>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Parker Donham" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: "List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2001 8:51 AM
>Subject: [Parker-L] [PBD 11-25-01] The Last Days of Coal
>
>
>> 25 November 2001
>> Halifax Daily News
>> Parker Barss Donham
>>
>>
>> The ironic impact of seniority lists meant that the men who emerged
>> from Prince Colliery on the last production shift Friday were those
>> most disadvantaged by the shutdown of Cape Breton's last coal mine.
>>
>> The 23 and 24 years they toiled underground gave them enough
>> seniority to be the very last to be laid off, but too little -- in
>> some cases, just weeks too little -- to qualify for bridge benefits
>> until modest pensions and old age benefits kick in at age 65.
>>
>> Instead, they will collect up to $80,000 in severance, much of which
>> will be chewed up in taxes. They will be unable to collect
>> unemployment benefits until the severance ends.
>>
>> The fear these pit-worn veterans feel for their future and their
>> families showed in their bitter comments to waiting reporters.
>>
>> "We just can't understand it," underground mechanic Jim Cantwell told
>> the Canadian Press. "We thought for sure we'd be retiring from here.
>> Now we're going to be looking for employment in a place where there is
>> none."
>>
>> "We were just disgusted," Mike White told the Chronicle-Herald. "We
>> were treated like dogs... but no one really cares."
>>
>> There is further irony in the cynical reaction of many mainlanders,
>> and some Cape Bretoners, who bristle at the entitlement mentality such
>> comments betray. Critics can't fathom how workers who benefited from
>> the $1.6 billion Ottawa showered on Cape Breton's coal industry could
>> believe they had been "treated like dogs."
>>
>> There is an element of truth to this reaction, but there is much that
>> it ignores.
>>
>> Ottawa established Devco in 1967 with a mandate to phase out the
>> island's money-losing coal industry. The 1973 Arab oil embargo, and
>> the energy crisis it caused, turned that mandate around.
>>
>> Suddenly, Cape Breton coal had value again. With John Buchanan's
>> election in 1978, it became the centrepiece of his strategy to save
>> the province from skyrocketing electricity rates -- and end the furore
>> over rates that brought down Gerald Regan's government. By the late
>> 70's and early 80's, Devco began opening new mines.
>>
>> The men who shut down the Prince Mine this week were hired in that
>> period, between 1977 and 1981. Most were in their 20s. They signed on
>> for what Devco assured them was a career, in an industry with a bright
>> future. They worked just shy of 25 years.
>>
>> Now, in their late 40s or early 50s, they find themselves out of work
>> with little reason for confidence in their ability to find new
>> employment.
>>
>> Miners are not unskilled -- far from it. Many excel as carpenters,
>> electricians, mechanics, pipefitters, and stationery engineers. But
>> Cape Breton already suffers from a surplus of older construction
>> workers. They are ill-suited to the hundreds of new jobs that have
>> arisen in Cape Breton -- jobs more likely to go to their daughters
>> than to themselves.
>>
>> Why not move, say the social planners of the new right. Lots of
>> people have to move to find work.
>>
>> A 50-year-old laid off New Waterford miner has many good reasons not
>> to move. If he could sell his house at all, it would not produce
>> enough cash to make a down payment on a dwelling in any job-rich part
>> of Canada. He likely has a network of family and social support that
>> makes it cheaper and easier to survive in Cape Breton on little or no
>> money than anywhere else in Canada.
>>
>> For the comfortably employed to dismiss the bitterness such
>> circumstances engender as the whining of an entitlement mentality is
>> too easy.
>>
>> Closing the coal mines, like closing the steel plant, was absolutely
>> the right thing to do. Taxpayers cannot continue to pour huge
>> quantities of money into industries that show no sign of regaining the
>> capacity to support themselves. Politicians mustn't keep doing it on
>> the taxpayers' behalf.
>>
>> In an important sense, the end of coal and steel is a liberating
>> event for Cape Breton. The island's best and brightest can now put
>> their talent and energy into enterprises with a future, instead of the
>> dead and dying industries of the past.
>>
>> That's a critical and a long overdue change. But just because a
>> decision is the right one, does not lessen the hardship it occasions.
>> The conviction that this is the right course must not blind us to the
>> need for compassion toward those the economy has left behind.
>>
>> <I> Copyright (C) 2001 by Parker Barss Donham ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). All
>> rights reserved. <N>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Parker Barss Donham
>> 8190 Kempt Head Road, Kempt Head, Nova Scotia, B1X-1R8
>> Phone: (902) 674-2953; Halifax: (902) 423-7714
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