Job training and community college put coal miners on a new path

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio


JOHN YANG: Now we return to our Rethinking
College series.


This week, we take a look at efforts to help unemployed coal
miners earn community college degrees and get on-the-job
training.


Hari Sreenivasan has our report, part of our weekly segment
Making the Grade.


HARI SREENIVASAN: In the heart of Appalachia,
generations of coal miners have lived through good times and bad.


CHRIS FARLEY, Former Coal Miner: We will have
some early tomatoes. Then we will have…


BERTHA FARLEY, Grandmother of Chris Farley:
Middle.


CHRIS FARLEY: Middle tomatoes. Then we will have
late tomatoes.


BERTHA FARLEY: Late tomatoes to can.


HARI SREENIVASAN: When coal miner Chris Farley
was laid off two years ago, he began growing food on his
grandmother’s West Virginia lot to feed his family.


BERTHA FARLEY: I’m telling him, you have got to
grow what you eat. You have got to survive. In this area, most of
all, you have to eat.


CHRIS FARLEY: I got laid off, and there was no
jobs around here to be found. They went from jobs everywhere to
nothing. And I was actually at the point of going from door to
door with my neighbors, seeing if they need grass mowed or weeds
cut, or just any odd jobs to try to pay the power bills and
anything, whatever it took to provide for my family.


HARI SREENIVASAN: Between 1980 and 2015, the
number of coal jobs fell by 60 percent, due to automation and
competition from natural gas.


But even before the decline, Bertha Farley had lived through many
coal industry downturns.


BERTHA FARLEY: My daddy got laid off, and I had
five brothers, and they all had to leave here. No work.


HARI SREENIVASAN: Still, her son Floyd and
grandson Chris both became miners.


CHRIS FARLEY: My dad, when he got old enough, he
went into the coal mines, so I followed his footsteps, and went
into the coal mines.


HARI SREENIVASAN: It wasn’t a choice Floyd
Farley wanted for his son.


FLOYD FARLEY, Former Coal Miner: I wanted
him to go to West Virginia University. I tried to explain to him,
I said, you don’t have to be like you’re old man. You won’t have
to be out here, breathing this dust. You can sit in an office
somewhere. I said, it sure beats the heck out of coal mining.


HARI SREENIVASAN: But, in 2002, when Chris
Farley graduated from high school, working at the coal mine meant
top wages.


CHRIS FARLEY: I made over $50,000 a year as soon
as I started out, straight out of high school, with no college,
nothing.


HARI SREENIVASAN: Some believe the high wages
created an unhealthy dependence on coal jobs.


BRANDON DENNISON, CEO, Coalfield Development
Corporation: You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket,
which is the mistake that West Virginia made with the coal
industry.


HARI SREENIVASAN: Brandon Dennison grew up in
Appalachia, but left to study social entrepreneurship. After
earning his master’s, he returned to retrain displaced workers.


BRANDON DENNISON: The moral arguments, I’m not
interested in on coal, but it’s like investing your money. You
never put it all in one investment account. You spread it out,
you diversify.


HARI SREENIVASAN: In 2010, Dennison formed a
nonprofit called the Coalfield Development Corporation. With
financial support from the Appalachian regional commission, the
nonprofit launched new businesses that Dennison believes will
generate sustainable jobs, everything from furniture making and
solar installation, to home building and agriculture.


BRANDON DENNISON: What we need is a diversified
economy, with lots of different businesses and lots of different
opportunities for all different types of people.


HARI SREENIVASAN: Coalfield crew members are
paid $11 an hour and given 33 work hours per week, an amount that
doesn’t come close to their former coal job wages. They must also
attend three hours of life skill classes, and six hours of
community college. Money to pay crew members comes from sales,
contracts, and private and public funders.


BRANDON DENNISON: We are not just creating a job
for these folks, many of whom still need a lot of job training,
but we’re also enrolling them in the local community college. And
then we’re providing three hours a week of personal development
to figure out how business works and to be successful.


HARI SREENIVASAN: Chris Farley is now an honors
student working toward his associates degree in applied science
and agriculture.


CHRIS FARLEY: I can still pay my bills. I’m
getting an education that I would never thought I would get. I
never thought I would be in school. I never thought — never
dreamed I would have a 4.0 GPA.


BRANDON DENNISON: The bottom line is, if you
look at states with low numbers of higher education attainment,
like we have, there are not a lot of jobs. And if you look at
states and communities with high numbers of people with degrees
of higher education, you see a lot more jobs.


HARI SREENIVASAN: One project, called Refresh
Appalachia, brings former coal miners like Chris Farley back to a
mining site.


BRANDON DENNISON: We have all of these mine land
sites that we have got to do something with, right? These are
massive former mountaintop removal sites that are sitting there
kind of not being used productively.


HARI SREENIVASAN: On this mountaintop in Mingo
County. Dennison’s workers are transforming a former mine into a
farm that serves local markets.


CHRIS FARLEY: We’re planting all this, different
types of berries, and pawpaw trees, and we’re going to have a big
orchard, different types of stuff to sell, goji berries,
blackberries, raspberries, elderberries.


HARI SREENIVASAN: James Russell is the farm’s
crew chief.


JAMES RUSSELL, Crew Chief, Coalfield Development
Corps: We have lots of interest with restaurants for our meat and
eggs, and our berries also.


We have goats, pigs, and chickens, and they give back to the
land. And the pigs tear it up. It’s just a good combination of
fertilizer when you mix the three together. After a couple of
years of working the soil, you can grow anything you want.


HARI SREENIVASAN: Crew member Jared Blalock
worked for six years in the mine industry.


JARED BLALOCK, Former Coal Miner: Running a
dozer on the coal pile, taking care of the stacker belt,
shoveling, greasing, just your everyday labor.


HARI SREENIVASAN: Now he’s refurbishing old
buildings for a Coalfield Development project called Restore
Appalachia. As part of his employment, Blalock is working toward
his associate’s degree in management. He says he’d go back to the
mines if a job was available, but worries about the instability
of the industry.


JARED BLALOCK: I don’t have anything wrong with
coal mining. Coal mining is a — it’s a great industry here, but
you don’t know. That’s the thing about it. That’s why I’m doing
this right now, because I need to take advantage of my
opportunity.


HARI SREENIVASAN: So far, 23 crew members have
completed their degrees and have been placed in full-time jobs;
55 are currently in the program, and 15 are on the waitlist.


Chris Farley hopes to use his degree and work experience to start
a business of his own.


CHRIS FARLEY: I would like to actually start my
own restaurants called Homegrown Home Cooking. My little girl,
she’s going to help me with the farm. My wife is going to help
me. We’re just going to start our own little business.


HARI SREENIVASAN: For the PBS NewsHour, I’m Hari
Sreenivasan.


JOHN YANG: There’s more online from our series
Rethinking College, including a look at a Tennessee pilot program
that helps ease the financial burden so adults can finish their
college degrees.


You will find that at PBS.org/NewsHour.


The post Job training and community college put coal miners on a
new path appeared first on PBS NewsHour.