The 100-Year Struggle for Mine Safety

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/08/17/the-100-year-struggle-for-mine-safety/

by Tula Connell, Aug 17, 2007

A few thoughts as we join in vigil with the families of the six men trapped in Utah’s Crandall Canyon mine, now 12 days since the mine collapsed, and with the families of the three who died last night during the rescue attempt.

Last year, Congress passed the first major mine safety laws in more three decades. Mine safety advocates hailed the MINER Act as a good first step in improving mine safety and responding to emergencies.


Children miners in the early 1900s.

But “the job is not done,” Dennis O’Dell, Mine Workers (UMWA) health and safety director, told a House panel in late July, just days before the Crandall Canyon mine collapse. O’Dell and other witnesses told the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections that two recently introduced bills (H.R. 2768 and H.R. 2769) address many of the most pressing needs in mine safety and health. (O’Dell’s full testimony is here.)

Among other provisions, the bills:

* Increase the enforcement powers of the federal MSHA.
* Increase the penalties against mine operators that have a pattern of safety
violations or that retaliate against miners who report safety and health
violations.
* Require a more rapid deployment of proven safety technologies, including
underground communications systems and refuge chambers where miners could escape poisonous smoke and gases.
* Require employers to provide miners with multigas detectors any time they work
alone.

As O’Dell told the subcommittee:

The enhanced enforcement authority this new legislation provides MSHA will also be critical to ensuring the safety and health of miners but, as always, only if the agency embraces that new authority and actually uses it. Irresponsible coal operators need to know that MSHA is serious about enforcing all the laws on the books and also enforcing the penalties for noncompliance.

FULL story at link.