Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Nekrosis666 t1_j2aqsp3 wrote

Reply to comment by Confident_End_3848 in [Serious] What can be done to stop the Clairton mill? by NickySmithFromPGH

Yeah, my thoughts when people talk about "Just shut it all down!!!" is "Okay, and what do you do with the people who are now unemployed?". The obvious solution, at least imo, would be to have some kind of program in place to transition current workers at places like Clairton to a different job where they can receive paid training. Something they won't need a degree for, and something not too crazily different from their current work. You'd want to make the change as smooth and painless as possible for everyone so that the people who will inevitably whine and moan about it don't rally all the unemployed workers and their families behind them.

But of course that would require people in charge actually caring about workers at all.

1

SamPost t1_j2axbco wrote

Harmful industries shouldn't be continued as some kind of jobs program.

5

Nekrosis666 t1_j2ayc3v wrote

I didn't say anywhere in that that it should be the same industry. I meant that they should be transitioned away from this industry to different jobs that they could reasonably do. If we have to kill off a place where people work, we should at least try to care about the people who will inevitably get left behind now that the job they've been doing for years, possibly decades, is defunct. Finding opportunities for them in jobs that won't harm the environment or other people that they'd be well-qualified for is the only thing I can think of doing that wouldn't potentially ruin their lives.

1

NunzAndRoses t1_j2dh935 wrote

The people who just want to pull the plug on those mills clearly don’t know the history of the area. We already tried that once and it’s turned all of those areas in to what we call “economically depressed regions” (shitholes)

5