Coal Company Fires 56, Blames Obama's Reelection, Gets Exposed on Reddit

Obama got reelected, so I guess those rich assholes that said they’d have no choice but to fire their employees if he did feel like they’ve got to put up or shut up. So of course there are reports trickling in, many of them dubious, of tantrum-throwing “job creators” laying off their workers. The most egregious example was brought to our attention by a coal miner and Reddit user who says that he and 55 of his co-workers have been laid off because of “Obama’s war on coal.”

The user kgphoto started a thread called Yesterday I was laid off because President Obama was re-elected. AMA!, where he explains:

I worked at a coal mine that decided today to layoff over 40 employees and the only reason that was given was that “America has betrayed coal miners” by re-electing President Obama. Despite the fact that nothing has changed in the two days since the election they decide to lay off employees. I’ve seen how corrupt the company can be over the years and am fairly certain the layoffs are just a way to make the President look bad.

He posted the release they were given, Reasons for Personell Layoffs online. It includes the following:

“Because of the ‘War on Coal’ by the Administration of President Barack Obama, the following has already occurred to the United States coal industry … Production in 2012 has been reduced from the historic 1.2 billion tons per year to only 825 million tons this year. The actions of Mr. Obama and his appointees to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Department of the Interior, Office of Surface Mining, and Department of Labor, have already lead to the closure by 2014 of 204 American coal-fired power plants.”

Just about everything outlined in the statement above is ridiculous. The “War on Coal” was a Romney campaign fantasy construct; other than a regulation on excessive pollution, Obama has barely touched the coal industry. In fact, he’s opened up massive public lands to mining, like the Powder River Basin. No, times are getting tough for coal because natural gas is cheap. Fracking has led to a glut of the stuff, and power plants are switching over to gas all over the place. Local activist campaigns like the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal initiative has pushed for the closure of exceptionally dirty plants and halted some proposed ones, but that has nothing to do with Obama. At all.

No, this is the petty vengeance of a dickish coal exec who was either going to fire employees because of shifting economic conditions anyways, or is truly among the biggest asses in the land. But let’s get back to KG, who has a wife and kids, and is now jobless. He says that there were indirect comments were made, coercing employees to vote for Obama: “No actual threats were made, but there were comments along the lines of ‘a vote for Obama is the same as treason’ and bullshit like that.” And he seems convinced that the firings are entirely politically motivated. He reiterates that “it’s a political statement just to be able to present a number of coal workers out of a job to make Obama look bad.”

He’s also a sharp dude: “The problem is I live in a coal mining town, but I do believe that we need to get away from non-renewable resources. I don’t understand how these people can deny scientific evidence that proves that carbon emissions are causing change in the environment.”

And now he’s out of a job. His coal miner buddy is too, and he made a rap video about it:

“Fuck you rich fat cats and your man-made catastrophes,” he says. I concur.