One Of Four Trapped Welsh Miners Found Dead

[ZenGum]

Mine workers here do get good money, specialists (like a mining engineer) get six figure salaries. The risks are by historical standards low. The conditions are the drag: fly-in fly-out, maybe 12 straight days of 12 hour shifts followed by a block of days off, in some stinking hot middle of nowhere mining camp. The work is still difficult, unpleasant and never 100% safe. Oh and do you remember that giant crocodile and drain full of snakes...?

[SamIam]

My friend Jim was a miner for almost 20 years. He grew up in a Colorado coal mining town and he said kids who didn't go to college just went into the mines. It was taken for granted that this was what a young man in that society would do. He told me that back in the day, the mines were unionized and miners made very good money.

He also mentioned that men were killed in the mines all the time - not always by cave-ins, but by a host of accidents that occurred because the safety precautions were often ignored by the supervisors.

Apparently, now miners still make decent money, but the unions are being broken so pay suffers and safety suffers even more. My friend finally quit because of an injury that prevented him from going back down into the shafts.