Mine workers seek help from Gregoire

Mine workers seek help from Gregoire

Mike Edwards was a year from retirement when the coal mine he worked at for 25 years was shut down suddenly last month, putting him and hundreds of his colleagues out of work.

“I felt the rug pulled out from underneath us,” said Edwards, who was making $70,000 as a bulldozer and heavy-truck operator at the 35-year-old mine run by TransAlta Corp.

Edwards was one of about 200 people who gathered Monday at Centralia College’s Corbet Theater, where Gov. Chris Gregoire came to hear them talk about their concerns while offering hope they will be able to find work without having to relocate.

“I find myself in very unfamiliar territory, and that is unemployed,” Ray Due, 57, told Gregoire.

Due, who worked at the mine 33 years, said officials need to make sure high-wage jobs are brought to the area.

Gregoire said that’s what she wants to do.

“My goal is to get good family wage jobs into this community,” she said.

The 600 unemployed mine workers will continue to receive pay and benefits through the end of January.

Edwards said he is looking for local work, but is not confident he can find something in Lewis County that will match his salary.

Gregoire told the workers that she does not want see to see them forced out of state to find work.

“It’s a challenge,” she said. “My priority is to do our dead-level best to get people back to the jobs they want in the locale they want.”

TransAlta is one of Canada’s biggest private power producers with coal, natural gas and hydroelectric plants in Canada, the United States, Mexico and Australia.

The company said the Centralia mine was too expensive to maintain.

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