"All the other jobs are just minimum wage," says Tonya Woodring (left), wife of a miner, with fellow waitress Kaity Hawk at Lavern's in Waynesburg, Pa.
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IN THE BLACK
The price of coal is soaring. Demand is up. No one could be happier than Greene County's miners, who dig the steady work and fat paychecks.
So do investors. Coal stocks, as a group, have quadrupled in value in the last three years, a faster rise than energy stocks overall and even oil stocks, according to Bloomberg News indexes.
"Worldwide demand for coal continues to increase, driven primarily by burgeoning coal consumption in Asia," Foundation Coal Holdings Inc., which operates two mines in Greene County, wrote in its fourth-quarter report.
Foundation estimates that global coal consumption will grow 70 percent by 2030, with 75 percent of the demand coming from Asia.
The market is already tight. Flooding in Australia sidelined mines that would ordinarily supply Asia. There have been problems with production and transportation in South Africa, Indonesia, Colombia and Russia - coal sources for Europe and Asia.
And the declining value of the dollar against the euro makes U.S. coal a better deal for European coal buyers. "The euro buys a lot more coal," said Gene Pisasale, a senior energy and natural resources analyst at PNC Capital Advisers in Baltimore.
All that, in turn, means tighter supplies and rising prices at home for "the foreseeable future," Foundation's report said.
All the money flowing into coal has encouraged more mining investment in Greene County.
Foundation has filed permits to open two more mines in the next five years, adding more tonnage to the 15 million to 16 million tons its mines already produce in Greene County. Consol plans to expand its mines over, or rather under, the border into West Virginia.
These days - due to the increase in mining and gas drilling - skilled workers are in short supply.
John Howard, who owns the local Pontiac and GMC dealership, can't find a good service manager. "The coal mines are starting to take a lot of good people out of the job market," he complained. "The coal mines pay more than I can."
That's what makes the mines a good bet for the Wendell family and others like it. Rich Wendell, 55, started in the mines in 1974. His son, Chad, 28, works side by side with him at Foundation's Cumberland mine. Wendell's son-in-law is interviewing for a job there as well.
The mines are, for the first time in decades, on a hiring spree, pushed by the demand for coal and the pending retirement of a generation of miners like Rich Wendell, who wants to stop work next year.
Wendell started in the mines in the 1970s during another boom, when mines nationwide employed more than 220,000.
Then steel plants began to close, lessening the need for coal. Mines shut down, workers were laid off, and ever-improving technology cut labor demands. Any jobs that became available through attrition could easily be filled by experienced miners who had been laid off. Mine employment nationwide hit a low of 85,000 in 2003.
Now the trend is reversed. Employment climbed to nearly 99,900 in 2006, according to the latest data from the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.
"We've come full circle," Wendell said. "When I started, there were guys in their 50s and the young guys. There were no guys in their 30s and 40s.
"Now here I am, one of the old men in their 50s. We bypassed another two decades when they didn't hire anybody," he said. "The baby boomers are retiring, and their kids are coming in."
Wendell's union, the United Mine Workers of America, is working to remain relevant in this boom time despite the growing proportion of nonunion mines, including Consol's Bailey mine.
In Harrisburg, the union is lobbying for an improved mine-safety bill.
In Prosperity, Greene County, the union is building a 100,000-square-foot training mine with a $4.3 million grant from the state, Gov. Rendell announced in June.
