Trump is not the coal miner’s friend

The coal industry has few stronger supporters than Donald Trump, who campaigned zealously in behalf of coal, and, since becoming president, has served more or less as the industry’s shill-in-chief. All the while, he has been claiming against all evidence that he’s done so in large part because of the importance to America of coal-mining jobs.

Trump’s support of the industry has been demonstrated most recently – and most egregiously – in his administration’s push to get the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to bail out uncompetitive coal-fired power plants (including some nuclear plants) through costly subsidies. This disingenuous move – calling it a “security plan” gives the scheme more gravity than it deserves – would benefit a handful of companies at the expense of American consumers as well as suppliers of other, more competitive and cleaner forms of energy (including natural-gas extracted via hydraulic fracturing). Indeed, so discreditable is the scheme that it somehow got oil and gas lobbyists to work together with solar lobbyists in trying to derail it. Although the FERC was supposed to decide one way or another by Dec. 11, late last week Energy Secretary Rick Perry reluctantly granted the commissioners’ request for a 30-day extension. Let us be grateful for this small mercy.

If few people have much sympathy for mining companies, almost everyone respects coal miners for the difficult, dangerous work they have long endured. It is, in fact, difficult to think of another occupational group that has received as much sympathetic treatment by artists over the years or that has gained as much cultural purchase. Here, one can point to works ranging from Orwell’s famous ethnographic portrait of English coal miners in “The Road to Wigan Pier” (1937) to Loretta Lynn’s iconic “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” from Richard Llewellyn’s depiction of Welsh coal miners in his 1939 novel “How Green Was My Valley” (the film version of which beat out “Citizen Kane” in 1941 for the Oscar for Best Picture) to Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “16 Tons.” Not to mention John Sayles’ well-regarded 1987 independent film “Matewan,” or my own favorite case, the Clancy Brothers’ cover of Ewan MacColl’s coal-mining song “Schooldays Over.” The above examples help to explain why even die-hard anti-union types today often have a grudging respect for John L. Lewis, longtime president of the UMW and protagonist in the story of the creation of the CIO. That’s saying something.

But coal mining and, alas, coal miners in the United States are pretty much yesterday’s news. The industry’s time is past, its era gone. It is a mature, even senescent industry, the capital intensity of which will never again produce a lot of jobs, and certainly never constitute more than a rounding error in America’s hoped for manufacturing “renaissance,” if said renaissance ever comes about.

At its employment peak in the 1920s, coal mining included over 800,000 workers in its ranks. Today there are about 50,000 miners and fewer than 80,000 employees in the entire coal industry. By way of contrast, Walmart, the nation’s biggest employer, provides work for more than 1.5 million people in the United States alone, Kroger has almost 450,000 employees in the U.S., and Home Depot over 400,000. There are twice as many people working in American car washes as in the entire coal industry, twice as many people employed in the solar-energy industry in California and working at Dollar General as in the mines, and more workers at Arby’s than in the entire coal-mining industry. Indeed, there are considerably more yoga instructors in this country than there are coal miners.

The number of jobs in the entire mining industry in the United States – coal, copper, iron, bauxite, rare earths, industrial sand, construction sand, gravel, you name it – is equal to only about 3 percent of the number of jobs in the health-care and social-assistance industry, 4 percent of the jobs in the retail sector, or 4 percent in the leisure and hospitality industry.

None of the above figures is “fake news” either. But the president says little about these industries, preferring to double down on coal instead. If he really wanted to help coal miners, there are other, better ways to do it than by subsidizing a dying industry. Job training, educational grants, transitional income support, extended health benefits, etc., come immediately to mind, none of which he’s especially keen on.

Why would he be? After all, Trump’s real goals are to bail out a few friendly corporations and their shareholders, while appearing miner-friendly – and by extension blue-collar-worker-friendly – in the leading coal-mining states, which in 2016 were Wyoming (by far the most important producer), followed by West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, Texas, Montana, Indiana and North Dakota, all of which, with the exception of Illinois, he won in last year’s presidential election.

This story was originally published December 14, 2017 at 12:34 PM with the headline "Trump is not the coal miner’s friend."