Mitt Romney visited an Ohio coal mine to promote jobs in the industry, unwittingly showing why a job in the industry sucks.
Sabrina Eaton, The Plain Dealer (“Coal miners lost pay when Mitt Romney visited their mine to promote coal jobs“):
When GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney visited an Ohio coal mine this month to promote jobs in the coal industry, workers who appeared with him at the rally lost pay because their mine was shut down.
The Pepper Pike company that owns the Century Mine told workers that attending the Aug. 14 Romney event would be both mandatory and unpaid, a top company official said Monday morning in a West Virginia radio interview.
A group of employees who feared they’d be fired if they didn’t attend the campaign rally in Beallsville, Ohio, complained about it to WWVA radio station talk show host David Blomquist. Blomquist discussed their beefs on the air Monday with Murray Energy Chief Financial Officer Rob Moore.
Moore told Blomquist that managers “communicated to our workforce that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend.” He said the company did not penalize no-shows.
Because the company’s mine had to be shut down for “safety and security” reasons during Romney’s visit, Moore confirmed workers were not paid that day. He said miners also lose pay when weather or power outages shut down the mine, and noted that federal election law doesn’t let companies pay workers to attend political events.
While the headline focuses on Romney, it’s obviously not his fault that his visit cost the miner’s a few hours’ pay. And, it may well be that, in this particular case, the mine owners actually were legally prohibited from paying their workers. But the fact that they don’t compensate their folks when the mine is shut down owing to weather and power outages shows what a horrible way mining coal is to make a living.
