They were being paid more than the coal was worth. I wouldn't say it was more than the job was worth, as such, because the job was still horrible and dangerous. Digging anything out of the ground in those conditions would command a high wage, it just depends on whether you can do anything with whatever you're digging out once you've got it.
Just because a job is dangerous or just plain hard dirty work to do doesn't inherently make it a higher earning job. It was the union actions made the wages higher than they should have been for what was being produced. This has good and bad effects. Good because it's nice to paid be paid well, bad if it causes you to loss your job in the end because the money has to come from somewhere. The only way this is possible in the long term is if the government/tax payer pays the shortfall.
UK deep pit coal did cost at least 50% more than just importing it.
Are you saying miners earned the equivalent of £70k?
If so, then why did the miners live in ****** two up, two down houses?
You could earn around £42K, £50+ with overtime at the pit face. This would be the best job for the manual workers who had no skills before entering the profession.
More senior workers, such as engineers that built and maintained equipment could earn £60-£75K.
Given 90% of mines are up north with it's lower cost of living they were doing extremely well.
So being brought back down to reality with £15-20K jobs at best they had on overinflated sense of entitlement and created a lot of "I'm not working for that amount" brigade, I suspect that's why some communities didn't recover.
If you lived in a small house all your life you probably don't care, and I would assume that would be the main type of housing available in the mining areas. Even if you wanted a large 4 bed detached and could afford it, there probably wasn't enough housing of that type in the area. It seems miners liked to spend their money booze, holidays and cars, but didn't save/invest much.
