How many bad references can there be in one headline? “Fired foreman sues,” “notorious coal CEO,” “pressure to donate to Republicans”? There are probably a few more encoded in that sentence. One is that the “fired foreman” is a woman named Jean Cochenour. Oh yes.
It’s a lawsuit and I got the news from DailyKos: Fired foreman sues notorious coal CEO over pressure to donate to Republicans. It begins:
Murray Energy CEO Bob Murray is notorious for using his workers as political props and pressuring them to donate to political candidates he supports, and now he’s being sued for the latter. In 2012, Murray drew a lot of bad publicity for the former, when he forced coal miners to be unpaid props for a Mitt Romney campaign speech. In the wake of that story, his habit of instructing salaried employees to write checks to candidates he supports also got some attention. That habit is the focus of a lawsuit from a former preparation plant foreman who feels her firing was related to the fact that she didn’t make the contributions Murray solicited.