How not to find new employees for the mining industry: a tale of lazy scroungers

After seven hours on an Allegiant Air plane we finally arrived in Cedar Rapids. The 2.5-hour flight became seven as the plane meandered back and forth between the gate and the runway in Las Vegas trying to decide if a defective break light was serious or not; they decided the “fix” was filling in the appropriate paperwork. Then a mad storm over Cedar Rapids diverted us to Minnesota for more gas and time for the lightening to subside. Thus it was a late, late family reunion that turned to serious economic discussions as the kids peeled away to bed and the whiskey took effect.

The connection to mining is that I tried to induce the brother of my son-in-law to go into mining. The Cedar Rapids floods destroyed his rented apartment. He has nowhere to go but my daughter’s house. He bewailed the fact that his ex-wife is about to give birth to their second child, has refused him access to both, and has a court order demanding 65 percent of his income. He bewailed the fact that he can earn no more than $10 an hour working to clean up the flood-induced mess.

In a flood of drink-induced empathy, I recommended that he get a job in the mining industry. I gave him contacts. I painted a rosey picture of $20 and $30 an hour laborers in the Canadian oil sands and the coal mines of Wyoming.

Now in the clear light of morning I write this posting. He, the lazy bum, is still asleep on the couch in spite of the playing and fighting cacophony of six kids. My daughter tells me over morning coffee that he seldom works, but scrounges money as cash can. I have already warned those whom I suggested he contact to avoid him like the plague. He just is not the type any industry needs, net alone the mining industry.

Or am I wrong in this harsh judgement? Afterall we were talking until three in the morning. Admittedly for me it was but one o’clock body-time due to the Pacific to Central time change.

We read so much about shortages of people available to work in the mines. Most often I conclude such writing and speeches are the empty words of idle journalists and speech-makers. Often I opine that the conclusion of not enough people to go around in the mining industry is just so-called not-for-profit groups seeking government funding to keep them busy turning out more position papers.

But when I listen carefully to this young man, I wonder if maybe there are many other able-bodied lazy bums like him out there: able to work in the mines, but somehow able to squeeze income out of a roaring economy to a sufficient degree to avoid actually working. Thus not available to work in the mines. Not that any right-thinking mine should or would want him, in my humble opinion.

All of this simply reinforces the absolute nobility of those who do get up every morning to work anywhere; be it the mines or elsewhere.

He did tell me he is thinking of joining the army! Now I refrain from further comment, for you can probably guess my opinion. And it is not polite.  Any more so than my opinion of the city fathers who placed their city hall on an island in the Cedar Rapids river.