Reply #49: why -- would that be more valid?

[NorthernSpy]

:eyes:

Charlie Brease, the president of Massey Energy subsidiary Sidney Coal Co., requested that the Kentucky Coal Board relax its requirement of English proficiency so that the company could bring in Hispanic immigrant workers for training. “It’s common knowledge that the work ethic of the Eastern Kentucky worker has declined from where it once was,” he wrote in a December memorandum. “Attitudes have changed among the existing work force, which affects attendance, drug use, and ultimately productivity.” At the Board’s March 10 meeting, the proposal was not discussed, although the “labor shortage” is still being publicly lamented by officials and executives.

Publication of the statement last month provoked such opposition among miners that Brease offered an apology for his insinuation of rampant drug abuse. Subsequently, the media coverage has attempted to paint the miners’ opposition as racist and backward.

Most miners actually quoted in the press, however, direct their anger at what is to be another attack on wages and benefits. Homer Black, a disabled miner working at the Sidney Coal preparation plant, told the Associated Press, “They bring Mexicans in here, they’ll get ’em killed.” Of his co-workers, Black said, “These people ain’t going to put up with it.” Shannon Gibson, who had just been hired to work at Sidney, added, “They’re just looking for more workers who’ll work cheaper and longer.”

The workers Brease was slandering are mostly white. You don't have to be black any more to have this kind of stigma shoved down your throat.



http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/kent-m15.shtml