If it's a day than ends with Y, that means it's time for another lesson in bad optics from Team Romney.
Remember the Ohio coal miners employed by Murray Energy who lost a day's pay because Mitt Romney came to town?
WASHINGTON, D.C. — When GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney visited an Ohio coal mine this month to promote jobs in the coal industry, workers who appeared with him at the rally lost pay because their mine was shut down.
The Pepper Pike company that owns the Century Mine told workers that attending the Aug. 14 Romney event would be both mandatory and unpaid, a top company official said Monday morning in a West Virginia radio interview.
A group of employees who feared they’d be fired if they didn’t attend the campaign rally in Beallsville, Ohio, complained about it to WWVA radio station talk show host David Blomquist.
The Romney campaign is now airing ads in Ohio featuring the miners who lost their pay.
Mitt Romney’s campaign is airing two ads in eastern Ohio that include footage of the coal miners who lost pay because he campaigned at their mine.
Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, went up with the two ads this morning – both of them hitting President Barack Obama on coal. The two ads titled "War on Coal" and "Way of Life" include shots of Romney on a stage with soot-covered coal miners.
The footage is from Romney’s Aug. 14 campaign stop at the Century Mine in Beallsville, Ohio, owned by a subsidiary of Murray Energy Corp. It was later learned that the miners on stage were ordered out of the mine because of Romney’s campaign stop and were not paid for the portion of their shift that was canceled by the event.
The Service Employees International Union, District 1199 has asked Ohio and federal labor officials to investigate to determine whether the miners losing a day's pay was legal.
Murray Energy originally claimed the mine was closed for safety, but the Secret Service denied requesting the mine's closer. The Romney campaign and Murray energy later blamed each other for the incident.