Top US Coal Boss Robert Murray: Trump ‘Can’t Bring Mining Jobs Back’

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While Murray said new plants using “clean coal” technologies could soon be built, he doesn’t expect that coal’s share of the market will rise significantly in the future.

Coalmining employed 98,505 people in 2015, according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration, down from 127,745 in 2008, the year Obama was elected president, and about 250,000 in the 1970s. Trump has consistently pledged to restore mining jobs, but many of those jobs were lost to technology rather than regulation and to competition from natural gas and renewables, which makes it unlikely that he can do much to significantly grow the number of jobs in the industry, said Murray.

“I suggested that he temper his expectations. Those are my exact words,” said Murray. “He can’t bring them back.”

But Murray is confident that Trump will move to “level the playing field” with renewable energy sources such as wind and solar by eliminating subsidies. “Get the government out of picking winners and losers,” he said. “We have to get the government out of the manipulation of the energy markets.”

Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, said Murray was right to think coal had a champion in Trump, but she said she doubts the industry can overturn all the regulations Obama has put in place, or that Trump can significantly revive the industry.

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Coal Museum Sees Future; Trump Doesn’t

Did you catch this gem on CNN.com from April 6? “The Kentucky Coal Mining Museum in Benham, owned by Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College, is switching to solar power to save money. … Communications director Brandon Robinson told CNN affiliate WYMT that the project ‘will help save at least eight to ten thousand dollars, off the energy costs on this building alone.’”

Go figure. The coal mining museum is going solar, for solid economic reasons, and President Trump is reviving coal, with no economic logic at all. This bizarre contrast speaks to a deeper question of leadership and how we judge presidents

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Coal Is Gold, for the Boss

Glenn Kellow, the coal executive who led Peabody Energy through bankruptcy, just collected an estimated $15 million stock bonus. John Eaves at Arch Coal, another recently bankrupt coal giant, got an award valued at $10 million.

The view from the coal pits is far less rosy.

An analysis of recent government data shows that the wage gap between the coal industry’s top executives and average coal workers has expanded, while low-end pay has stagnated.

From 2004 to 2016, the average annual wage for chief executives in the coal industry grew as much as five times faster than those of lower-paying jobs in the industry, like construction or truck and tractor operator jobs. Executive pay averaged $200,000, up 60 percent from $125,000, while paychecks for truck and tractor operators rose just 15 percent, to $43,770 from $38,060. Pay for construction jobs in mining rose just 11 percent, to $35,080 from $31,470.

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