Who is really to blame?
Posted on December 10, 2009 | By Denny Tyler | 2 Comments
Coal Company Cuts 500 Jobs in West Virginia, Blames Environmentalists
If an innocent bystander is in court testifying to a murder he or she witnessed, is the bystander guilty of murder? Blaming these layoffs on the environmentalists/residents is like the murderer trying to convince a jury he is completely innocent, the witness made him do it.
The coal industry is a conglomerate. They are a corporation composed of corporations. It is the nature of the beast to fight new regulations or the enforcement of old ones. CEO’s of these corporations see the word regulation and before even reading it they wonder, “how much is this going to cost me?”
If the coal industry were doing so much to benefit the community, as they claim, they would try their best to help these coal miners by putting them to work at another mine site or even starting one of the many idled underground mines instead of possible unemployment. Or, God forbid, just by following regulations and adapting. This is precisely why a transition in this state is going to be tough, to put it mildly.
The coal industry is fighting new regulations and the enforcement of old ones and they are holding West Virginians hostage. ‘Let us do what we want, or we will economically destroy the hostages starting with these 500.’
As far as I know, we do not negotiate with terrorists.
To the 500 workers/hostages: Your jobs are going to be sacrificed… if the industry demands are not met on time.
Our remnants of wilderness will yield bigger values to the nation’s character and health than they will to its pocketbook, and to destroy them will be to admit that the latter are the only values that interest us. – Aldo Leopold
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December 10th, 2009 @ 11:47 pm
that’s a really good point that i had not thought of before.
Bill Raney is demanding an endowed seat at the table for the industry like he had a busload full of kids wired to some C-4. It’s disgusting how they hold people in the crossfire.
December 12th, 2009 @ 9:39 am
In the early news reports when this story was just breaking, there was a mention of “Many of the workers have been offered the option to transfer to other CONSOL operations”. (http://www.wsaz.com/home/headlines/78776652.html)
This segment of the story was “conveniently” omitted from subsequent stories, I think, to drive home the impact of 500 jobs lost. There’s most likely not going to be 500 jobs lost, probably not even a fraction of that, but what it did was make statewide news pick up the story and “endear” these rogue companies to the hearts of the average citizen. These companies know how to work the media, a wholly owned subsidiary of the coal industry.
Another statement can be found in the original press release which was also omitted from subsequent news stories. This very important statement is hidden amongst all the hysterical B.S. about environmentalists being to blame, and reads:
“In addition, DeIuliis said that the long-term economic viability of the Fola Operations remains uncertain due to adverse market conditions for the coal product mined there.”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/CONSOL-Energys-Fola-prnews-3929797112.html?x=0&.v=1
Could it be that Consol is just trying to find a scapegoat to cover-up their blatant disregard for the law? Surely not! Because we all know that Consol always has the best interests of their workers at heart. It’s too much for us to fathom to imagine that we can’t trust a huge multi-national coal corporation to simply do the right thing and obey the law. Yes, it must surely be the fault of those “out-of-state communist protesters”, as one recent WV State Journal editorial coined “radicals” of our ilk.