Set Dressing: Coal Miners Lose Pay, Dirtiest Ones Used As Props At Mandatory Romney Rally

Take a look at these two pictures. One is from the Plain Dealer article on this story, one is a screencap from Raw Story’s followup.

As the miners and their families arrived, they looked like this (some may have been office workers and executives):

Coal miners, other workers and families arrive for Romney rally

Very few miners in working clothes – most are in clean street clothes

A phalanx of coal miners with sooty faces and dirty work clothes stands with Mitt.

Only hard-working, dirty, sooty-faced miners shown standing with Mitt

Amercian coal miners stands with Mitt! Look at how hard they work, in their dirty work clothes and sooty faces! They are obviously real working Amercians!

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.

via Coal miners lost pay when Mitt Romney visited their mine to promote coal jobs