Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 11, 1990 TAG: 9004110017
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: SCOT HOFFMAN CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Medium
People are beginning to wonder, she said, if it's worth it to support an industry that "tears up the land, keeps out other industry, pays little in taxes and is hiring fewer and fewer people."
Giardina, author of "Storming Heaven" and "King Harry," both books about coal mining communities, made her remarks to an audience of about 100 at New River Community College as part of Appalachian Awareness Week.
Her talk covered the history of coal mining in the region and described the industry as a mixed blessing that has exploited the land and its people, yet has helped keep many communities from destitution.
"This mixture of brutality and paternalism still exists in coal companies today," she said.
Giardina, who grew up in a coal town, defended the actions of the Pittston miners during the strike and denounced the Pittston Group for trying to break the union.
"Unions are the one institution that has stood between coal miners and poor wages, between miners and poor working conditions, between miners and death," she said. "Without these [strike] actions, Pittston would have succeeded in getting rid of the union."
She was arrested twice during the strike.
Writing her books, Giardina said, she's begun to see a trend in the industry. Specifically, the slow, deliberate dissolving of coal mining communities.
"The industry wants the coal fields emptied of residents," she said.
Residents of these communities, she said, are beginning to complain about such things as runoff from coal deposits into drinking water and strip mining in their back yards.
"It's a lot easier to deal with when there aren't any people living there anyway."
Giardina has a prediction for mining towns if the next few decades continue as the past few have.
"Our communities will be smaller; our families and friends will move away," she said.
During the 1950s after World War II, when coal production in America dropped off dramatically, half of Giardina's community left.
"I see a future that is bleak," she said. "Fifty years from now, few people will live there, [in coal communities] or even be able to. . . . Mines, mostly automated, would be run by a few people, perhaps in barracks, as they already do in South Africa."
Much of Giardina's talk served to dispell common misconceptions about mining and miners.
"You may have read in the newspapers that the coal industry is hurting," she said. "That's not true. Coal miners are hurting; the industry's doing better than it's ever done."
by CNB