I had to do a double-take when I first read the news because we've seen this story play out several times over the last couple years.
Longtime readers should be familiar with the exploits of Murray Energy CEO Bob Murray, the man who forced coal miners to appear in a campaign ad for Mitt Romney and then fired them after Romney lost the election.
Bob Murray has laid off hundreds of workers again for the same bullshit reason he used in 2012.
Murray Energy Corp. will lay off the 214 workers at three mines in Marion and Marshall counties.
Murray said in a late Tuesday statement that the layoffs are “due to the ongoing destruction of the United States coal industry by President Barack Obama, and his supporters, by the increased utilization of natural gas to generate electricity, and by the extremely excessive coal severance tax in the state of West Virginia.”
In 2012 Bob Murray forced a group of coal miners in Ohio to attend a campaign rally for Mitt Romney that later served as a backdrop for a campaign ad. The miners lost a day's worth of pay for attending the rally which Murray Energy claimed was voluntary except for that part where you could be ostracized or fired if you didn't attend it.
After President Obama defeated Mitt Romney, Bob Murray laid off over 150 employees because, in his own words, the "takers outvoted the producers." Not long after he read a job-killing prayer to his employees, however, he rehired most of them because there was no real reason to punish them in the first place.
Last year a former plant foreman filed a lawsuit against Murray alleging that he personally calls employees into his office and instructs them on which political candidates to make donations to. According to the foreman who was fired for not making the required donations, cash donations were to be delivered to Murray himself in envelopes.
All four the candidates (Scott Brown, Ed Gillespie, Terri Lynn Land, Mike McFadden) Murray distributed these required donations to lost the election. The one employee who refused to make donations for failed candidates, former foreman Jean F. Cochenour, was fired.
Suffice to say Bob Murray's employees are punching bags that he takes his anger out on. The 214 workers he laid off this week may be rehired in the near future after Murray realizes there was never any real reason to dismiss them.
It's clear that Bob Murray is a much greater threat to coal miners than President Obama is.