You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Mining' category.
The White House announced today 10 nominations for senior administration positions, including Mr. Joe Main to serve as the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health (MSHA). The biography provided with the announcement notes that he:
“… began working in coal mines in 1967 and quickly became an advocate for miners safety as a union safety committeeman as well as serving in various local union positions in the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). He was employed by the UMWA in 1974 as a Special Assistant to the International President, and joined the UMWA Safety Division in 1976, serving as Safety Inspector, Administrative Assistant, and Deputy Director. In 1982 he was appointed Administrator of the UMWA Occupational Health and Safety Department, a position he held for 22 years, managing the international health and safety program and staff. “
In an article in the Louisville Courier-Journal reporting on Main’s nomination, mine worker advocate Tony Oppegard said:
“A year from today, you will see a very different agency in terms of the way it’s run.”
Here’s hoping for a speedy confirmation process [remember Senate Dem's, Bush's choice Mr. Dave Lauriski did not have a confirmation hearing] so Mr. Main can get to work.
We are approaching day 160 of the Obama Administration, yet the Solicitor of Labor is not yet in place, neither are the Assistant Secretaries for most other DOL agencies, including Employment Training Administration, MSHA, OSHA, VETS and Women’s Bureau. Attorney Patricia M. Smith was nominated by President Obama on March 19 to serve as the Solicitor, and her confirmation hearing on May 7 seemed quite tame. I’d not imagined that I’d be writing this blog post 8 weeks after that Senate proceeding, with her nomination stuck in Committee. The slow pace of the Solicitor of Labor’s nomination got me thinking about how this Administration’s appointment process for DOL officials compares to G.W. Bush’s first term. Here are a few facts to ponder:
- G.W. Bush’s Labor Secretary, Elaine Chao, was confirmed on January 29, 2001; Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was confirmed on February 24, 2009.
- G.W. Bush’s OSHA chief, John Henshaw, was nominated on June 12, 2001 and confirmed by the Senate on August 3. A nominee to head OSHA has not yet been announced, but Jordan Barab was selected by Secretary Solis to serve as acting OSHA chief.
- G.W. Bush’s MSHA chief, David Lauriski, was nominated on April 3, 2001 and confirmed on May 9, 2001. A nominee to head MSHA has not yet been announced.
The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. reports that one of West Virginia’s oldest and largest law firms, Jackson Kelly PLLC, is being sued for hiding evidence of coal miners’ black lung disease. Ward writes:
“Earlier this year, an investigative panel of the state’s Lawyer Disciplinary Board filed misconduct charges against Douglas A. Smoot. Smoot hid a key portion of coal miner Elmer Daugherty’s medical examination report during a 2001 case, a board investigative panel alleged. A hearing on those allegations is scheduled to start June 18. And two lawsuits filed last month in Raleigh Circuit Court accuse Jackson Kelly of a widespread pattern of trying to cheat miners out of black lung benefits.”
If these allegations are true—cheating injured coal miners from due compensation—that’s some low-down dirty work for their coal industry clients.
Of the many disturbing and damaging policies instituted during the G.W. Bush Administration, high on my list is abuse of FOIA. It started with the post 9/11-Ashcroft memo, which was institutionalized into downstream agencies, and reconfigured and rejustified over Mr. Bush’s remaining 7 years. In the public interests, one journalist sought to find out how the Labor Department’s FOIA practices were “evolving” under G.W. Bush’s non-disclosure philosophy.
In March 2005, Mine Safety and Health News (MSHN) received an anonymous tip, urging the editor, Ellen Smith, to request records from a training session held for DOL FOIA officers on March 1-2, 2005. The tipster suggested that she’d likely be very interested in what had been communicated to DOL staff and that she should specifically ask for a copy of the videotape made of the two-day session. (Presumably, the officials who organized the FOIA training session decided to videotape the event for the benefit of employees who were not able to attend.)
By Ellen Smith
The nation may have a new President with grand ideas about the Freedom of Information Act, but let’s be clear: at MSHA, nothing regarding FOIA has changed.
The same people are still in charge of FOIA, offering ridiculous redactions and refusing to divulge information which, previous to 2002, was openly shared with the public. The latest redaction battle comes from Tony Oppegard, a miners’ rights advocate. (See Oppegard’s response to MSHA’s FOIA denial.) Oppegard has filed 135 cases on behalf of miners, but in his latest case, MSHA is denying Oppegard information that had been routinely handed-over. MSHA’s denial is based on FOIA’s “law enforcement exemption.” However, this information has been made public since the founding of the 1977 Mine Act itself.
by Rena Steinzor, cross-posted from CPR Blog
With his attractive family and a phalanx of top aides in tow, Professor Cass Sunstein had a cordial, 45-minute hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee yesterday. He was introduced by former student and current Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) who praised Sunstein as a teacher, mentor, and eclectic thinker, all qualities for which he is rightly known. Ironically, however, the remainder of the hearing could be summarized as efforts by the three Senators in attendance— Chairman Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), ranking minority member Susan Collins (R-ME), and Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI)—to get Sunstein to pledge that eclectic thinking will not be his modus operandi at the White House.
by Pete Galvin
You never learn much from a “wired” confirmation hearing, and that was true yesterday at the hearing for Cass Sunstein to be director of OIRA. Only three Senators bothered to come (apart from his former student, now the Senator from Minnesota, who introduced him before leaving) and two short rounds of questions were designed to let him place on the record a few key statements to respond to interest groups.
He is, he assured them, not in favor of banning hunting; he thinks both OSHA and the Clean Air Act are constitutional; and his number one priority at OIRA is to follow the requirements of the Congress in each case. That last point is not unimportant for OSHA and MSHA, although it will be a while before either can get around to testing the proposition.
Early Sunday morning (May 10), I read a news brief from WSAZ reporting that seven workers had been rescued from a flooded underground coal mine in Gilbert, WV, after being trapped for 32+ hours. As I combed the web for further details, I was struck by the news accounts and audio recordings noting that the trapped miners and their families had spoken numerous times by telephone during the ordeal, as if such conversations are ho-hum-routine during mine emergencies.
I was fascinated simply reading that the miners trapped under the earth had a means to communicate with the surface. I had flashbacks to the news coverage of the Sago disaster, when every other question seemed to be “why can’t anybody communicate with those men?” or ”don’t coal mines have systems to talk to the workers under-ground?” Does anybody else remember that?
One trait of a good reporter is providing facts—facts that may make us uncomfortable, but ultimately force us to ask “is this really true?” That’s what happened to me on Friday when I read the Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward’s piece Solis plays fast and loose on MSHA budget, in which he accused the new Labor Secretary of spinning the data on mine safety enforcement spending—reminiscent of Chao and Stickler. He wrote:
“…what should I make of the way Labor Secretary Hild Solis tried to spin the Obama administration’s proposal to — when adjusted for inflation — pretty much flat-line MSHA spending for the next financial year?”
Humpph. Can’t that pesky Ken Ward, Jr. lay off the Labor Department for a bit longer? Do I really want to read criticism of Secretary Solis during our honeymoon?
During today’s confirmation hearing for M. Patricia Smith as Solicitor of Labor, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) referred back to last week’s Senate hearing on “Meaningful Roles for Victims and Their Families.” The dialogue went as follows:
00:72:30
Senator Murray: “This committee has had a number of hearings about workplace accidents and the aftermath. One of the things that has become apparent is families of victims have very little say in OSHA and MSHA’s compliance decsions, and I wanted to ask you if you believe that OSHA and Regional Solicitors should consult more closely with the victims’ familes or injured workers when they are assessing penalties?”
