Coal miners lost pay when Mitt Romney visited their mine to promote coal jobs
http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2012/08/coal_miners_lost_pay_when_mitt.html
Coal miners lost pay when Mitt Romney visited their mine to promote coal jobs
Published: Tuesday, August 28, 2012, 5:40 AM Updated: Tuesday, August 28, 2012, 7:15 AM
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. Blomquist discussed their beefs on the air Monday with Murray Energy Chief Financial Officer Rob Moore.
Moore told Blomquist that managers "communicated to our workforce that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend
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Records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics show that
Murray Energy has contributed more than $900,000 to Republican candidates in the last two years.