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Jobs Americans would do

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Posted: April 7, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern


By Anthony Gancarski
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com


As the debate about immigration has churned on, a convenient caricature of the illegal-alien worker has emerged. To hear many describe it, the vast majority of illegal laborers in this country are performing "jobs Americans won't do" – as best exemplified by the hapless laborer in the poultry racket, beheading and eviscerating luckless fryers for domestic consumption. Americans wouldn't do such jobs, the logic goes, because the pay isn't quite a "living wage" and the work itself is somewhat objectionable.

Much is said about the fundamental health of the economy, as evidenced by historically low rates of unemployment and statistical evidence of robust growth. But despite such indicators, there are areas in the country where jobs and opportunity historically are hard to come by. One such region: the coal fields of the Appalachians, of Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia.

Coal has always been primary to the region's economy. The mineral-rich area around border city Williamson, W.Va. – the Tug Valley – at one time was popularly known as the "Billion Dollar Coal Field." Nowadays, though, it is clear that the billions of dollars expropriated from the soil have done precious little to benefit locals. Vacant storefronts are plentiful, and as has been the case for decades, most of those born in coal country – like my own mother – do whatever it takes to get out as soon as possible.


Automation and improved efficiency in the industry have conspired to render the workers increasingly irrelevant as time has progressed. With each passing year, less of them are needed. It's hard to also ignore the corner-cutting in much of the coal industry, as evidenced most especially by the safety problems in the industry, spotlighted most resonantly by the Sago mine disaster a few months back. Still, despite all this, it could plausibly be argued that at least Big Coal wasn't undercutting its indigenous labor source by bringing in outside workers. At least, until now.

Lee Mueller, writing for the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky, delineates the crux of the problem: "The U.S. Labor Department says 3,500 additional underground miners are needed in Eastern Kentucky. The president of a large Pike County [Kentucky] coal company says the shortage of miners is so severe – in part, he alleged, because of a declining work ethic among mountain workers – that he wants to bring in non-English speaking miners to fill the jobs."

Evidence of this "declining work ethic" and the labor shortage both is largely anecdotal and fraught with the burden of a competing claim: to hear locals tell it, they would love to have those jobs if only they were being offered to them. That said, recent concerns about "mine safety" have been predicated on that "declining work ethic" claim, as well as the ancillary assertion that drugs run rampant in Kentucky and West Virginia coal mines.

Legislation recently passed in Kentucky: Drug tests will be mandatory for all coal-mine workers in what advocates call "front-line mine safety legislation." One can only guess if the imported miners will face similar tests, regarding drugs and other issues. How safe can these itinerants be if they don't even know the language? Time undoubtedly will tell.



In the meantime, though, the long-suffering people of the Billion Dollar Coal Field will struggle to eke out a living in an increasingly mechanized industry. They will be the scapegoats of the industry's failures, endemic inefficiencies, and competitive disadvantages with miners in other, less-regulated areas of the world. As they give their bodies – or attempt to give their bodies – to a career in the coal mines, they will find themselves beset by competition, from elsewhere. Competition not just for jobs, but for the resources that have always proved too finite in this benighted area of the country.

What will become of the local culture? Towns will change. Some towns will die, their best and brightest doing what the best and brightest have done for generations. Finding jobs in auto-parts factories near some New South metropolis, or waiting tables near military bases. Appalachia? Well, it won't be Appalachia anymore. The old ways will die. But the coal will still be mined. Arriba La Raza.



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Anthony G. Gancarski comes from generations of mountain people, coalminers and otherwise.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/artic ... E_ID=49637

I live about 1 to 2 hours from these areas, coal mining is the best paying job in these areas, the talk is, the mine owners will bring in translators to stay in the mines with the Latino's, all day.....talk about insanity!