Six Months After Upper Big Branch, Republicans Still Obstructing Progress

[Omaha Steve]

http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2010/10/05/six-months-bigbranch/

Posted on October 5, 2010 by dsalaborblogmoderator

by Jake Blumgart and Peter Dreier

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Six months ago, on April 5th, 29 miners were killed by an immense explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia. They didn’t have to die. Mine owners, government officials, and union safety experts have known how to prevent such explosions for decades. Some operators take the necessary steps to prevent such occurrences, but others are willing to put short-term profits above worker safety.

Massey Energy Company, owner of the doomed mine, falls into the latter category. In fact, the company has one of the worst safety records in the nation. In 2009, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) tried to fine Massey $12.9 million, but the company appealed a stunning 75 percent of the violations, putting off payment indefinitely. Upper Big Branch alone was cited over 3,000 times since 1995, and received 53 new safety violations in March, including specific citation of the mine’s ventilation system, meant to disperse potentially explosive methane gas. Frequent inspections did little to hinder the operator’s unscrupulous practices, partly because the non-union workers feared retaliation if they expressed their concerns to inspectors.

Meanwhile, Massey’s CEO, Don Blankenship, insists that the industry is capable of regulating itself. “Washington and state politicians have no idea how to improve miner safety,” Blankenship declared at a 2009 anti-union rally. “The very idea that they care more about coal miner safety than we do is as silly as global warming.” Since April, two more miners have died at Massey sites.

Massey isn’t the only bad actor on the American scene. In a worldwide worker safety survey of 39 companies, provided by financial risk analysts at the RiskMetrics Group, Massey, Patriot Coal, Peabody and CONSOL all received a “CCC” rating, the worst possible outcome. No other surveyed company received such a low rating. This is partly accounted for by the fact that Appalachia’s underground mining is riskier than the machine-dominated surface mining in the Western states. Even so, there is no excuse for the industry’s sporadically inflated death toll in recent years. 44 miners have died so far this year, nearly matching 2006′s grim high of 47.

According to Blankenship, the problem is government overreach, not company negligence. “The feeling of the industry is that we’re regulated too much and not too little,” Blankenship told Bloomberg T.V.’s Margaret Brennan in July, a day after the Robert C. Byrd Mine Safety Act passed the House Labor and Education Committee on a party line vote. In August, the West Virginia Coal Association’s senior vice president, Chris Hamilton, indiscriminately blasted all government regulation in a pro-mountain top removal press release. “We plan to…call on lawmakers and administration officials to discontinue efforts to regulate the coal industry–and the hundreds of thousands of jobs it provides–out of business.”

FULL story at link.

[Bluzmann57]

1. An MSHA inspector told me

" He has a lot of money." I got mad and then the inspector said, "And it isn't over yet". I think his first answer to my question is much more truthful than his followup. And although I have little power, I have no intention of letting this drop.