Reid Frazier reports for StateImpact:
At a gymnasium in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, Trenton Phillips is looking for a job as a coal miner.
Phillips already works at a company that fixes belt lines at coal mines. He’s at a job fair in Greene County today. He passes booths for health care and trucking jobs. He stops only at a booth for a coal mine contractor. He wants to become a mine foreman or supervisor.
“I’m currently looking for something where I can advance. Maybe one day be somewhere higher up, not have to break my back and use my head a little more,” says Phillips.
Phillips, 24, got a job at a union coal mine after graduating high school six years ago, during better times for the coal industry. With overtime, he says he made up to $90,000 a year.
“It was pretty much boomin’ when I was coming right out of high school so that seemed like the thing to do,” said Phillips.
The mine closed in 2015. So Phillips drove a truck in the oil and gas industry for a year. But the hours were unpredictable. So, when a job opened up at the belt repair company, he grabbed it.
He says he’s not afraid of another coal industry slump, now that President Trump is in the White House. Trump has begun rolling back regulations on coal mine waste and its carbon pollution. Trump has promised to revive the coal industry, and coal miners are taking this promise to heart, sticking with an industry that has been walloped in recent years.
“Now everything seems to be going back up and it’s going in the right direction,” he said.
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