The shift change came and members of the night crew dragged themselves up from the hole. Their faces were stained and their eyes unfocused. Their faces were old.
The morning crew members had old faces, too. The average age of the worker in this coal mine is 52. Although it was the beginning of a damp work day, the men were laughing, because for them, these are the best of times. They have a saying: The only thing worse than this work is not having it. And for many years they did not have it.
"When this mine closed down I thought that was it for me," said Gary Hill, 51, who had 18 years in the tunnels before he was laid off four years ago. "Then I got the call saying the mine reopened and come back to work. I got two years to make full pension. I didn't think I was going to make it."
PHOTO: NY TIMES
But with the energy crisis creating new interest in coal, these are boom times in coal country.
"The good times have created a dilemma in the industry," said Ed Yankovich, the president of District No. 2 of the United Mine Workers of America, as he drank coffee with the men at the Mathies mine here, about 30km south of Pittsburgh.
"There is a generation of miners missing," Yankovich said. "The average age of a miner is 50 years old. Now that the companies want men, we don't have enough."
For decades the industry limped along. Steel manufacturing, which depends on high-grade coal, dried up. Power plants started moving toward clean-burning natural gas. Coal prices flattened. Mines closed and men were replaced by machines.
There was no job for the old, experienced coal miner, much less his son or daughter, so for more than a decade there were few new miners in the pipeline. Then the price of natural gas quadrupled and California was hit with rolling blackouts. US President George W. Bush made coal a centerpiece of his energy strategy and 22 new coal-burning power plants have been proposed.
The price of coal has doubled since February to more than US$40 a ton. "These are boom times just because there are job gains in the industry instead of loses," said Dominic Toto, an economist who studies mining for the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A thousand miners have gone back to work in Pennsylvania this year, and companies are looking to hire more, Yankovich said. In 1990, 149,000 people made their living in the mines across the US. By last December, the number had plummeted to 75,000. As of June, however, the number increased for the first time in years. There are now at least 77,000 coal miners.
When a miner gets laid off, his name goes on a seniority list. If a job reopens at his mine, he may apply. For the last decade, there were no job openings. People do not give these jobs up. The labor is dark, damp, dirty but it pays US$18.91 an hour and perhaps US$6 more an hour in benefits. It is one of the top-paying occupations in this area.
Under the union's contract, a jobless miner can not apply with another mining company. He, is in effect, the lifetime property of the mine owner.
Aging workforce
So the work force has aged and few young miners have been able to break into the business. Those who were laid off went to loading docks or to teach school or to work as mechanics. Union rules require that they had to be called back before any new miners could be hired.
"In a way, the strong union is a victim of its own success," Yankovich said.
All of the miners at the Mathies mine have been called back. Most will retire in five years, union officials say. And when they do, there will be no one to teach the greenhorns who will replace them.
"Young guys don't pay," said John Hatch, president and owner of the Mathies mine. Hatch, 49, once was a mechanic in this same mine. But he says, he made good, got out, cleaned his nails and started wearing collars. Now he owns a big desk and a leather chair and at least has an understanding of his men.
"I can't find experienced men," he said. "It's dangerous work and a new man takes the supervision of two experienced miners. I can't afford that."
Hatch's mine is the old underground room-and-pillar operation.
Unlike the surface strip and pit mines, underground mines are very labor intensive, because the roof of the tunnels must be reinforced before coal can be carved out.
A year ago, the mine was idle because of the low price of coal and the high cost of labor. Now, Hatch employs 164 people and is looking to hire seven more. He is running round-the-clock six days a week.
After generations of men telling their sons not to work down in the mines, this last generation of sons finally listened.
"A lot of young guys wanted this job and couldn't get it," Hill said. "I told my son to stay away and he did. He's a paramedic. A lot of young people have moved away or make pizzas and things."
And in a small way this has made the coal miners sad. What dream can be made in the service industries, they ask?
"No one will write songs about the life and struggles of the hamburger flipper and bed maker," said Mike Kasavich, who, at 46, is one of the youngest men in the mine. Kasavich loaded docks for a couple of years after he was laid off. He stayed drunk for a couple of more, he said.
"I'm just glad to get back," Kasavich said. "It's in my blood."
The country is still heavily dependent on coal. .More than half the electricity is generated from coal. Roads and highways cannot be built without it. Steel, gold, roofing materials and batteries, all depend on coal.
Unhealthy occupation
So at 7:30am, the men strapped on their emergency oxygen boxes and turned on their headlamps and carried their lunch pails into the bowels of the earth. There was a blanket of cold mist and an old trolley that took them 100m down.
The roar of the machinery is frightening to the unaccustomed visitor. Most miners have hearing problems from the noise and bad joints from the dampness and puddles that form when it rains. A man who is 55 and works underground has the face of a 70-year-old who works in an office building. Still, the miner is sinewy and strong and humps bags of stone on his back, shovels rocks, repairs equipment in poor lighting and works on his feet all day.
"You work in a coal mine you're going get hurt," said Bill Shaneyfelt, 64, who is the oldest man in the mine. When he got laid off, he went to work as a repairman in the nuclear power plants. "Radiation or coal dust," Shaneyfelt said. "Either way, it's a pretty good living. Somebody's got to do it."
The loss of a thumb will pay about US$50,000. The eye goes for nearly $140,000. A miner's life is valued at half of his average weekly earnings -- about US$378 -- paid to his widow for life.
But coal miners do not think about the danger. They think about the money. And when the workday is over they drag themselves out of the hole and shower. Some go home and others go to the bar.
There, the bridge builders have settled in and the working people start talking about their jobs.
"Those young guys are crazy working [100m] above ground," said Joe Hohol, 56, who has made a 20-year career working 100m below. "Funny things a man will do for a dollar."
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