Job-killing coal-mining robots

There's a lot of nostalgia about the coal industry in Illinois but the coal companies don't hesitate to embrace change. One change they enjoy is that reopened mines are no longer union, despite all the blood spilled to organize the industry.

But more than that, the industry is quick to reduce the size of their workforce by mechanizing operations. The amount of coal mined in the United States steadily increased over the past twenty years, even while the number of coal mining jobs dropped dramatically.

This story reveals the next step.

Imagine that? Illinois could keep spending millions of dollars subsidizing the coal industry and there's no guarantee that one day most mining jobs won't be inside Peabody headquarters in St. Louis. Or, Murray Co could do it from Ohio. There are already less than 4,000 people employed in Illinois coal mining and even new mines won't hire many workers.

The change is being driven by the same forces behind mountaintop removal, longwall mining, "enhanced oil recover" and the Canada tar sands. Resources are running out so the coal and oil industries are scraping the bottom of the barrel in old mines and hard to reach places.

Illinois' own Caterpillar is one of the companies developing driverless trucks, "which would avoid having human drivers involved in moving truckloads of dirt and explosives from one part of the mine to another." Was anyone wondering why Caterpillar invested in FutureGen? The industry may not hire many new miners but they'll need new Caterpillar machines.

There are politicians like John Shimkus and Brandon Phelps who still foolishly believe that coal can provide enough jobs to revive the regional economy. It's time to stop living in the past. They're only keeping Southern Illinois poor.