Cheeto took them for a ride. He does that. Is WV voting its interest in the opioid crisis? I don't think more guns, gays and god will get them out of it.
Dem here, but I haven't seen a whole lot of priority given by my party to opioids. Back pre-Trump there was much more attention being given to Transgender kids and sexual assault of college women.
When people are despised and neglected, they tend to notice.
> Dem here, but I haven't seen a whole lot of priority given by my party to opioids.
Whack-a-mole with specific drugs isn't a solution, it is something that will never make any progress but can generate the perpetual illusion of action.
You want to deal with cocaine/crack/meth/opioids and whatever tomorrow's iteration is, you deal with the health (including mental health and substance use disorder) prevention and treatment system, including cost and access issues, broadly. And the Dems are the only ones that aren't actively fighting to make that worse, rather than better, across the board. Everything else is the equivalent of shipping homeless from one town to the next to “fix” homelessness.
Another Dem here. The opioid crisis starts in 2010. The Republicans took over the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. Congress then grounded to a halt and broadly rejected anything Obama proposed even going so far as to shut down the government. Congress is still halted.
Not sure why the governing party isn’t being held responsible for, you know, governing.
The transgender kids and sexual assault of college women coverage was on Fox. Again, guns, gays and god ain’t gonna get us out of this. But it will deliver the votes in places like WV.
People innth field were talking about it before that, but meth was still getting more attention; that's pretty much true of each of the unbroken sequence of specific-drug abuse crises, too.
The prescription drug part of the crisis begins in 2010 at the inflection point. Those prescriptions were something a willful Congress could have addressed.
Sure it does. People always look for someone to blame for something like this, and the Republicans capitalized on that fact with the "war on coal" narrative. Not shocking it worked.
>I'd try to consider it from their perspective, but I get confused by the part where they vote overwhelmingly Republican to protect their union jobs and government subsidies.
Ok, read the parent. Appalachian Miners do not vote overwhelmingly Republican to protect their union jobs and government subsidies. For the longest time they voted Democratic to Protect their Union Jobs and Government subsides until their jobs were no longer there.
Their jobs aren't coming back, that's a given, and the reaction to that was to stop voting for the people they thought would protect their way of living, only to see a shift over the last decade where their voice was completely drowned out in the Democratic party
>They'll be going from a situation where they can expect and get reasonable compensation which grows faster than cost of living increases, pensions, etc to being treated like a cost center to be manipulated and reduced, forced to hop jobs every 4 or 5 years to even remain at market rate for their skill level, etc.
They and most other people in the world. What's happening to the Appalachian coal miners today is going to happen to tech sooner or later.
>You really can't expect them to not be defensive of their position, especially considering the history of open flagrant abuse and violence they've faced in the past.
But coal isn't going to make a comeback. The world has moved on from that economy. Trump lied to them, and fed them a populist self-insert power fantasy where America just strongarms the world into treating them with the respect they feel they deserve. That isn't going to happen.
Basically, I believe the Industrial Revolution started with obsoleting physical labor, because that was simpler, and now efforts to automate will move on to mental and creative labor. Most technical, programming, design and even scientific work will likely become either fully AI driven or else be outsourced to fewer and fewer necessary humans, leading to the same problems of mass layoffs and skills suddenly having little value in an evolving marketplace.
to being treated like a cost center to be manipulated and reduced, forced to hop jobs every 4 or 5 years to even remain at market rate for their skill level
You’re right this is how most people work. Makes me think we should start to unionize office work.
I'm with you. The company who wants to exchange capital for labor benefits from being able to negotiate separately with each provider of that labor to get the lowest price possible from each person. SOME of the people providing the labor do well out of this too (the good negotiators) and would perceive a union as harmful to them. Employers can exploit this by, say, keeping salaries as close to secret as they can so that more people think they are doing better than average. But it's weird to me that this hoodwink works so well. I have been in both union and non-union roles. I'd go for union every time. All of the labor might as well negotiate with all of the capital, otherwise the power differential has an outsized effect.
And that worked remarkably well for Detroit auto works. They thought once they could leverage they're position as car capital if the world for unionized benefits. Until it became much cheaper to just build better cars elsewhere.
Unionizing SV will likely have the same result, except that with today's comm tech, importing services is much simple than building auto supply chain.
It is already much cheaper to import services and hire people who don't live in SV. But somehow companies continue to locate themselves there. Presumably the opportunities for profit outweigh the costs imposed by the high cost of living etc. Unions might reduce profits a little (or not, depending on the impact on worker productivity) but these companies have shown they will pay big premiums to attract the most capable workers.
But unions must of course think about these things and understand their ACTUAL bargaining power. Detroit sounds like that mark was missed.
So shockingly, people who have been fooled by a con artist (Trump) refuse to believe that they've been fooled.
And I get the argument that learning is difficult for some, and that union jobs are better than non-union jobs, and that it is difficult to move from an active job to one that is more sedentary. But so is losing your job in a dying industry and being unable to provide for your children, which is the alternative.
And I feel for them. I really do. They've been taken by the political equivalent of an email from a Nigerian prince. They wanted to believe so badly that they didn't check the history of the person making the promises, and ignored what facts they did get.
Agreed. But I don't think this all falls on the current administration. US energy policy has been weak if not non-existent for as long as I can remember. Why shouldn't they believe it? No one (had the stones) to declare it dead; not part of our energy future; etc.
Furthermore, along the same lines, look at domestic oil. That is, fracking. Production has hockey stick'ed in the last 10 - 15 years. We didn't shift to renewables. We stuck with oil.
So again, why shouldn't coal believe the same? Most of the signals support their POV than otherwise.
Note: I agree 100%. Coal is f'ed. As it should be. But from the miners' POV there really isn't a clear message that say "time to give up." Clinton didn't say it. Bush didn't say it. Obama didn't say it.
Do you really need to tell people when there aren't any new jobs? No one is telling taxi drivers that their industry is shrinking fast due to Uber/Lyft, but they see the writing on the wall. The world is full of employment markets that dry up, and it is reasonable to look around once in a while are notice that.
This isnt about jobs per say. It's about the perception that coal has a place in US energy future.
A real energy policy and real leaders would have delivered that message a long time ago. They have not. Why do you expect the miners to be any better than the highly paid and highly educated W.DC elites?
Sitting (or, trendily, standing) before a desk all day working in a computer is not for everyone. These guys do hard, dangerous work in the mines in an environment that is very different from office work. They probably would have a very difficult time adjusting, not only to the office environment but also to the social rules in place in such environments (I write this with some experience of the difference between white collar and life-on-the-line work). It is no wonder that there is little interest in retraining into a field which is so different.
I find myself more surprised that the article ignored such basic points as these. Not that I am absolutely correct in my assessment, but that these kinds of points weren't addressed. Almost as if they didn't even occur to the author. The focus was on empty classrooms and money unspent and, perhaps, stubborn coal miners, while being wilfully ignorant that the jobs on offer are probably completely uninteresting to the communities affected. It probably seems better to them to hold out hope that coal will come back than to sit around driving trucks or coding.
Your theory doesn't explain why they don't retrain in welding, plumbing, electrical work, construction, vehicle maintenance, etc which are all more similar to mining (particularly within certain parts of each field) than they are office work.
At least in my state, many of the (re)training programs are for those and consist of a couple weeks of lecture followed by a few months of apprenticeship -- I suspect that they're simply sticking with the familiar while there's hope. People do that.
The empty classrooms is probably referring to the fact that every program begins with a little domain specific knowledge, so the people observing the intake look at that part of the funnel that every program goes through -- and then make comments about it from their perspective.
The article is a little deaf in saying "100 programs from coding to nursing". I'm guessing the fields are actually widely broader than that in the kind of work, since he found a program in coal mining among those 100, and I don't consider that between coding and nursing in any sense. (I think that left you with the impression they only train office or service work, for instance.)
They probably would have a very difficult time adjusting, not only to the office environment but also to the social rules in place in such environments
Some would, some wouldn’t (I have exp. here too). It’s a problem but it’s not THE problem. The problem is politicians in coal states (including POTUS) keep peddling this bullshit story that coal will come back. The effects of this are terrible. It’s hurting communities.
Before someone inevitably mocks these people as being less enlightened, this isn't that surprising. Labor isn't fungible: retraining would involve abandoning a career and all the seniority it entails, going back to school and losing the ability to work and generate income, and finally being forced to relocate. Is their attachment to coal tragic? Yes. Is it unreasonable? No.
Imagine if tomorrow there was an AI that obsoleted the entire software industry. Would you willingly retrain as a carpenter?
I've asked this question before (what would you do if software development went away[1]) and the response indicated that they would not, or could not entertain that thought. Instead they posited that such a world would be impossible or that developers could go back to school to be lawyers - not realizing that new law school grads had a 25% unemployment rate.
"As a thought exercise, what will/would software developers do once 90% are made redundant by A.I. or something? Maybe "suck it up" and go back to school to become nurses?"
There are tons of things I'd want to try if I became redundant due to automation. However, if that were to suddenly happen the world would quickly change so dramatically that we would not be able to determine what careers are stable and worth training in, so I'm not sure that's a fair example.
Lab tech. It's not specialized, so there's no fear of your entire field drying up (like cytology). Every hospital needs them, so you can find work anywhere in the country. The downsides are it doesn't pay well and it requires a two year program followed by state specific licensing exams. Those last two points result in a true labor shortage. Most Hospitals will hire licensed lab techs sight unseen.
I'd study to be a radiology tech or something along those lines. Tech and Healthcare are the "jobs of the future", if you take tech out of the equation, the answer is obvious.
Their decision is not reasonable. Coal is dying. These miners are laboring under the delusion that their jobs will come back, which will never happen. Their decision is understandable. It's tragic. It's pathetic in the classic sense. It's also foolish.
I feel arrogant and condescending for saying this, but it's the way I see it.
I will go little bit off-topic here, but regarding your question, I would, carpentry sounds very interesting and engaging. What I would miss would be the nice salary that comes with working in SW.
Union carpenters can make pretty good money, actually. Once you get some seniority, the rate improves nicely. Finish carpenters make pretty good wages.
They average $76,000/year, which is not that bad depending on where you live. You can do better than that, as much of the industry is slowed down during the winter months. The few that I know take that layoff as a yearly winter vacation.
According to the latest energy report from Lazard, the subsidized cost of solar and wind is now below the marginal cost of operating nuclear and coal plants.
And the unsubsidized cost isn’t far behind and is still falling. It fell 9% last year.
Maybe they reject "retraining" because the programs available suck and are useless and unlikely to actually help them improve their life, and then tell stories to out of town reporters when asked. Just a theory.
I could quote the lines where it says he is training for $13/h low paying coal job because coal companies sell their assets to companies that only hire temporary workers.
I could quote the part where it says that new companies will not come if there is no trained workforce, so those people are stuck in a catch-22.
I could quote the part where it says that people retrain where there is no hope, but don't retrain where there is coal left.
I could quote the part where it says coal companies move to natural gas.
I could quote the part where one miner says the coal is a great career path for the next 50 years.
Or people could be interested and read the article.
That may or may not be true, but the fact remains there is no shortage resources online to self-learn a great deal of material related to specific jobs, augmenting it with getting mentorship from people in real life.
There’s a lot to unpick here. There’s permanent unchanging things like the continued decline of the coal industry (there are precious few scenarios where it is cheaper and/or better than all of the many alternatives available). There’s the danger of wrapping up your profession and your identity (something we in tech should be on our guard against). But then there’s the grim and hopefully ephemeral spectacle of a bunch of rich politicians lying to their faces and giving them false hope.
The only way the coal industry survives as a major employer is as a form of disguised welfare.
Coal miners are resisting retraining without ready jobs from new industries, but new companies are unlikely to move here without a trained workforce.
The Economist ran an excellent piece a few weeks back contrasting Scranton, PA and Greenville, SC. The latter was able to re-invent itself by attracting BMW to build a plant there, which saw them out of their catch-22. PA, despite offering billions in subsidies over the years has had no such luck.
However, exactly how to do this is still uncertain:
> South Carolina has not become an all-purpose manufacturing powerhouse. In fact, manufacturing employment is lower in the region than it was when BMW set up shop. But real incomes are growing and the population is booming. Greenville is 70% bigger than it was in 1990.
> Its success shows the value of co-ordination. There is a chicken-and-egg problem in establishing a cluster. Firms would like to be where there are workers, suppliers and infrastructure; workers want places where firms are already offering good new jobs. Neither will go where the other isn’t. But action on a number of fronts can, under the right circumstances, attract both at once, creating a kernel round which a cluster can grow large enough to become self-sustaining. After that, it may well invigorate other areas of the local economy.
> Strategies which build clusters through such two-way seduction are hard to assess.
Retraining in general apparently has a bit of a mixed success rate at best. Instead of reading this article about the terrible, clueless Trump-supporting miners who are just too thick-headed to retrain, it might be worth reading up on what happens to those who do make use of retraining programs: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/magazine/retraining-jobs-... Also, perhaps, about the past history of government retraining and investment programs in Appalachia and why people there didn't believe Clinton's promises during the election were worth much: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/us/politics/coal-country-...
If you are unemployed and sitting around, why not pick up some new skills if training is free? You can always go back to mining if it comes back. It’s not like learning something new means losing old knowledge.
If you know mining, and an electrician, a mine electrician will be payed much better than either alone. Combining skills is where it’s at.
Skills that are actually useful and have enough demand aren't that easy to get. I'm extremely skeptical when people claim we can solve the automation job losses by retraining everyone. Converting a 50 year old miner to a programmer capable of solving real world problems seems like a pipe dream. Sure, there will be exceptional individuals who love to learn new things, but they are exceptional. Look at the market now - programmers already have high salaries, and it's still hard to find the talent.
while there are several good points made in the video, one really made me think: if you're in an IQ segment that gives you lot of opportunities - as the prof said: "not just opening word, but programming" -, it is really easy to forget that many people might struggle with "reasonable simple" tasks.
Actually, your question should be: Why use Appalachian coal? And indeed, coal production has shifted to Wyoming where it is cheaper to produce with less labor. So even if coal comes back, it will not likely come back to Appalachia.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/coal-jobs-i...
All trends show it's not making a comeback. The only thing actively pushing it on are government subsidies and programs intended to push it over alternative energies.
Care to explain how you think natural gas, solar, and wind aren't going to continue to crush demand for coal in the US? To top that off, there is almost no foreign demand at the price we can produce coal. Even still, downward pressure on prices and loosening of regulations drives companies toward mountaintop removal which employs far fewer workers at far lower wages.
Everyone needs to face that economically, US coal production increasingly doesn't makes sense.
