OT: THEY FOUND THE MINERS ALIVE!!

When we were in Nova Scotia we toured a coal mine in Glace Bay. The tour guide was an interesting man who had spent his life working in the mine, and now, he tells visitors of his life. It certainly gave one a sense of reality walking along underground in the somewhat dank air and low ceilings. At one point there was an area, where a very small raised garden had been planted. There was a bench each side of the garden, and the guide told story after story, with his accent getting stronger as the minutes passed by. He told of the camaraderie, the risks, the basic every day life of a miner. He had started working in the mine as a boy, as had his dad before him. He also had great pride that he WAS a miner.

There were many memories from that great vacation, and this is one that I don't think I will ever forget!

Gillian

Right. A vacation day for which you were paid, as opposed to being off contract and unpaid for those days. And lots of people in fields outside of education are reimbused for the skills classes they take.

Elizabeth

"Jangchub" wrote.

I cannot imagine any corporation acquiring a going concern (here, an operating coal mine) without being aware of its status with the various regulating bodies. It's one of the things you check out, just like the tax status, pending lawsuits, status of various depreciable assets, whatever. Continuing to operate was a business decision. I had a grandfather and an uncle who worked in the mines in the Crowsnest area years ago, until they could find other work or buy a bit of farmland. If you have ever been on a mine tour, and can picture how those men spent their last hours, knowing they were their last hours, your heart breaks. Dawne

x-no-archive:yes

Sure the mine managers knew, likewise the miners. When Westray in NS went up in a methane explosion ten years ago and 26 miners were lost (they couldn't even recover their bodies it was so dangerous) - that mine had safety violations too and one way and another the manager evaded prosecution. He is from out west and he even had the gall to come back a year or two ago with a proposal to open and run another mine, he ran okay, right back where he came from!

Now we have some Germans who intend to open a mine in Cape Breton, the Donkin mine which has seams that run for miles out under the sea. They have got permission (from a provincial government with apparently a short memory) and I can see it all coming. The area is poor, much like WV, and in their eagerness to be employed the men will close their eyes to a manager who puts tape over the methane measure - as was done at Westray - and who asks them to daily defy death, until the day that death comes anyway.

That's about the average size of a class in high schools and lower. The number is MUCH higher at University level. I had classes in theaters which held hundreds of students.

My heart is broken! I feel devestation for the families. I wouldn't be so naive about big energy companies and their ethics. Since Bush came into office, many industrial corporations have been given a wave and have been de-regulated to the point of obsurdity.

Here in Canada the summer school break usually starts the last week of June, and the students return to classes the Tuesday after Labour Day in September, so approx. 10 weeks off.

The schools in our district usually have a Professional Development Day the last Friday in June to finish up paperwork, etc., so no students, just paperwork. The secondary schools have more than week of exams, so again no students, only the ones taking exams in the gym. It is the teachers option as to whether or not they enter the classroom prior to the Tuesday after Labour Day.

As for 'continuing education'...again, to my knowledge it is the teachers option, they may choose to do some upgrading which I would think would make their jobs easier in the long run.

In my workplace we are not paid to attend staff meetings, so if we do not attend that can not be shown on our yearly appraisals. We can do online learning where our employee number is recorded, but I found out recently if I take an hour to do a course, that hour is deducted from the hours in the workplace...not in addition to those hours....interesting eh?

take care, Linda

Interesting... Do you teach at the university level? college level? Do you have tenure?

My son is currently working on his Masters Degree in Computer Science, is a Research Assistant and Teaching Assistant. He makes approx. $20 per hour as a TA, and receives a monthly salary for his research work.

My girlfriends DH has a B.Sc. If he had his PhD and was doing the work he currently does, she said he would make approx. $50,000 more a year if he had his PhD. Is this sort of thing not true in the U.S.

take care, Linda

What's nasty about temporaries?

Well, it does sort of depend on the weather you get. In Winter, in the northern part of the country, kids having to trek outside to a trailer for one period a day is just plain nasty. Kids don't have time to run to their lockers, grab a winter coat, get to that one class and afterwards repeat the process in reverse. Therefore, they are outside in snow, sleet or rain in their shirts freezing on their way in and out of classrooms without adequate heat, bathrooms or other facilities. My daughters are taking their foreign languages in such trailers this year, and they end up spending that period damp and cold way too much of the time. Not exactly conducive to learning French and German, you know?

I'm sure that in L.A. such things are not an issue, but L.A. is not the rest of the country.

Caryn

The United States are each different. There is not nationwide position on any of this. Within each state there are school districts, particularly in the southern states. New York has the NYS Board of Education. Texas does not have a statewide position so each Independant School District determines everything about the schools.

Where I live, the schools are closed from late May till mid-August. There are several weeks for intersession and for this recent holiday break the schools were closed from the friday before the week of Christmas, and resumed last Monday. It's all so boring, I know.

In New York you cannot GET tenure unless you have your Masters and you are given five years to get it after you are hired with you Bachelor's degree. It's not easy to get tenure in NYS, particularly in lower NYS.

Don't anybody freak out, but I"m gonna agree with Elizabeth here.

Most businesses will reimburse you for taking a class which relates to your job. And I'm sorry, but a paid vacation day is so NOT the same as taking a class during your UNpaid vacation just to stay competitive in your job.

Teachers get screwed coming and going, poor wages, mediocre benefits, the expectation that they stay current in their field with little or no support from their employers.

My parents got their Masters when I was small, and I know that it was on their dime, not the schools they taught for. They were compensated, eventually, but getting a higher salary as teachers with Masters, but it took years for that to "pay" for getting the degrees in the first place.

It's not the same with many businesses in the U.S. They will reimburse the employee for a passing grade in any class as soon related to the job as soon as the expense and grade are submitted.

Caryn

If I remember correctly you need your Masters to get permanent certification, not tenure.

I think tenure is given for time served and certification is given for advanced education.

Lucille

In my experience, it is not usually the case that a PhD generates a $50k differential for the same work. There are a number of positions you can't get at all without a PhD, but I doubt there's that big a differential in most jobs.

Best wishes, Ericka

I haven't read RCTN for several days, so I'm jumping in a little late. Also, I'm responding to several posts, but I haven't figured how to quote more than one post, so I'm paraphrasing the rest - I'm *sure* someone will let me know if I get it wrong :-). And finally, this is going to be really long.

I have a BS in Mining Engineering, and I've worked for several years for a large company based in Pittsburgh. Like many mining engineers straight out of college, I was hired as an underground foreman in order to learn the business. After a few years, I decided that production management wasn't challenging enough, so I moved into mine safety, and in 2005 I came full circle back to engineering. I'm now based at a mine in north-central WV that employs about 500 people, close to where the Sago mine disaster ocurred. I rarely go underground anymore, & I kind of miss it.

Let me state unequivocably that I *love* my job, and I chose to move here (away from family) because of it. It's pretty dirty sometimes, but it's the coolest thing in the world to stand in a newly-mined place & know that you're the first living thing that's been there for

250 million years. And the people are the best: the cameraderie that exists among coal miners is very real. At the mine where I was a foreman for so long, I often joked that I had 400 brothers: some were older protective brothers, and some were younger annoying brothers, but we were family nonetheless. There's an even stronger bond between the few women in the industry.

On 1/4 Gillian remarked that $50,000 was a low-middle class income. It may be in her neck of the woods, but that's a pretty decent living hereabouts. And that's the low end of the spectrum - depending on who you work for & what your job is, you can easily make $70,000+. And that's *without* a college degree or specialized skills. For comparison purposes, a colleague checked an online cost of living calculator a few years ago & found he'd have to make $103,000 in DC to equate to his $72,000 here.

On 1/4 Maureen stated "Shut down the mines for God's sake," and Stitcher wrote "Close the mines down says I...What is the coal used for anyway." Um, do you know where your electricity comes from? No, not the wall. Before you advocate getting rid of something, you'd better educate yourself about what it's used for. As someone else pointed out, about 50% of the US's energy comes from coal. And I'm willing to bet that Canada also depends heavily on coal. No mining is not an answer, unless of course those of you who don't know how coal's used are willing to give up all your electric toys.

On 1/5, Jangchub mentioned OHSA standards, and on 1/4, she mentioned "hundreds of safety infractions" against Sago. First of all, the mining industry does not fall under OSHA's jurisdiction. It is such a specialized industry that around 1970 the federal government created the Mine Safety & Health Agency (MSHA) specifically to target mining. The enforcement activity under MSHA is *much* stricter than OSHA, and accounts in part for the high number of violations that you typically see associated with coal mining.

Let me explain: those of you who have dealt with OSHA know that, typically, most businesses can expect one inspection every 2 or 3 years. MSHA inspectors, however, show up almost *every day*, often 2 or 3 inspectors at a time. They can (and do) appear at any time of day or night, weekday or weekend, and they can look at anything they want. Obviously, the more people you have looking, the more you're going to find. Here's a good analogy: let's say that you're a good housekeeper, and after cleaning house, you have 3 people show up, & spend a few hours looking anywhere they want. What's the likelihood that they'll still find some dust you missed *somewhere* - pretty good. What if they show up 5 days a week? On top of that, the dynamic nature of mining means that even the very best mines have violation histories. We don't just stay in one place, we are constantly finishing one area, and moving to another. So now it's like those cleanliness inspectors are showing up at your house while you're in the midst of adding one room on & tearing down another. Sawdust on the carpet? You're busted, and just because you just finished sawing & haven't even had time to vacuum is no excuse.

I'm not saying that there weren't some serious deficiencies at Sago - no one knows at this point. All I'm trying to emphasize is that violation history isn't a good indicator of how dangerous a mine is. There's a world of difference between writing a violation & making the mine a safer place. Overall, I feel much safer underground than I do driving. And, by the way, it's fairly well known in the industry that an inspector who writes lots of violations gets more pats on the back from the boss than one who doesn't. Not that all of them are personally motivated, but it happens.

Jangchub made 2 comments implying that mining safety regs under the Bush administration are more lax. On 1/4 she posted that "with all the restrictions loosed by our illustrious current administation, the protection for safe work place has just about disappeared for these miners" and on 1/6 "...many industrial companies have been given a wave & have been de-regulated..." I think you must be confusing safety with environmental regs. Although many industries lump safety & environmental together, they are two very different things. MSHA has, in fact, tightened many of the existing regs & introduced new ones in the past few years.

And Miryam, thank you for voicing the suggestion that those who think coal's so awful ought to give up their electricity. Most people have

*absolutely* no clue where the raw materials in the products they use every day come from. Bottom line is, you either mine it or you grow it. Period. Next time you pick up a bottle of shampoo, a bag of cat litter, a plastic container, a box of crayons, anything really - ask yourself "What's really in this & where does it come from?" I was appalled a couple of years ago when the CEO of Tiffany's got involved with some anti-gold mining activists. Helllloooo?

A few other comments, then I'll get off my soapbox. The US government maintains a list of minerals that are considered strategically critical to maintain our way of life. Many folks have never heard of most of them, but we'd be in a world of hurt without them. The worst part is that a high percentage of them are imported, and not necessarily from friendly or reliable countries. We could find ourselves in the same bind with, say, vanadium, that we're in with oil.

Finally, there is a serious misconception even today about the nature of coal mining. A lot of people still think we use picks & shovels in

3' high coal seams. The truth is, it's a highly mechanized industry utilizing state-of-the-art equipment. We have comuter terminals underground & high speed internet access. Although there are still a few of what we call "punch mines" like Sago around (punch a hole in the ground & mine a little coal), the most productive mines range from 7' of height up to 15 or 20'. They're not bad at all, just so different that it's impossible to really tell someone what it's like. I tend to think of it as a natural environment, like working out in the woods.

*Really* finally, I want to add that my company sent 8 mine rescue teams to Sago. The team from my mine was the first one in and happened to have the sad job of bringing the bodies out. All of our guys worked as hard as they possibly could to try to stave off disaster, and although I fervently wish the outcome had been different, I'm very proud of all of them.

OK, I think I've run out of thoughts for now.

Jacqueline in Carmichaels, PA, soon to be in Fairmont WV WIPs: Minerva by The Goode Huswife & Max's Moon by Cross My Heart.

For Calif., you have to have that fifth year of education to get your teaching credential.

While it is possible to work as a substitute by passing the CBEST test (California something something Substitute Teachers) or to get an "emergency credential" solely for use at a school that's having trouble getting full-fledged teachers (read: poor financially and poor educationally, so teachers bail as soon as they can find a job at a better district), you're supposed to be working on getting credentialed while you're working without one.

Tenure means you already have your credential and have worked the requisite number of years. Before you get tenure, you can be fired easily; after getting tenure, it's almost impossible to fire a teacher.

In higher education, the value of a Ph.D. depends upon the field of specialty. A university will pay more for someone who has just completed a Ph.D. in engineering than in English simply because they have to be competitive with the non-academic world for those specialists.

If I continue to work in the Public Schools in WV until after 2009, I will make $50,000. That's with 35 years experience and a Masters degree with 60 credits beyond. This is based upon the most recent pay raise we received this year (after several with none). Our insurance just went up 7% with a possible 20 - 22% increase next July. That just about eats up any pay raise.