Laid Off

By Nick Mullins - The Thoughtful Coal Miner, August 23, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Over the past four years we have witnessed an amazing downturn in the coal industry. Mines all throughout Appalachia have closed, leaving thousands of coal miners and their families in dire straits with difficult decisions to make. For as long as the coal industry has existed they have placed the people of Appalachia at the mercy of their booms and busts. Each time coal companies face a choice between decent profits now or leaving the coal in the ground until they can make excellent profits, we know what they choose, and we see what happens to the decent hard working coal miners who have already given so much of themselves to the company’s bottom line.

Had these layoffs come 75 or 100 years ago, they would have hurt, but the blow to mountain families would not have not been nearly as severe. Our ancestors had been weary of becoming entirely dependent upon coal mining wages for their food supply and shelter. They didn’t trust banks. They’d known the bondage placed on them by company script, company stores, and perpetual debt. For many, it was a matter of pride to be without debt, for others it was a source of freedom.

As my grandfather tried to teach us, “It’s your wants that get you in trouble, not your needs.” But theirs was also a different time. When they lived, there were still enough woods to hunt in and run their hogs. The water coming out of the mountain sides and out of family wells was still good enough to drink. Extended families still owned enough land to graze mule teams and a dairy cow, and they could still plant enough food for themselves and sometimes for their livestock. Today, many of the miners being sent home from the coal mines do not have a farm to go home to. They cannot spend their idle time using their hands to provide for their family in the traditional ways. Each day the mail carrier brings another bill, another reminder of the life they’ve been forced to lead at the mercy of “progress.”

It is truly criminal how much the coal industry has made us dependent upon them. They’ve taken our lands, our water, our dignity—even our freedom. Since they came in, each generation has lost the ability to provide from what God has given us. Without our lands and our forests there are fewer choices when it comes to finding happiness: work for the coal company to enjoy a decent paycheck, find some way to make due with a minimum wage job, or turn to drugs and government checks.

Of course, the coal industry isn’t having the best time. CEOs, board members, and stock holders are reeling with the decline of the coal market, fearful their businesses will falter leaving them without their immense power. It is the power that they truly enjoy, not so much the money. Like generals in a war room, they move their small plastic soldiers, each representing the lives of thousands of men and women. Open this mine, close that one. Lay off this many, scare the hell out of the others to up production. Pay into this campaign, pull the strings on the politicians already in office. It is a game to them. They have their millions, their foreign bank accounts, their global investments. They have their mansions in their gated communities. When these industrialists become outplayed by their counterparts in a different industry or in a different part of the world, they do not have to fear losing their homes. They do not have to lay awake at night wondering if they can afford school clothes for their children, whether or not they can afford the next light bill, let alone how they can afford to get their kids to the dentist.

The “War on Coal” is real. But it’s not what they make it out to be. It is a battle between industries, massive oil and natural gas companies vying for profit in the electrical generation sector. It is not being waged by the EPA and politicians. It isn't between environmentalists and coal mining families. As with any war, the wealthy corporations sit back, giving orders to their officers in congress and in the state houses, spreading propaganda to make people fight for their causes and letting the casualties fall upon the lower classes. We fight their battles and suffer their losses. They leave us with a war torn land, water we cannot drink, messes that cannot be cleaned up, and all the public debts that must be repaid. They leave us jobless and broken with children wanting to be their next coal miners, the next to fall victim to their games. Each time they battle for profits the less we are able to pick up the pieces and begin our own lives again. But we can. We must.We are Appalachians.

We can fight back. We can see through their lies, to see them as they truly are. We can remember our history and know that coal companies are not our friends and that we are not Friends of Coal, we are Slaves to Coal. We can find our way back to our own freedom, building our own economy, not being enslaved to theirs. It will not be easy. There will be mistakes, there will be further losses. But we have to start somewhere, and that somewhere begins without a dependence upon coal.