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Coal Wives Back to Work: Another Sob Story for Right-Wingers Living in the 1800s

Life changes. Industries change. Adapt or die. Are we really supposed to feel bad for these people?

"It has been a hot and mean summer in Letcher County, with a rash of coal mine bankruptcies and layoffs even crueler than the ones that came before. From the barstools at the American Legion post to the parking lot of the unemployment office, there was little debate: The coal business around here is going under. The only question was what would keep everyone afloat.

These days, the answer has been: women. From 2010 to 2017, Letcher County saw a greater shift in the gender balance of its labor force than almost any other county in the United States."

"Coal mining has always been boom-and-bust, but it is hard to shake the feeling that this might be the last bust. Some men picked up and left at word of mining jobs elsewhere, some went to work as linemen or truck drivers, and others, figuring they were too old or physically broken to start over, just dropped out of the labor force. It was as if the very identity of a Letcher County man had been declared insolvent.

“I could always tell the man who worked in the mines,” said Debbie Baker, a cleaner in Whitesburg, the Letcher County seat. For one thing, “they had money.”

She recalled a family who lived comfortably where she grew up; the father worked underground and his sons followed, one by one. “The next would get old enough and get a wife and go working in the coal mines,” she said. “I don’t think any of the men did anything else.”

“When the mines left, they all ended up on drugs,” Ms. Baker added. “And their women went to work.”

Women in coal country always found paying work in greater numbers during the lean times, cleaning houses or making burgers, earning enough to get the family by until the mines picked up again. When that happened — and it always did — wives often returned home or cut back on hours because they could and because someone had to, child care being an elusive commodity. But just tiding the family over is not enough anymore.

There is little hope of finding work that could replace a miner’s income; women in Letcher County still on average make substantially lower salaries than men. But in a place stricken by chronic disease and opioid overdoses there is one area where workers are in constant demand: health care. Signing bonuses for nurses can reach into the five digits."

"A short drive from the community center up Coal Miner’s Highway, in a house his grandfather built, Mr. Rose considered the way Ms. Bowling went about things, and the way preferred by men like himself.

“We’re definitely a dying breed,” he said. He had been released from prison a few weeks earlier — drugs — and was now delivering merchandise for a hardware store. Getting back underground was the aim, but he wanted his sons to see how it was supposed to be: him hard at work and their mother at home with them.

This was getting harder to sustain, though. And fewer people seemed interested in holding onto it.

“The way of life is changing so bad,” Mr. Rose said. He grew quiet. “You’ll get overwhelmed if you think about it too hard.”

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by Anonymousreply 45September 20, 2019 3:06 PM

Christ, what is their attachment to coal mining? It's an industry that needs to die like the hundreds of others that they never shed a tear over. It's killing the miners and the planet while making a few assholes rich. Is it the country songs that make them so misty over men dying slowly of black lung?

by Anonymousreply 1September 18, 2019 4:06 PM

Obama tried to give them free training and those fuckers would rather tunnel under ground like some animals and die when they're 60

by Anonymousreply 2September 18, 2019 4:07 PM

Dear God OP, exactly how much digging did you have to do to find this article?

by Anonymousreply 3September 18, 2019 4:12 PM

R2.. hillary tried to do the same thing, and all they heard, wanted to hear and comprehended was "hillary wants to kill coal" and that was enough for them.. they couldn't take the time to understand the rest of what she said, that she wanted to kill coal and TO HELP YOU PEOPLE OUT so you could learn new skills, so you wouldn't have to die at 40, so you wouldn't have to be in poverty!... SEEMINGLY THEY ARE THEE EPITOME OF PEOPLE WHOSE MINDSET IS: "don't you dare tell me i'm wrong, even if i KNOW i'm wrong, don't you or anyone dare tell me i am!".

by Anonymousreply 4September 18, 2019 4:14 PM

Did he R2? Oh that Obama! (tears!)

by Anonymousreply 5September 18, 2019 4:15 PM

No R2, they'd rather sit back and collect SSDI because [italic]they're owed[/italic] a living, while the rest of the working world has to actually work for a living.

I don't care about these people who continually and repeatedly vote against their self interests because those interests align with the left and they'd rather suffer than see anyone else get anything (like healthcare, which as coal miners they should want, but again...).

And R3, FOAD. It's from the Times and was published only a few days ago; not exactly obscure.

by Anonymousreply 6September 18, 2019 4:15 PM

“We as a community are so proud of our miners,” Ms. Bowling said. She was sitting on a hot afternoon at the Hemphill Community Center, in a building that once housed a long-shuttered grade school. In the parking lot stands a shrine to those who died in the nearby mines, the names listed on black marble of miners “who gave so much that future generations may benefit with a better life.”

WOMP WOMP

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by Anonymousreply 7September 18, 2019 4:16 PM

Oh, so OP/R6 only posted this because they are concerned that these miners and their wives voted against their own self-interest and the bunch of fuckers who are going to die like animals comment from R Whoever came from a place of compassion and you'd probably take this very same tone if these were coal wives of color.

Guess I got confused, my apologies.

by Anonymousreply 8September 18, 2019 4:23 PM

Datalounge and women married to coal miners just go together like PB & J! Just one of these hot DL topics! I mean, ANOTHER coal miners and their wives thread???

Okay, miner wife Frau, identify yourself! C'mon now!

by Anonymousreply 9September 18, 2019 4:27 PM

“who gave so much that future generations may benefit with a better life.”

....and still work in a coal mine

by Anonymousreply 10September 18, 2019 4:29 PM

My cousin is a police officer in Harlan Kentucky and several years ago my mother and uncle (his father) and I went up to visit for a week.I honestly felt like I was on a another planet. The people were all actually very nice,but oh my god everyone was dirt poor. And terribly uneducated. I wanted to leave the day after we got there. The big thing to do there was go to Walmart or play bingo! All that being said,I did in fact have a couple of very satisfying sex romps with a truly horse hung redneck who was only missing a few teeth(as opposed to so many others who had NO teeth) . Damn, that man had a huge uncut dick. I was never so glad to leave some place in my whole life,huge cock notwithstanding.

by Anonymousreply 11September 18, 2019 4:33 PM

OP here. If this was a community of black miners or black families running their mom and pop video store, I'd have just as little sympathy. The world changes and industries die. I rolled my eyes when I got the NYT newsletter the other day and I rolled my eyes reading it. "WHAAAA, I can't do the same job my grandfather did in fucking 1945!"

by Anonymousreply 12September 18, 2019 4:34 PM

OP again. I was more annoyed that the NYT posted ANOTHER "sob story" about people shooting themselves in the foot, as if everyone else is supposed to care.

by Anonymousreply 13September 18, 2019 4:36 PM

"They had money."

Money money or just money ? Because I can't imagine the salary being that good.

by Anonymousreply 14September 18, 2019 4:40 PM

No group has ever wanted big government solutions than coal miners. For conservatives who bleat on and on about small government they sure want government to save their anachronistic industry. They need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and learn marketable skills. Stop expecting my tax dollars to bail out their dead beat jobs.

by Anonymousreply 15September 18, 2019 4:43 PM

You found it in 'the Times'. Well, why didn't you just say so?

by Anonymousreply 16September 18, 2019 4:46 PM

OP/R6/R12 Please post a thread where you are in any way critical of the marginalized group of the month. It would take about five minutes to reach 600 replies, and none of those replies would be very kind toward you at all.

by Anonymousreply 17September 18, 2019 4:49 PM

R17 Unemployed coal miner angry on the internet while his wife is at work.

by Anonymousreply 18September 18, 2019 5:42 PM

A man who works in a troubled or dying industry has a family to support. He gets laid off during another downturn.

Does he:

1) Go to night school for a couple of months and get a CNA certificate so he can join the healthcare industry and support his family, or

2) Send his wife out to get a job and abuse opiates?

by Anonymousreply 19September 18, 2019 5:47 PM

Blake Johnson is fucking hot.

by Anonymousreply 20September 18, 2019 8:00 PM

It's hard to have sympathy for these guys. They're what? Age 30 - 55? That's of the age when there were already other options available for them. They're not exactly from the 1910s or the Depression-era.

by Anonymousreply 21September 18, 2019 8:04 PM

I have very mixed feelings about all this. I have spent some time reading about and visiting the many ghost towns of Southeastern Ohio, almost all of them coal towns. I accept that there's a time to shut the mines down, and find another way to make a living, or move somewhere that offers more opportunities. But there's actually a rich history there, and I can't help feeling sad that so many of these towns are just a few old buildings decaying in the woods.

by Anonymousreply 22September 18, 2019 8:23 PM

How poor can they be if they can afford drugs?

by Anonymousreply 23September 18, 2019 9:13 PM

R23 you assume they're getting the good shit.

by Anonymousreply 24September 19, 2019 2:47 AM

Bill Clinton promised retraining to manufacturing workers displaced by globalism. He lied.

Miners weren't necessarily wrong to think Hillary Clinton was lying to them. That doesn't mean, however, that Trump will be able to save (or is interested in saving) their asses either.

by Anonymousreply 25September 19, 2019 3:11 AM

I really don’t care, do u?

by Anonymousreply 26September 19, 2019 3:16 AM

Reading this thread, it's no surprise they voted for Trump.

by Anonymousreply 27September 19, 2019 3:22 AM

I know what would fix all their problems:

Vote for a party that gives massive tax cuts to wealthy people who want to take away the last shreds of your social safety net because they’ll save a dead fossil fuel industry that nobody uses anymore! Plus, liked owning the libtards and Killary!

MAGA!

by Anonymousreply 28September 19, 2019 3:47 AM

These people were sold a bill of goods by corporations and a government who wanted to profit from their labor. They constructed a society where coal miners were heroes, because it turned victims of poor safety practices into martyrs. It meant the corporations could count on sons to sacrifice themselves for dangerous labor just like their hero daddies did.

Plus they were paid well for a job they didn't need advanced education for.

You're not going to be able to convince that culture that they were taken advantage of, or that they need to move on. Wait a generation or two and it'll change, but for now, they're too desperate, they'll never admit it was all an illusion.

by Anonymousreply 29September 19, 2019 10:10 AM

We abandoned them. The roots of the problem go deeper than a coalmine. Now we despise them and victim-blame.

by Anonymousreply 30September 19, 2019 10:33 AM

Oh spare me the mawkish bullshit, R30. These aren't helpless babies left in the woods. They are grownups with agency and the ability to choose. I know it's hard to leave where you grew up, and it's hard to watch a way of life and a whole industry die. Tell that to a newspaper reporter or a printer or a travel agent or any number of careers that have gone down the shitter since the internet destroyed everything.

by Anonymousreply 31September 19, 2019 12:08 PM

R31 is yet another reason why Trump will win in 2020.

by Anonymousreply 32September 19, 2019 1:05 PM

Don't forget the textile factories, r31.

by Anonymousreply 33September 19, 2019 1:36 PM

And the farmers and the longshoremen and the thousand other jobs that have gone pffft.

by Anonymousreply 34September 19, 2019 2:22 PM

R31 is right. For as long as there have been industries, there has been turnover. Nobody gets to ignore that, why should "black gold" be any different?

by Anonymousreply 35September 19, 2019 2:42 PM

The Datalounge parallel universe in which big government job creation for working class people in dead industries is a right wing position.

by Anonymousreply 36September 19, 2019 2:52 PM

[quote]Christ, what is their attachment to coal mining?

Little to no education required with a big paycheque.

[quote] Some men picked up and left at word of mining jobs elsewhere, some went to work as linemen or truck drivers, and others, figuring they were too old or physically broken to start over, just dropped out of the labor force.

They found other jobs with little to no education required.

People (mainly men) don't want to do the time to warrant the paycheque. As soon as there is no hope of hammering a nail into a piece of wood for decent pay, they just give up.

by Anonymousreply 37September 19, 2019 2:57 PM

Fuck them.

by Anonymousreply 38September 19, 2019 3:08 PM

The cult of victimization on the right is incredibly strong.

by Anonymousreply 39September 19, 2019 3:16 PM

"Women in coal country always found paying work in greater numbers during the lean times, cleaning houses or making burgers, earning enough to get the family by until the mines picked up again"

So why aren't the laid-off miners going out and getting jobs cleaning houses or flipping burgers?

by Anonymousreply 40September 19, 2019 3:44 PM

R17 is right. I've never criticized any marginalized group. Except gays, trans, women, men, whites, Asians, African-Americans, stupid people, religious nuts (and Catholics! Don't forget the Catholics, who I would arrest outside their Saturday night/Sunday morning confabs of child molestation as accessories to same), agnostics, atheists, bad drivers and employees. Also, admirers of anime, who by definition are not marginalized, just lacking in taste.

Oops, R17 is his own little marginalized group... another record shot to hell.

by Anonymousreply 41September 19, 2019 3:49 PM

Rethugs have created a whole class of of entitled hoes who think the world owes them a living because they are poor and white.

by Anonymousreply 42September 20, 2019 4:30 AM

The signing bonuses for nurses seems attractive But I’m black I don’t understand why they won’t learn a trade like truck driving, plumbing, electrician. Truck driving would be the easiest and some of them make like 200k. I met one who used to be homeless but made 150k his first year. He was fifty, black and had a mini criminal record.

by Anonymousreply 43September 20, 2019 4:35 AM

R43 Most truck driving jobs will have been automated by the end of the next decade.

by Anonymousreply 44September 20, 2019 2:58 PM

But I reversed light bulb regulations to increase electricity use- so there would be more need for coal!

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by Anonymousreply 45September 20, 2019 3:06 PM
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