Let me work
I’m a coal miner for Consol Energy at the Bailey Mine Complex in Greene County. I love to work, I work weekends and any overtime that is offered. Some weeks, I have worked over 80 hours.
Now, my shifts have been cut in half and many of my fellow workers have been laid off or displaced. I have a wife and two daughters, one aged 3 and the other six months old, and my job provides the only income in our household. Providing for them and making sure they have a good life is my No. 1 priority.
I fully understand the energy market is in a down cycle, so there is less work. But the coal industry over the last seven years under Barack Obama’s Environmenal Protection Agency has been brought to its knees. And now Gov. Tom Wolf’s Department of Environmental Protection is trying to finish the job. We’ve been kicked, punched and nearly strangled to death by government regulation with coal-fired power plants closing left and right, leaving uncertainty for all of us.
The free market should dictate what energy we consume, not politicians with an agenda. The fact remains coal is still the safest, cheapest and most reliable energy source available. Politicians shouldn’t decide which industries exist because of their ideology. That doesn’t make much sense. I can speak for thousands of coal miners in our region, and those whose businesses depend on coal, when I urge Obama and Wolf to stop the political games and let us all go back to work so we can provide for our families.
Frank Zaccone
Washington