In the e-mails, miners said that they were forced to attend the campaign rally, without pay, and had to donate to the Romney campaign. Bloomquist said that he had received several e-mails and calls to his show about the intimidation being used against them.
Blomquist interviewed Rob Moore the Chief Financial Officer for Murray Energy Corporation on his talk show to address the complaints by the miners.
David Blomquist told Moore that miners feared for their jobs if they did not attend the Romney event, and then read one of the e-mails from the miners:
“Yes, we were in fact told that the Romney event was mandatory and would be without pay, that the hours spent there would need to be made up my non-salaried employees outside of regular working hours, with the only other option being to take a pay cut for the equivalent time,” the employees told Blomquist. “Yes, letters have gone around with lists of names of employees who have not attended or donated to political events.”CFO Rob Moore told Blomquist that the charges were untrue, and the following conversation between Moore and Blomquist took place:
“I realize that many people in this area and elsewhere would love to have my job or my benefits,” one worker explained. “And our bosses do not hesitate in reminding us of this. However, I cannot agree with these callers and my supervisors, who are saying that just because you have a good job, that you should have to work any day for free on almost no notice without your consent.”
“We do not appreciate being intimidated into exchanging our time for nothing. I heard one of your callers saying that Murray employees are well aware of what they are getting into upon hire, or that they are informed that a percentage of their income will go to political donations. I cannot speak for that caller, but this is news for me. We merely find out how things work by experience.”
Moore: “There were no workers that were forced to attend the event. We had managers that communicated to our work force that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend the event. We had a preregistration list. And employees were asked to put their names on a preregistration list because they could not get into the event unless they were preregistered and had a name tag to enter the premises.”Robert Murray, the CEO of Murray Energy Corporation received national attention in 2009 after his Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah collapsed, leaving six miners trapped inside. Government mine inspectors had issued 325 citations against the Utah mine since January 2004, according to federal Mine Safety and Health Administration online records.
Blomquist: “What about not getting paid for an eight-hour day? If the mine was shut down for the visit, I understand, but wouldn’t it be fair, let’s use the word ‘fair’, to still pay these individuals for that day? I mean, it wasn’t their fault they weren’t working.”
Moore: “Our management people wanted to attend the event and we could not have people underground during Romney’s visit”.
Blomquist: “But why not still pay then their wage for that day?”
Moore: “By federal election law, we could not pay people to attend the event. And we did not want anyone to come back and see where anyone had been paid for that day.”
Blomquist: “I’m not saying pay them to attend the event, I’m saying, ‘Hey look, we have to close down the mine, if you want to attend this event, that’s fine, but you’re still going to get a day’s pay for the work that you would have done. Why not do that?”
Moore: “As a private employer, it was our decision and we made the decision not to pay the people”.
“We’re talking about an event that was in the best interest of anyone that’s related to the coal industry. I do not believe that missing an eight-hour day, when you put it into perspective, when you think about how critical this next election is, and how critical it is that we get someone in this office that supports coal, to give up eight hours for a career, I just don’t believe that there is anything negative about that.”
Murray is a large campaign donor for Republicans and runs a Super PAC called the Murray Energy Corporation Political Action Committee. The Super PAC has given $317,575.00 to various Republican campaigns, including Mitt Romney in 2012.
This past June, Mitt Romney spoke to the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), and told them to threaten their employees and “make it very clear” that they must support his campaign or they could lose their jobs.
You can listen to the entire radio interview on the Huffington Post by clicking here.
Don't miss any of the National Elections Examiner articles: Click Subscribe and enter your email address or choose the RSS feed. Either way you’ll be alerted to the latest column when it's published. And don't forget to click Email to send this article to a friend. You can also follow on Facebook and Twitter.
