Posted on 05/04/2021 4:10:27 AM PDT by Kaslin
When coal mine employee John Morecraft heard last Monday that United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts approved of President Joe Biden's plan to move the nation's energy industry away from fossil fuels, Morecraft said he anticipated the news would be misconstrued.
"I knew the story would come across as though all coal miners approved of this deal, with no mention of how (un)representative the UMWA is of the coal miner population," said Morecraft, just before going down for his shift at the Bailey Mine here in Greene County.
"The UMWA in actuality represents a small portion of the people who work in the mines," Morecraft said. "What that means is that deal was not made with the support of most of the people who do the work in the industry."
He is not wrong.
According to the latest energy statistics for the U.S. government, there are 6,758 coal miners working underground in this country today who are members of the UMWA, compared with the 24,820 miners, such as Morecraft, who are not members of the union.
The same goes for the surface-mine workforce, where just over 3,000 are members of the UMWA, compared with the nearly 17,000 who are not.
Once a dominant force that represented virtually everyone working in the entire industry, the UMWA membership today is the smallest portion of the mining workforce.
Had you not really followed the decline of UMWA membership over the decades and were sitting at home watching the news reports and thought, "Oh, wow, the coal miners are now backing Biden's 'climate-justice' infrastructure package; maybe it is not that bad," you were misled.
Morecraft said there's another component of the story many people might miss. When deals like this are struck, or union bosses look the other way when the party they support hurts their jobs, he says it shows how the people who negotiate these deals are entrenched within this administration.
Morecraft does not fit any of the stereotypes of coal miners that our cultural curators in the news, government or Hollywood like to cast. He is a college-educated former history teacher who coached both high school football and basketball until he was laid off from his teaching jobs.
"I was kind of down on my luck, with students and a young family," he said. "Working at the mine was my only way out because there are not too many jobs around here other than coal mining, which is now providing me with a life that I never would have had."
Morecraft says he has been following in detail the proposals in the so-called "infrastructure bill," which presently does include grants or loans to fund carbon capturing. He is not sure if those grants will stay in there: "What I don't understand is why they're not trying to put more money towards carbon-capture sequestration rather than displacing an entire workforce."
Carbon capturing is not embraced by Biden's environmental-justice base. Last year, when the House passed a clean energy package, 18 Democrats, including leftist Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley, all voted against it.
And some of the most influential liberal environmental groups also objected to that bill's plan to capture carbon dioxide from coal- and gas-fired plants. For many of these groups, it was viewed as a bargain that only benefits fossil fuel companies.
Morecraft sighed in exasperation.
"These people on the far left won't even entertain the idea of carbon capture," he said. "They just say, 'No, fossil fuels are bad, and we need to go in a different direction,' even though the technology isn't quite there to even sustain the grid, as was shown in Texas this winter."
In February, in the middle of an unexpected deep freeze, 3 million Texans lost their electricity when the state's generating capacity could not meet the sudden demand caused by the plunging temperatures. Pipes froze and burst; people were left without heat and power for days; and the power grid suffered a wholesale collapse.
Morecraft says he loves his job.
"I am a fire boss, EMT, and I work in our bunker, which is the main hub of the underground. And it is sort of like a desk job, only in a mine, because I have all of these computers, and I am basically in charge of all the tracking of where all the miners go and also the CO sensors that go off."
"More reporters and elected officials should come and take a look at what we do," he added. "It is not at all what they think; there are no picks and shovels. There are just a lot of misconceptions. There is also a lot of presumption that we don't care about the climate, and that always gets me. Do people not understand that we live, drink, fish, raise our families and enjoy the wildlife right in the same place where the mines are located?
In saying so, Morecraft echoes a frustration that energy workers frequently share.
Too busy writing code I suppose
Ironically, the coal that they mine provides the energy that ultimately charges the electric cars people like Biden are pawning off as the chariots that will save civilization.
Politics and elected office are full of people like Biden, precisely because they have the two requisite requirements to be politicians - a lack of ethics and an ability to incessantly spout bs and lies.
According to this article, the UMWA had fewer than 10,000 working miners among its members. And yet according to its website, the union supports about 100,000 retirees and family members.
This union — like most other old industrial unions — doesn’t give a sh!t about its workers. It only cares about the politics of subsidizing its retirees.
China’s imports of US coal, Canadian barley continue to climb amid ban on Australian exports
Looks to me, from my above link, like somebody’s digging, but to the ChiComs’ benefit, not ours.
Unions are an arm of the commie government
Worse yet, NY State sits on top of huge natural gas reserves. There are upwards of 150 Trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas in the Marcellus shale formation, of which upstate NY has a sizable portion. Below the Marcellus shale formation lies Utica shale, yet another even more expansive reserve of natural gas. Strange how Marcellus and Utica are both towns in NY State.
I'm not slighting coal as a fuel. I am all for domestic energy production consumption based on competition. Quite simply, the government (Albany and US Gov) stands in the way of that competition through regulation and outright bans. Meanwhile, government heavily subsidies more expensive and unreliable forms energy production, namely solar and wind. Unions have their part in this, since they have long supported leftist government. Quite honestly, unions are partly to blame for the decline of American manufacturing beginning more than a half century ago. It's a perfect convergence of unions, environmental over-regulation, and the scientism behind climate change that makes America less competitive in manufacturing and generally increases the cost of living for many Americans through higher energy prices.
I'm emphasizing manufacturing for specific two reasons. 1.) Large manufacturing has long been heavily unionized. 2.) Manufacturing requires significant energy resources. Labor and energy are two of the largest cost components of most manufacturing operations. Unions and government stand in the way competition that would keep those costs in check. Now it seems that energy sector unions are meeting manufacturing unions in the middle to erase American jobs. Not only do they price themselves out of jobs through non-competitive wages and benefit packages, they are also contributing increased energy costs. Quite simply, you can't run a steel mill on solar or a car plant on wind.
If it's anything like the teachers' unions, it only cares about the politics of subsidizing itself.
Teachers' unions don't give a sh!t about retirees, only what they can collect from them in union dues.
State Treasurers Send Message to Banks: If You Drop Coal, We Will Stop Using You
Too late for NYS, but hopefully not for most of the rest of the nation.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.