By Elizabeth Catte
A recent class action lawsuit filed in West Virginia against a retraining program that promised unemployed coal miners a foothold in the tech industry offers a cautionary tale to those banking on the rise of a Silicon Holler. At least 60 plaintiffs in the suit allege that coding bootcamp operators Mined Minds, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit organization, provided inadequate training and failed to place trainees in paid apprenticeship programs, which many believed would be a cornerstone of the experience.
The complaint, filed in Raleigh County, West Virginia, in December, argues that Mined Minds accepted substantial government funding and grants in West Virginia and Pennsylvania to recruit individuals in high-unemployment areas of Appalachia but did little to deliver hands-on tech experience and mentorship. The plaintiffs’ attorney, Stephen New, told the Register-Herald that he found no evidence that any graduate of the Mined Minds program had ever found a job in the tech industry, apart from two individuals who had been recycled back into the program as trainers.
In communications with the press, Mined Minds placed the blame for its unconvincing results on students. Josh McNett, a graduate of the program who subsequently became a trainer, told KDKA-Pittsburgh that, “the problem is, miners don’t want to come to class because they think the coal mines are coming back. They don’t want retraining.” According to Mined Mines co-founder Amanda Laucher, many enrollees simply had unreasonable expectations for the program, which did not charge students for training. “The vast majority of Americans pay for their education. We are shocked and saddened that [the plaintiffs] would believe they deserve compensation in addition to retraining,” she said.
But plaintiffs say their expectations were grounded and in-line with the promises made by Mined Minds during recruitment. Max Pokropowicz, who completed Mined Mines training in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, said he never expected a high-paying job as the result of his retraining, just “an entry-level job to get me in the field.” Two West Virginia plaintiffs claim Mined Minds promised them paid apprenticeships after completing an initial phase of training, which factored into their decisions to reduce their workload (and wages) at their retail jobs in order to attend the program full-time. Other plaintiffs were unable to complete their training after the Pennsylvania Department of Education ordered Mined Minds to cease and desist operations when it refused to seek an education license from the state.
Should a judge allow the lawsuit to proceed, it could generate important insight into the phenomenon of coding bootcamps, which are too often touted as the economic salvation for poor individuals in areas hard-hit by the decline of blue-collar industries.
Should a judge allow the lawsuit to proceed, it could generate important insight into the phenomenon of coding bootcamps, which are too often touted as the economic salvation for poor individuals in areas hard-hit by the decline of blue-collar industries. In Appalachia, proponents of these mass retraining schemes often speak of the acquisition of tech skills not just as a path to economic uplift but a symbolic transformation as well, in which one signals a desire and willingness to face the 21st century and leave the outdated industries and values of the past behind. Coding bootcamps and similar retraining programs enjoy big boosters, from the Appalachian Regional Commission, which awarded Mined Minds with a $1.7 million grant, to local departments of labor and industry. While some trainees do acquire skills that kickstart a career transformation, the only people guaranteed employment are the individuals who run the often-unregulated bootcamp programs.
Coding bootcamps are part of the lore of the “skills gap” — a theory that suggests workers left behind by globalization and automation should use initiative and re-align their skills to in-demand industries, often in tech services, in order to flourish in the new labor market in which the need for coders is exponentially greater than the need for miners. But according to tech and education writer Audrey Watters, “it’s important to remember that the job market isn’t national; it’s local.” While the potential for remote or tele-work is greater in tech services, coding bootcamp programs in Appalachia aim to train individuals for a regional sector that, to the extent that it does exist, is far from booming.
Without guaranteed jobs, retraining programs remain flawed in their design and there’s little convincing evidence that planners and funders have learned productive lessons from past efforts. In Appalachia, economic development and diversification moves slowly and relocation is difficult. While funders are eager to subsidize training, there’s scant enthusiasm for subsidizing workers to the tune of wages lost to retraining, relocation costs, independent career counselors, or wage differentials, factors that some economists believe would make retraining programs more successful.
Unfortunately, the politically-charged narrative of Appalachia and particularly the tableau of the stubborn, Trump-supporting coal miner means that when such programs do fail, it’s easy to replace scrutiny on said programs with blame on the population they claim to be helping. In November, Valerie Volcovi for Reuters offered a dispatch from West Virginia and Pennsylvania that argued miners, having bought Trump’s promise of a coal comeback, remained uninterested in well-funded training schemes. “Despite a broad consensus about coal’s bleak future, a years-long effort to diversify the economy of this hard-region away from mining is stumbling, with Obama-era jobs retraining classes undersubscribed,” she wrote.
Unfortunately, the politically-charged narrative of Appalachia and particularly the tableau of the stubborn, Trump-supporting coal miner means that when such programs do fail, it’s easy to replace scrutiny on said programs with blame on the population they claim to be helping.
What we now know by virtue of the lawsuit is that much of the funding from the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and the Appalachian Regional Commission cited in Volcovi’s article went to Mined Minds, a program without appropriate licensing, unendorsed by local education partners, and presumably with a trail of disappointed graduates not inclined to recommend the program to others.
Coding bootcamps, both within and outside of Appalachia, are part of what sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom calls the ecosystem of “Lower Ed.” The foundation of this ecosystem is the for-profit college, but McMillan Cottom has written, “When we offer more credentials in lieu of a stronger social contract, it is Lower Ed. When we ask for social insurance and get workforce training, it is Lower Ed.” This makes coding bootcamps, both reputable and disreputable ones, a symptom of a transformation in which workers assume more and more economic risk to sustain employment, be it a loan for a $60,000 associate’s degree from a for-profit college or quitting a part-time job to attend a retraining program full-time.
It’s tempting to suggest that a solution to the difficulties Mined Minds trainees experienced might be greater regulation of retraining programs. To the extent that these organizations receive government funding and accept donations from community partners, more regulation would not be a bad idea. But we can be bolder, too, and try to invest in people beyond their value to industries that might or might not flourish in the region. We can support their access to higher wages in, for example, retail and hospitality. We can fight to further detach health insurance from employment. We can work to reduce childcare costs that often prevent people from exploring other employment or education options. Investing in coding programs won’t save Appalachia, but investing in people might.
Elizabeth Catte is a writer and historian from East Tennessee and is the author of the forthcoming What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia (Belt, February 2018). She holds a PhD in public history and is the co-owner of Passel, a historical consulting and community development firm.
Banner photo by Jack Korn via U.S. National Archives.
I’m just skeptical that everyone can and should be a coder. Coding will be increasingly automated and off-shored. It’s like many of the failed promises of the “Education” (said in that wonder George Carlin (RIP) voice) religion promoted by white collar professionals and, yes. grifters.
Not everyone can and will “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”. That does not mean the “left behind” and the low paid service workers on which this economy and society still largely depend should have lives of misery, even if they are mythical Trump voters. Professional social mobility advocates assume at heart that those who do not take advantage of all these “programs” (designed and staffed by said educated elites) just deserve to be left behind, while their successful clients conveniently enough serve as examples for the program funding to continue or be increased.
These programs are one scan amoung many that poor people like me can choose from in order to have hope that things will get better. Whether it’s community college, or U. Phoenix, or these new “coder boot camps”.
These really are “mythical” Trump voters as well. I work in a dead end job, in service work, and while my peers can be jaded and supportive of snake oil salesmen like Trump, most are actually pretty politically neutral, and don’t endorse the full scale discrimination that Trump supporters do. It really bothers me that after 2016, working class men were blamed for the ascendency of Trump. The whole “unwashed masses” message, which does nothing to solve the problem, and this depiction is in itself self fulfilling, making working class people feel guilty because peers voted for a pretty nakidely racist regime. If only people at this level had, oh IDK, Union’s to help politically educate them, and have some basic sense of decency returned to them, given a helping hand by a national union that hasn’t written off huge sections of the working class as “un-unionizable”. Perhaps if workers at this level had even a modicum of hope that their lot can be improved by collective bargaining and political unity, then maybe they wouldn’t buy into a snake oil salesmen like Trump.
Just a thought…. Great article.
We get very little in this life for free, you primarily get what ever you fight for so if what you fight for is ignorance that is what you get. When a people fail to acknowledge basic facts they become in jeopardy. The German people once voted for Hitler with gusto, this cost most of them their lives, in the end children and the elderly were conscripted for battle because everyone else had been killed. Voting for Trump is not a small mistake, there are consequences for such ignorance and some acts can not be taken back. It was understandable that many thought Hitler to be a good choice and in some ways he was, but nature is not understanding, one mistake can get you or the people you love killed. I do not forgive the people who voted for Trump out of ignorance because we will ALL suffer the consequences of only some peoples ignorance, even the people who did not approve of Hitler were destroyed along with the ones who did. Do the survivors who did not support Hitler have a right to.criticize the people who did? In my opinion yes absolutely, they do..A person who votes for an abuser is an abuser and they should be shamed for their abominable desire to abuse others, everyone who voted for Trump knew who he was, he had a television show unlike Hitler, ignorance can not be claimed,Trumps show plainly portrayed him as cruel and anyone who voted for him did so out of a cruel intention, so if your answer is to treat t your inferiors cruelly when your superiors abuse you I have zero sympathy for you, If a person votes for their own nemesis they only have themselves to blame.
Another example of “outsourcing” and privatization failures that line the pockets of entrepreneurs who only care about bottom-line.
This is an incredible article. Thank you.
John Newman:
Excellent points, all. I have read that statistically speaking it is not really the “white working class” that elected Trump. More the Midwestern upper middle class. “If you want to find a Trump voter, look for the nearest gated community”.
What these Trump voters share is a firm belief in Jesus Rand. A toxic combination of heretical American Protestantism and that strange irreligious 19th century Social Darwinism. That, and a fetish for guns. Many of the most fervent Trumpalos at my workplace are avid Ammosexuals.
How does an article about the pros and cons of free education turn into a screed against Trump – a man who has been in office for one year 🙁 Take control of your own lives! It shouldn’t matter who is in office.
As a former student and temporary employee of this company, I found your article very interesting and quite accurate. I do not know if all bootcamps are like this one. I have heard of bootcamps that do not get paid unless you get a job, and take a portion of your earnings for the first 2 years, and only if you make greater than 50,000. If they aren’t receiving federal funds, like Mined Minds, then I think that is a very good business model. They are encouraged to see you succeed because without your success they don’t have success either.
Mined Minds claims everyone who graduates from their program gets a job. But those jobs are with Mined Minds. And some of those jobs have lasted only 3 days for many people. In WV, I saw 1 woman get fired within 2 weeks for lying on her time sheet. She worked 80 hours, but she thought she was supposed to put down all of the hours she worked, and put more.
The reason so many of us are angry is because not only are they going into poor and demoralized communities, talking people out of quitting their jobs(She literally asked me to get fired so I would qualify for a government subsidized program that repays her my salary), but when they do end up dismissing us, they act and make it sound like we were at fault. One person dismissed because they didn’t feel like he was dedicated enough to becoming a programmer. Another person being fired for missing days he was given permission to miss. Telling them he was given warnings, when the warning they are speaking of was me saying, “You should be careful man. Even though they gave you permission, they will still fire you.” They said that my warning was the warning they had given him. Then, when its time to get rid of some more people, they tally up the average hours a person has worked, those with the lowest hours(including requested vacation time) are dismissed from the company. Oh, and also running what we called, “Survivor Island” punishment system.
They claim its a TEAL system where we manage ourselves. And when we feel someone isn’t doing their part, we hold a group vote, and decide the outcome/punishment. Yet the only one who ever initiated these votes was Amanda Laucher, and she always had at least 1-2 family members on the votes. And she also decided what the punishments would be, and who would be voting on it. A “random sample” of 4 team members, give me a break. I was never included on a vote because she knew I was always the “give them a second chance” guy, because NO ONE ever got a second chance, a warning, anything. It was always straight to firing. And these were supposed to be our mentors. We didn’t understand the business. But instead of correcting us when mistakes were made, they used it is an excuse to get rid of us, usually through an email, followed by a text message saying, “Hope all is well. Please check your email before you go into the office today.” With blanketed statements like, “We know you will do great things”, “We expect they will do great things.” However, when they feel like they don’t think the vote will go their way, they just fire the person. Its a TEAL organization, til its inconvenient, and even then, as some people said, we always felt like we were walking on eggshells. Being accused of cushioning our hours and such.
And they are basically receiving millions of tax dollars to train employees and cherry pick the best out of them and throw the rest out. Like being paid millions of dollars to hold try outs. Then when someone gets thrown out and DOES manage to find a job with another company, they try to attribute that individuals success to their help. Not only is that diminishing to the individual, I find that highly offensive.
And like your comment to jobs being local, not national, this particular company teaches Ruby and its framework Sinatra. Not only are Sinatra jobs tough to find at a national level, Ruby jobs are IMPOSSIBLE to find in a local level with any other company than Mined Minds. There might be a tiny amount of Ruby on Rails jobs in WV, but she actually DISCOURAGES people to use Rails. She tries to tell us how awful Rails is. And pretty much any other language besides Ruby.
They have never taken accountability for anything they did. And we want to see their actions accounted for. They had, and have the funds to make this a good thing and make this work. But they chose not to. They have never found one person a job. The jobs they claim people have gotten is from no effort on their behalf. It is jobs people have found on their own and for them to take any kind of credit for it is sickening. Its a very nepotistic organization where the only people who succeed are family members or somehow related to the Lauchers.
I hate to think that all bootcamps are bad. It does seem like there could be some very good ones out there. But this one has definitely left a bad taste in my mouth. Someone heard her say, “That MFer! After everything I have done for him!” Yeah, she talked me out of taking a paid internship in the IT field that had a strong chance to lead to a permanent career to pursue temporary employment and be let go the week of Thanksgiving, with no explanation and no “TEAL” vote. Then have her brother and sister write up fake complaints afterwards to make up excuses as to why she fired me. Thanks alot.
And that leads to another thing. She lies on a regular basis. Its almost like she looks at you thinking, “You really think anyone is going to believe YOU over me?” That is kind of how I think she operates. She puts on this front in front of everybody, and everyone eats it up. But those who have participated in her class have gotten to know her and how she truly is. But she still operates under that, “You think anyone is going to believe YOU?” mentality. I could go on forever.
But yes, I hope not all bootcamps are bad. Those that succeed based upon their clients success seem like they would be a much better business model than the ones that are blindly thrown public tax dollars, then take numerous “travelling for business” vacations and disappear from the company except when its time to fire someone, a chance to make a public appearance, or when crap hits the fan, as it has recently. The one good thing I think that might have came out of this, she is going to be much more careful about firing the few people she has said graduated. Hopefully they won’t lose their jobs over some made up garbage.
Hopefully one or two bad apples won’t ruin the bunch, and hopefully those bad apples will be forced to shut down their publicly funded bad apple factories, and exposed for the bad apples they are.
This program would have likely predated Obama’s time in office, so why the heck does Trump have anything to do with it? The politics does not belong in a serious article like this.
I”m a native of West Virginia, and came through College about the time of the Promise Scholarship. I asked these questions then, what good are these scholarships to help get an education doing if the best and brightest must leave the state to find a job to use what they have learned? West Virginia is trying to make things better, the legislature is still too caught up in us vs them to really address the issues. Big mergers have sapped the Chemical and Coal industry, improved technology is also making the number of needed people go down in those. There is some tech growth in a few place, but once you are there, where’s the next thing. I had to leave the state to really better myself.
IMprovements in education need to accompany help to startup new tech jobs in areas nearby. Many families in Appalachia have been there multiple generations, and do not want to move away from family. The new economy with access to high speed internet in theory will provide some opportunities, but it is still a problem in the rural counties for sure.
A lot of people seem to think that the article is attacking Trump or Trump voters.
The author is just describing how the company is attempting to place all of the blame on supposedly delusional trump supporters rather than take responsibility for their broken promises.
The author isn’t advocating for that position and the author even cautions readers over shifting scrutiny from the company to the students that are being stereotyped and put into boxes that can be easily dismissed because it appeals to some peoples biases against people from the region.
There was ONE comment on Trump in the entire range of responses. Mea culpa. That first year has been a doozy, by the way. Toxic looting by the criminal gambling class (not that Obama was all that much better. And the Dems love to urge “education” on the left behind as a panacea)
The “skills gap” reason for unemployment is one favored by the same hypocrits who want to gut public education and funding for community trade schools. Quite simply, anyone can jump on upwork.com and see for themselves what a coder can earn on the global market. As soon as someone is a remote coder, they have to compete for gigs with people who live in socialist and communist countries with much lower living costs than even the most modest American.
The only way to resolve this is to apply a vat tax to digital labor done overseas. it would immediately stop the drain of jobs to vfx houses overseas and it would help bring job security back to our own citizens.