West Virginia Becomes a 'Right to Work' State

[DINGO Joe]

Either way, nothing's going to save the coal jobs, especially in the CAPP.  Thermal production and jobs had already been eviscerated by natural gas and lower cost (longwall mining requires fewer miners) production in the NAPP and Illinois Basin.  The only saving grace was China and the boom in met coal (used for steel production) but that has collapsed and as the contracts roll off more and more CAPP miners will be out of work.

In fact, more than 2000 layoffs have been announced in WV since just the start of the year, virtually all in met coal mines.  It's very pathetic to read the articles because when you read them in something professional like Platt's, they talk about the global met coal market (at the peak of met mania, more than 75% of US production was being exported), but when you read the local articles the politicians and media talk about the coal as if it's being used for power production and MATS or the CPP (Obama) are responsible.  Are they really that stupid or just incredibly dishonest? Hard to have sympathy for them either way.

Obama did proposed a substantial plan to use mine reclamation money for economic development and retraining in his budget last year, but it was ignored by the Rs in Congress.  This year, at least Hal Rogers seems on board with the plan.

Neighboring Kentucky actually doesn't have any union mines left (despite being a right to work state) and they've lost coal jobs faster the WV over the last 8 years, though that's in part to having virtually no met coal and EKY being totally played out.  It's so bad that some thermal coal has been rotting on the banks of the Big Sandy that no one's willing to buy even at distressed prices.