mine workers

By Clement Daily - World Socialist Website, August 22, 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.

Virginia-based Alpha Natural Resources—the second-largest US coal producer—announced last month that it intended to lay off approximately 1,100 coal miners and support staff at 11 affiliated coal mining operations in southern West Virginia by mid-October. These job cuts are only the most drastic in a wave of layoffs sweeping through the coal industry this year.

In a press release, Alpha President Paul Vining noted that in the last three years the company has idled about 35 million tons of coal production in an effort to cut costs. These moves underlay the closing of eight mines and a similar mass layoff of 1,200 coal miners in 2012. Moreover, these layoffs come on the heels of the company’s announcement in late June that it was permanently closing its Cherokee Mine in Dickenson County, Virginia, cutting about 120 jobs.

Similarly, Coal River Mining announced last week it planned to eliminate 280 mining positions at its operations in Kanawha, Boone and Lincoln counties in West Virginia. This comes on top of more than 150 layoffs by the company last year.

In July, Cumberland River Coal—a subsidiary of US mining giant Arch Coal—announced it was idling two mines at its complex on the Virginia-Kentucky border, eliminating 213 positions.

In June, St. Louis-based Patriot Coal confirmed it was laying off 75 of the nearly 850 workers to whom the company had issued layoff notices at its Corridor G and Wells mining complexes in Boone County, West Virginia. Back in May, after posting $116 million in first-quarter profits, CONSOL Energy cut production at its Buchanan Mine near Oakwood, Virginia, eliminating 188 jobs.

All these layoffs and production cuts occur in Appalachia, where the coal industry remains in a protracted structural decline driven by thinning seams and higher production costs. According to statistics compiled by Sean O’Leary of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, Central Appalachian productivity stood at just 2 short tons per labor hour in 2012, compared to more than 4 short tons in the Illinois Basin and nearly 30 short tons in the Powder River Basin (Wyoming-Montana).

The US Energy Information Agency (EIA) forecasts that coal production in Central Appalachia—comprised mainly of southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky—will decline to half its 2010 level by the end of the present decade.

However, the decline of Central Appalachian coal production takes place within a broader crisis facing the US coal industry. Thermal coal used in electricity generation faces increasing competition for domestic energy production as the list of aging coal-fired power plant retirements grows under the pressure of cheap and abundant natural gas. The EIA projects natural gas will surpass coal in its share of domestic energy production by 2035.

By Mining Slave | The National aka The Loggers Times - Papua New Guinea Mine Watch, August 22, 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.

I WISH to express my views and concerns about expats being the lawmakers of PNG.

I am a mine worker and worked with most expats during my years in several underground mines for the last 10 to 20 years.

I have noticed that they seem to be above the laws of this country which the department of foreign affairs has put in place to guide those expats who later become elected leaders in PNG.

There are also regulations where the departments of mining and petroleum have put in place to guide both expats and PNG nationals.

Most expats come into the country to work, they bring in their family members and use the nationals to train them and in return, they start to criticise and threaten us to get us sacked.

For instance, if a national supervisor makes a single mistake or does not want to follow an idea of an expat to get a job done which is unsafe, they start to kick him or her out because they come in groups and once it comes to decision making, they all come in to compromise in favour of one single expat, even the so-called manager falls into his favour.

The correct procedure is, the expat or national supervisors should contribute ideas to get a job done safely, or if the expat’s ideas are unproductive, the nationals use their own ideas so the job is done safely because in any mine you go around the world, safety is the number one priority.

Please, can the departments or foreign affairs and immigration or our leaders look into this issue because we do not want to be slaves in our own land or spectators of resource development on our land.

We have enough experienced underground miners.