A recent mining headline caught our eye this week:
Australia’s Mining Boom Creates Demand For Sex Workers
Apparently, all those young male miners, flush with cash, have more money to spend in the brothels. The article goes on to say that the sex workers are even making more money than the miners. One quote was $200,000 per year!
In the oil boomtown of Williston, North Dakota, strippers can make more money in one day than they could working an entire week in Las Vegas.
Rosemont Copper and Wildcat Silver like to tout that they’ll bring much needed jobs to the area and help our economy.
It’s not a big stretch to say that our current, local workforce is not trained to fill most of the mining jobs that Rosemont Copper and Wildcat Silver have to offer. The mining jobs are fairly specialized. Consequently, trained workers will have to be imported from somewhere. With the nature of the mining industry as being boom or bust, mine workers typically travel from mine to mine following the work. An extreme picture of a job boom situation is happening around Williston, North Dakota.
Along with the increase in their workforce came increases in violent crime, drug use, prostitution, domestic violence. Last year, the number of criminal incidents reported to the Williston Police Department nearly tripled.
We need to take a hard look at the complete package that the mining companies are offering to our communities. What’s best for our community in the long run? And what will be left of it after the copper and silver are gone?
Sources:
Fracking Communities—Now Add Crime to the Laundry List of Problems Drilling Brings to Your Town: http://ecowatch.org/2012/fracking-crime/
Australia’s Mining Boom Creates Demand For Sex Workers: http://www.knau.org/post/australias-mining-boom-creates-demand-sex-workers
Crime turns oil boomtown into Wild West: http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/26/pf/America_boomtown_crime/index.htm?iid=SF_PF_River
