Are union mines safer? W.Va. tragedy at nonunion site rekindles debate

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10108/1051388-455.stm

Sunday, April 18, 2010
By Daniel Malloy, Post-Gazette Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Deep in a coal mine in Harlan County, Ky., one day in the late 1980s, a large rock began to slip and appeared to be inches away from falling on Scott Howard and his partner.

Mr. Howard refused to continue working in that area. His supervisor told him to go see the mine owner, whose response was curt.

"The next time a boss tells you to do something and you don't do it, you won't work for me anymore," Mr. Howard said the owner told him.



Had the mine been unionized, Mr. Howard could have reported the problem to a member of the union's safety committee and he would have been protected from potential retaliation. Instead, Mr. Howard filed a court action against the company, developing a reputation as a rabble-rouser that, he said, eventually cost him his job.

Former federal mine safety official Tony Oppegard said Mr. Howard's case is indicative of the circumstances faced by miners who lack access to protections from unsafe conditions and management retaliation that a union works to provide.

"In a nonunion mine, a miner is between a rock and a hard place," said Mr. Oppegard, of Lexington, Ky., now a mine safety lawyer who represents Mr. Howard, of Roxana, Ky., and other miners in lawsuits and complaints about safety.

FULL story at link.