I would like to see more career training programs and more funds to relocate.

[TidalWave46]

So did Hillary Clinton. She had their best interests at heart. Such a difficult conversation to have that the people involved would rather "hope" than "listen."

This is a national issue. Generations of families have powered our country, at great risk to themselves, and now it's all changing.

We need to help these communities as a priority when we take the helm. Make sure they know that we mean what we say.

Blackhawk Mining announces closure of facilities in southern West Virginia

LOGAN, W.Va. — Three underground coal mines and two preparation plants in Logan and Mingo counties have been idled by Kentucky based company Blackhawk Mining and its subsidiaries.

Blackhawk announced Tuesday afternoon saying the affected operations are the Washington Underground Mine, Muddy Bridge Underground Mine, Buffalo Underground Mine, Fanco Preparation Plant and Loadout in Logan County and Mingo 1 Preparation Plant and Mingo 2 Scaggs Loadout in Mingo County.

“It’s sad and it’s disturbing,” Bill Raney, the President of the West Virginia Coal Association told MetroNews of his reaction to the news.

“It’s just a matter that the coal market is what it is. It’s an international marketplace.”

Metro News

[PatrickforO]

1. Not only funds to relocate provided through a TAA-like program, but

career, interest, skill and academic assessment, followed by training in a new field, and...

small business development, including micro-lending and angel capital for miners who get training and want to start a business, and...

an economic development package that produces a strategy to bring in new firms that hire people like the newly-trained miners.

I'm especially thinking about retooling this workforce around some kind of renewable energy and/or conservation and mitigation. There is lots of opportunity, but there needs to be capital investment in new companies.

[TidalWave46]

3. Well stated. Thanks for the addition. NT

[wasupaloopa]

4. How about auto workers, they should get the same, right? How about teachers, nurses,

factory workers, how about anybody who loses a job?

[PatrickforO]

5. The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act provides for

retraining for all dislocated workers and adults in priority populations (disabled, poor, ex-offender, single parent). This program is funded and operated through the United States Deparment of Labor, Employment and Training Administration.

In addition, if workers are laid off due to offshoring of a facility (particularly prevalent in manufacturing), those workers may petition to their state Department of Labor and Employment for TAA status. If this petition is granted, the TAA program will a) give them unemployment checks for up to two years, and b) provide training assistance for up to two years.

All states and territories have a Workforce Development system, which is a network of federally funded job training and labor exchange programs including services for veterans under Title 38, vocational rehabilitation, food stamp job search, TANF works programs, Ticket to Work, Job Corps and others. It is usually this system that steps forward with a rapid response (if the mine closures fall under the WARN Act, which they do, then WV's Department of Labor and Employment, as well as the local one-stop career centers are required to provide what is called a 'rapid response.' This entails meeting with the affected workers and helping them hook up to resources to survive the plant closure, find training, and rejoin the labor force.

Now, I'm suggesting in tandem with these services, that a concerted statewide economic development strategy be developed and enacted with the goal of bringing in new businesses, and starting new businesses so that the affected workers actually DO have employment opportunities. You can train people until you're blue in the face, but at the end of the day, if there are no jobs for them to go to, then you've wasted both time and money, and more importantly you have materially hurt the affected workers, not to mention the indirect and induced workers also affected when the laid-off workers quit spending money on anything but essentials. This includes supply chain people up and down line, as well as service people in retail, government (teachers, police, firefighters) and other industries. A layoff like this can cause a significant ripple effect.

So, yeah, wasupaloopa, there is a decent system in place that is filled with people who got into public service because they wanted to make a difference in their communities.

[wasupaloopa]

13. In Moraine Ohio workers lost their jobs to GM leaving then they went to work for the Chinese

at lower wages and got laid off from those job. They deserve whatever the miners get.

[Peacetrain]

2. I supported Gov O'Malley last time.. and one of my favorite

lines from his stump speeches in Iowa, was that when he saw the big wind turbines on flat beds going down our roads...that it did not bother him that they slowed up the flow of traffic, because those were wonderful paying jobs for people... not everyone needs or wants a 4 year degree..but with the changing work force and need for technology (boy can I go on and on about the that)..everyone is going to need more than our traditional 12 years of schooling..

[wasupaloopa]

6. Maybe Candidates who drop out with millions of dollars

in contributions can give it to miners.

I mean why stay in if you are not going to win? Why continue to take campaign contributions?

Put out a statement like “ since I will not be the nominee I will not stay in the race out of ego building. I will give my remaining campaign money to ex coal miners and you should send your money to them also instead of sending it to me.”

[loyalsister]

7. I didn't see anything but about housing

You can't relocate without a place to live and many of these folks own their houses outright in a region that may be gradually deserted.
Asking them to move somewhere they are unfamiliar with, where they then have to rent, and spend some years with the uncertainty of job training for something they would not have chosen for themselves is a lot to ask of someone in their 40s.

[TidalWave46]

8. It is a lot. I agree.

The other option is worse.

I also think that if it was done property it would be much easier than you mention. Not easy, but much easier. These programs should have been building much larger than they are. Entice people to take advantage before they lose their jobs.

Not everyone needs to take advantage. If someone wants to hole up, have at it. Freedom an all of that. They will still get welfare assistance.

[loyalsister]

9. "welfare assistance"

Medicaid and AFDC are available only to people who have minor children. It varies by state, but a family of 3 has to have earnings of less than $3,000 annually for the adults to qualify.
They are supposed to give up their homes and modest but secure lifestyles for that?

[TidalWave46]

10. That comment was clearly directed at those who stay.

Their lifestyle is anything but secure, as you state. That insecurity has been known for a long long time.

[loyalsister]

12. Define "security"

You can't because it doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. A house without a mortgage is a kind of security that I can see and believe, but have never experienced. One that a person spent half of their lives paying for is something beyond my comprehension. The meaning behind one that has been inherited comes with more than a sense of security, too.

We should try harder to walk in their worlds and imagine what it means to give up the lives they have built and love. It's not a simple matter of logistics like job training. People who have spent generations in a region are attached to other people who have also been there for generations. Another kind of security stems from familiarity and long standing family connections. What is being demanded of them is a lot more complicated than it may seem.

If you want people to abandon their roots, housing is essential and should be part of any plan to encourage people who are reluctant to leave the lives they feel are safe.

[Hortensis]

11. People have both duty and huge incentive to take care of themselves,

Last edited Wed Oct 9, 2019, 04:54 PM - Edit history (2)

though. Don't we? Poverty's a major bummer and by far most people don't need to be asked to do what they have to to take care of themselves. The numbers for people moving around this nation alone show that.

Others have good reasons for staying and choose low incomes, and even poverty, in order, for instance, to be with and take care of family.

Others still, though, could use either a few swift kicks in the ass, effective but typically illegal, or various encouraging hands out, going to them and telling them about opportunities, reassuring them that they can do it, and helping make it happen. A little help, like tuition assistance or low tuition, for job training is all many need to get up and go. And others refuse, of course; they don't want to move to find decent-paying work and don't.

Republicans typically believe in the virtues and benefits of insisting people take care of themselves, and since 1978 or so they've dominated government.

Democrats see virtue in both coordinating labor and employer needs on large scales for the benefit of everyone and in helping individuals who need some assistance standing on their own, AND in leaving those able-bodied and able-minded people who insist on failing the freedom to pursue their own version of happiness. Tax breaks, professional planning, and other assistance to the employers and communities who make it happen locally are the most common means of greasing these wheels.

But liberals especially value education to promote individual and national wellbeing. The virtues of making education available to all is a basic liberal principle that our liberal founding fathers believed would be very important to the success of our republic. It's even more critical today, while the Republicans try to destroy good education to create a populace more appropriate to an authoritarian-appropriate state.