President Donald Trump’s administration needs you to get a job—within the mines.
The Division of Labor posted a link on X on Monday promoting job openings for coal miners practically every week after Trump signed an executive order clearing the way in which for extra “beautiful, clean coal” manufacturing on public lands.
Naturally, this didn’t sit properly with the general public, given widespread data of how mining jobs considerably affect human well being.
“Make Black Lung nice once more,” one consumer replied on X.
“why do you assume Individuals need to work in coal mines once more?” one other wrote. “are you fvcking loopy?”
After all, for Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, that is simply one other day within the books. Her earlier contributions to American employees embody advocating to chop packages aimed toward fighting child labor. And her division’s X put up fortunately marketed that folks might “leap begin” their careers by diving into the mines.
Whereas coal made up for less than a fifth of America’s power manufacturing in 2023, it’s not simply the push for environmentally taxing fossil fuels that has folks up in arms. Slightly, the Trump administration’s newest strikes have sparked large security issues for present and future miners.
Seemingly because of Trump’s race to make fossil-fuel billionaires completely satisfied, the federal government’s Mine Security and Well being Administration announced on April 8—the same day that Trump signed the order—that it could quickly pause a long-in-the-works security rule to extend miners’ protections from silica mud. As an alternative of going into impact on April 14, miners will now have to attend till at the least August earlier than they see higher protections in opposition to sicknesses like black lung.
The company cited “unexpected [National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health] restructuring” and “different technical causes.”
Traditionally, miners are subjected to quite a few life-threatening security hazards on the job together with pneumoconiosis, which might come from inhaling silica on the job.
“Whereas we’re appreciative of the chief motion, there are a number of issues which are being pulled again which are going to guard the well being and security of our miners, which is our principal precedence,” Erin Bates, a spokesperson for the United Mine Employees of America labor union, instructed Day by day Kos. “Each single day this rule is delayed is one other day that our nation’s miners are uncovered to silica mud, which results in and has been confirmed to result in quite a few lung illnesses.”
Not solely is the administration pushing for newbies to leap head first right into a harmful work surroundings, however because of Well being and Human Companies Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. and the Trump administration’s vicious firings of federal employees, there are fewer folks to watch miners’ well being.
Two-thirds of NIOSH, a key company defending and monitoring miners’ well being, is expected to vanish within the coming weeks. Amongst many different duties, NIOSH runs the Coal Employees’ Well being Surveillance Program, which supplies a sort of free well being care to miners and helps to watch their ongoing lung health.
A NIOSH facility in Morgantown, West Virginia, was among the many hardest hit from these cuts, with the Trump administration shedding nearly 200 workers.
In line with MSHA’s spokesperson, Morgantown helped lead respiratory analysis.
“With out these assets, it’ll be tougher to watch and management the mud ranges in these mines, leaving a excessive danger for Black Lung,” Bates instructed Day by day Kos.
Trump’s push for extra coal and power manufacturing could tie into his race in opposition to China concerning synthetic intelligence. Final week, AI trade leaders met earlier than Congress final week to beg for more energy, with one former Google CEO saying, “We’d like power in all varieties. … Renewable, nonrenewable, no matter. It must be there, and it must be there rapidly.”
And Trump’s coal-focused government order particularly talked about AI, saying that home coal “might be vital to assembly the rise in electrical energy demand attributable to … the development of synthetic intelligence information processing facilities.”
In different phrases, the price of large enterprise is excessive, and it’s doable that the president is making an attempt to spice up large trade—employees’ well being be damned.
