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Following The Pump Handle’s July 8 post “Secret Rule on OSHA Risk Assessment” (and July 10 here), a front-page Washington Post article provides more details on the Bush Administration’s plan to ”reform” the system used by OSHA and MSHA to assess workers’ risk from toxic materials. In U.S. Rushes to Change Workplace Toxin Rules, Post reporter Carol Leonnig obtained a draft copy of the proposed rule, which would direct the risk assessment assumptions and procedures used by MSHA and OSHA when developing regulations to protect workers health hazards. Leonnig reports that Bush appointee, lawyer and “ethics advisor” Deborah Misir in DOL’s Office of Policy worked with a contractor to develop the new risk asssessment plan, intentionally leaving career scientists out of the process.
Well, well, it’s the same old playbook for the Bush Administration: Leave out the career staff who know most about the topic, assign a political appointee with no expertise to manage the process, and pay a hand-selected contractor to do the work. That would be bad enough, but it gets worse.
Today’s New York Times’ editorial No Friend to Workers provides just a few examples of how Labor Secretary Elaine Chao has made a sham of our nation’s worker protection laws. The examples come from a GAO report about the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division: One case involved child-labor violations but the matter was closed because the investigators couldn’t track down the employer (but GAO easily found him); another involved a worker’s complaint about his employer’s failure to pay his legally-due overtime wages. The complaint languished at DOL for 17 months, past the statute of limitations. Yep, the worker got screwed.
Lest anyone thinks this ineptitude is unique to DOL’s Wage and Hour division, I’ve my own example—a double doozy involving the combined incompetence of MSHA and DOL’s own Inspector General.
I found the most curious item on OMB OIRA’s webpage today, and my paranoia about end-of-the-term mischief by the Bush Administration kicked into high gear. The item is listed as a proposed rule submitted to OIRA for review on July 7 titled:
“Requirements for DOL Agencies’ Assessment of Occupational Health Risks” (RIN: 1290-AA23) (Link here, select DOL) or (screenshot)
Whenever the term risk assessment is uttered by the Bush Admininstration, I know they are up to no good. Recall their earlier effort at a major overhaul of agency’s risk assessment procedures; this was a proposal that was long on new one-size-fits-all requirements for agencies involved in health, safety and environmental protection, but woefully lacking in details about the alleged problem it was designed to fix. More importantly, it would have added new steps to the rulemaking process, making a dysfunctional system more so, and creating administrative obstacles for health protective rules. Thankfully, a failing grade by the National Academy of Sciences forced OMB to junk it.
This mysterious draft proposal at OMB makes me wonder whether this is the White House’s plan B for so-called “reforms” to agency risk assessments. Let’s see: they couldn’t impose their requirements agency-wide, so why not target specific agencies? What better place than those pesky rules to protect workers’ from dangerous contaminants?
The United Steelworkers, North America’s largest private sector union with 1.2 million members, and Unite the Union, the largest labor organization in the United Kingdom and Ireland with 2 million members, signed an agreement to create the world’s first global union called Workers Uniting. The announcement was made at the USW’s 2008 Constitutional Convention.
In a video news release featuring USW Int’l President Leo W. Gerard and Unite the Union’s General Secretary Derek Simpson, the two trade unionists describe the power of the two institutions coming together with a shared “vision of a world where workers globally unite.”
Earlier this month, William Scott Hill, 33, of Staffordsville, KY was killed while cutting trees to prepare for a surface coal mine for the Premier Elkhorn Coal Company (TECO Energy). Mr. Hill was employed by Gopher Contracting of Jackson, KY. His death on June 3 reminded me of other fatalities involving tree cutters working at mining operations, including Lawrence Payne, 32, who was killed in March 2004 and William S. Woods, 44, who was killed in December 2004.**
Just as I was reading about Mr. Hill’s death, OSHA sent an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking on June 19 to OMB concerning tree care operations. The OSHA notice states that about 58 fatalities occur each year during tree-servicing operations, and an ANSI standard (Z133.1-2006) might be an appropriate model for an OSHA standard. But wait! Why don’t we seriously consider a rule to protect workers involved in tree cutting which could be used by both OSHA and MSHA.
Mr. Robert Carey, 45, an athracite coal miner from Shamokin, Pennsylvania was killed on Monday by falling rock/coal at the Harmony Mine. So far this year, 26 workers at U.S. mining operations have died on-the-job. Just this past Sunday, former MSHA chief J. Davitt McAteer had an Op-Ed in the Charleston Gazette entitled: ”Enough: No More Mining Deaths.” He wrote:
“It is time to stop killing our children, husbands, brothers and sons in the name of mining.”
The 26 deceased men were working at mining operations in the following states: Alabama (2), California (2), Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky (3), Missouri, Nevada (2), New York, Pennsylvania (4), Texas (2), Virginia, West Virginia (4), and Wisconsin. Seventeen of the 26 deaths occurred at surface mining operations.
The 65 or so high school seniors of Tygarts Valley High School shared a moment of silence during their graduation ceremony last night (The InterMountain reports) to mourn the death of Adam Lanham, 18, who died on Friday, May 30 at ICG’s Sentinel Mine. The young coal miner was a 2007 graduate of Tygarts Valley High School, and reportedly was pinched between the mine rib and a coal scoop. News reports (here) state that the “red hat” (apprentice) miners’ father and two brothers also worked at the Sentinel Mine.
ICG’s website makes no mention of the young man’s death. The company says:
“We care about the health, safety and well-being of our employees, and we do our very best to protect our miners and provide them with a safe working environment.”
Maybe ICG’s “very best” is just not good enough.
How do you best teach workers about safety? How do you change people’s attitudes?
The Workers’ Comp board in Ontario, Cananda, and many safety instructors along with them, believes that gruesome pictures or videos work best. Like driving by the scene of a car accident, it is hard not to look. Perhaps by showing a horrific accident, workers will be more careful or take more precautions. The Ontario Worker Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) produced a series of five short (30 second) videos for different industries each showing an “accident” which occurs and then saying how this could have been prevented.
Earlier this year, a group of worker advocates sent a petition to MSHA Chief Richard Stickler asking for rulemaking to improve the training miners receive about their statutory rights. The petition called for significant changes in the way in which all workers employed at U.S. mining operations learn about their rights, including the right to refuse unsafe work and to express concerns about hazards. (Previous post here) The petitioners asked MSHA to consider changing how miners’ rights training is conducted, specifically having someone other than the miner operator or his representative cover this part of the training.
Not surprisingly, MSHA’s Stickler sponded to the petition saying “new regulations are not necessary.” Some of the assertions he makes to support his position are dismal, at best.
For the third time in eight months, workers from the Getchell gold mine* near Winnemuca, NV have seen a co-worker killed on-the-job. First was Mr. Curtis L. Johnson, 36, a roof-bolter, who was killed on August 28, 2007, when part of the mine collapsed on him. Next was Mike Millican, 43, who was killed on January 26, 2008 when a haulage truck backed over him. Then, Kenny Barbosa, 28, was killed on April 21, in another fall of ground. Thanks to the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Alan Maimon** for drawing my attention to these workers’ deaths. Sadly, and as usual, all of them were preventable! (Maimon’s full story here.)
A fair number of people have “Ah-ha!” moments, but how many actually take those nuggets of brilliance and pursue them?
One man –an inventor of sorts who I came to know because of the Sago disaster—has done just that. While watching the rescue efforts at the WV Sago mine unfold on television in early January 2006, this man used his knowledge as a former Navy submariner to design and develop a tracking system for underground miners. His “Ah-ha!” moment and now application was recognized this month by Popular Science magazine as one of the top-ten inventions for 2008! (PopSci article here)
Announcing the award, the magazine editors note:
“The world needs help…but the solutions may well end up coming from the garages and basements next door. As the winners of PopSci’s 2nd annual Invention Awards demonstrate, invention–even world changing invention–can happen anywhere there’s an idea and an endless drive to see that idea made real.”
Congratulations to Russell and Jay Breeding and Mike Millam of InSEeT System, who have shown (not just talked about) their commitment to workers’ health and safety.
Just as the 60-day deadline approached for filing a legal challenge to a new health standard to protect mine workers from asbestos exposure, mining industry trade associations submitted their petitions in federal court. MSHA’s rule was published on February 29, and tick-tock, like clockwork, the National Mining Assoc, the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Assoc (NSSGA) and others filed suits in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, requesting judicial review of MSHA’s rule. Under both the OSHA and MSHA statutues, ”any person who may be adversely affect by a [newly promulgated] standard” may file a petition in the US Court of Appeals challenging the “validity of the standard.”
These legal challenges to worker health and safety standards are typical—nearly every final OSHA health standard was challenged by some industry association—It’s just part of the standard-operating due-process protections afforded hazardous materials to which workers are exposed. Even in this case, for ASBESTOS, a known carcinogenic and respiratory toxin which has been responsible for the death and disability of hundreds of thousands of individuals, is still granted its “day in court.”
For more than two years, the Cook family has waited for answers about the coal-truck crash that took the life of Chad Cook, their son and brother. Their long ordeal began immediately after 25-year old Chad’s death, when an MSHA inspector decided that the fatal crash occurred on a public road and therefore would not be investigated. The State followed MSHA’s lead, and Chad’s death was chalked up as a motor-vehicle accident, not deserving of workplace safety agencies’ resources. Too bad none of them told the Cook family.
About a year later and as a last resort, Mrs. Gay Cook contacted Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette to ask his advice on how to get information from MSHA or the State. Curious as he is, and with a map and camera in hand, it didn’t take the reporter long to determine that Chad Cook’s death occured on mine property on a private road used exclusively by mine operator(s), and therefore should have been investigated by both MSHA and the State. Now, one year later, MSHA has issued its investigation report, the most sorry excuse for an investigation I’ve ever read. Read the rest of this entry »
The front page of yesterday’s Washington Post provided a stark reminder of the cost of powering the DC region: a scarred and denuded landscape once graced by mountains and wildlife. Mountaintop removal mining (MTR) in West Virginia feeds coal-powered plants that have been demanding more and more of the fuel; in the DC area, demand for electricity grew 18% since 2001. The Post’s David A. Fahrenthold explains the process and its effects:
Pork plant in illness probe wins worker safety award
Safety award to Massey mine where two miners were killed
First, I thought these were bad April Fools’ jokes or maybe an article from the ONION. But no, these headlines are no joke. A pork packing house in Austin, MN, a worksite where at least 12 workers have developed an autoimmune disorder, is receiving the Award of Honor from the American Meat Institute for its worker safety and health program. (This is the plant with the ”blowing brains” table,” where workers used compressed air on pig skulls to harvest the brains, resulting in aerosolized brain matter which caused them to develop severe neurological symptoms.)
Worse yet, is the recognition to Massey Energy’s Aracoma Alma mine, where Mr. Don Bragg, 33 and Mr. Ellery Hatfield, 46, died in January 19, 2006 in an underground mine fire; Massey announced it’s receiving a safety award from MSHA. Just one year ago, this very same MSHA, issued a record-setting $1.5 million penalty against Massey for its ”reckless disregard for safety” in the disaster which killed Bragg and Hatfield.
One of the nation’s top advocates for miners’ health and safety, Tony Oppegard, sent a scathing letter last week to the Deputy Solicitor of Labor (SOL), Ronald G. Whiting, mincing no words about their pitiful performance. Oppegard’s letter concerned a particular case involving a worker who was fired for complaining about safety, but its content speaks volumes about SOL’s “consistent and undistinguished record” of turning its back on workers who exercise their statutory rights. As Oppegard foretells:
“If SOL is going to continue to insist that a discrimination case be a clear-cut winner before it will represent the miner, coal miners will continue to file less and less discrimination complaints with MSHA and the mines will become even less safe. Instead, coal miners will either perform unsafe work in the hope of keeping their job and pray they don’t get injured or killed, or they will quit their job and hope they’re lucky enough to find another. Unfortunately, SOL seems to have no idea that oftentimes the right to refuse unsafe work is the non-union coal miner’s only remedy to protect his safety, and that it is rarely invoked frivolously.”
The first story about the death of Mr. Ricky “Mud Puddle” Collins came on Thursday afternoon (3/27) in an AP story Massey Miner Killed in Logan County. The short news clip mentioned a miner employed at Massey Energy’s Freeze Fork Surface Mine in Logan County, who we later learned was Mr. Collins, 43, of Dan’s Branch, WV. The article said he:
“died while working on a trailer at a railroad crossing near Stollings in Logan County Thursday,” but
“MSHA is not investigating the accident because it did not occur on mine property.”
The Department of Labor’s Inspector General (IG) issued a report yesterday about the Utah Crandall Canyon mine, saying:
“MSHA was negligent in carrying out its responsibilities to protect the safety of miners.”
The investigation was carried out in response to a request from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and documented in an 80-page report entitled: “MSHA Could Not Show it Made the Right Decision in Approving the Roof Control Plan at Crandall Canyon Mine.” The August 2007 underground mine disaster killed nine men, including Mr. Gary Jensen a federal mine inspector who worked out of MSHA’s Price, Utah office.
In response to a recommendation from the Department of Labor’s Inspector General, MSHA released data on 40 additional deaths which occurred (mostly) in 2007 at U.S. mining operations but were deemed not “chargeable” to the mining industry. The information, which includes 5 deaths in late 2006 and 35 in 2007, involved miners, contract workers, a mine owner, children of mine operators, and trespassers onto mine property. Of the 40 deaths, 30 were classified as “natural causes,” based on autopsy reports with notations such as “acute cardiac dysrhthmia,” “acute myocardial infarction,” “atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease,” “pulmonary thromboembolism,” “ischemic heart disease.” The remaining 10 deaths included two suicides and eight fatal injuries involving individuals not authorized to be on the mine property such as former employees and apparent burglers.
A coal miner from eastern Kentucky filed a law suit yesterday requesting a federal court judge to compel MSHA to issue a health standard to prevent miners from developing black lung disease. The Petition for Writ of Mandamus (Howard v. Chao) argues that Congress intended, through the Federal Coal Mine Health & Safety Act of 1969 (amended 1977), MSHA to promulgate regulations to prevent new cases of coal workers pnuemoconiosis, progressive massive fibrosis and other illnesses related to miners’ exposure to respirable coal mine dust. Despite evidence over the last 12 years that the current permissible exposure limit is inadequate to prevent black lung disease, including a NIOSH criteria document which recommended a 1.0 mg/m3 limit, the petitioner argues that MSHA has failed to fulfill its duties under the Mine Act. The Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center filed the petition on behalf of Mr. Scott Howard*—one heck of a brave man for putting his name (not John Doe) on this case. He is a coal miner (has been since 1979) and is directly affected on every shift by an inadequate coal mine dust standard.
A group of state legislators in West Virginia introduced a bill earlier this year to strengthen the State’s laws to protect mine workers who raise concerns about unsafe working conditions. The lead sponsors were Delegate Bill Hamilton (R) who represents the region where the now-abandoned Sago mine and State Senators Jon Blair Hunter (D) and Randy White (D). (I wrote earlier about their effort here.) Several weeks have now passed, and are any of us surprised to learn that the bill was killed in the WV legislative committee?
Nathan Fetty of Mine Safety Project of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and Environment names names of the State Senators who killed the bill. Read the rest of this entry »
The State of Alaska’s Department of Health and Social Services recently released a report on work-related lead poisoning over the last 12 years (1995-2006). I was shocked to read that 94 percent of the workers (289 men) with blood-lead levels above 25 ug/dL were employed in the mining industry. A follow-up story by Elizabeth Bluemink of the Anchorage Daily News reports that most of the adult blood-lead laboratory results came from the Red Dog lead-zinc mine near Kotzebue, Alaska. Although there is no MSHA standard to protect miners from lead poisoning, Teck Cominco Alaska Inc. has some sort of lead-poisoning prevention program with routine blood-lead testing.
For the first time, beginning on April 29, it will be unlawful for employers in the mining industry to expose workers to asbestos concentrations higher than 0.1 fiber (per cubic meter of air) over an 8-hour shift. MSHA published today a new exposure limit for asbestos to replace a 2.0 fiber limit which has been on the books since 1978 when the agency was created. Other U.S. workers, in contrast, began getting protection from an OSHA asbestos standard in 1971 and it was revised several times over years—from 2 fibers, to 0.5, to 0.2 and 0.1—-to make it more protective of workers’ health.
But, and this is a big BUT, there is still a vast difference between OSHA’s asbestos standard, and the one issued by MSHA. This new standard for U.S. mine workers is ONLY an exposure limit, it does not have any of the additional protections afforded to other asbestos-exposed workers, such as protective clothing, hygiene facilities and medical surveillance. Don’t let anyone in the Administration get away with suggestions that mine workers now have a federal workplace health standard on asbestos that is equivalent to every other worker in the country. It is not.
There are a number of memorable quotes in the Center for Study of Responsive Law’s newly released report “Undermining Safety: A Report on Coal Mine Safety.” In one section, report author Christopher W. Shaw discusses the mining industry’s lobbying for “targeted inspections” (a la the OSHA model) instead of the current requirement for mandatory quarterly inspections. The AFL-CIO’s secretary-treasurer Richard L. Trumka—a former coal miner—derided the notion of making MSHA more like OSHA:
“OSHA reminds me of an 18-year old Mexican Chihauhua dog that’s lost its teeth and hides behind the furniture going ‘bark, bark, bark’.”
Ouch! for the chihauhua lovers out there, but Trumka doesn’t mince any words about his views on OSHA’s relevance.
A group of advocates for miners and their families sent a rulemaking petition to MSHA on February 1, asking the agency to improve its regulations governing the training that mine workers receive about their statutory rights. The Petition for Rulemaking was submitted by the West Virginia Mine Safety Project, the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, United Support & Memorial for Workplace Fatalities, and the United Mine Workers, and calls for significant improvements in the content and manner in which all U.S. mine workers—whether at coal, gold, stone, or other mine or mill—learn about their rights, such as expressing concerns about hazards, refusing unsafe work, or any rights provided in the 1969 and 1977 federal mine safety and health laws .
Two high-tech communication firms, Venture Design Services, Inc and Helicomm, Inc., teamed up to create a wireless tracking system for underground miners, and it is the first product of its kind to be approved by MSHA since the Sago, WV disaster. That 2006 event, which claimed the lives of 12 coal miners and forever changed the lives of their families, coworkers and community, was the impetus for the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act (MINER Act) and its requirements for wireless tracking systems.
Helicomm has been using the CONSOL Energy’s Big Branch mine in Mingo County, WV to test the system. The Big Branch mine is not an active mine, but since June 2007 has been the demonstration site for the ”MineTracer” system. Helicomm’s Ken Hill says:
“MSHA’s approval of MineTracer represents a quantum leap for safety systems in the coal industry. It is truly bringing 21st century technology into the mines.”
A group of state legislators in West Virginia introduced a bill to strengthen the State’s laws to protect mine workers who raise concerns about unsafe working conditions. The lead sponsor is Delegate Bill Hamilton (R) who represents the region where the now-abandoned Sago mine is located.* He’s been a strong champion for mine safety improvements and also known for reprimanding Massey Energy’s Don Blankenship when the CEO asserted that mining disasters, like Sago and Aracoma Alma, were rare and insignificant. Mine-worker advocates, like Nathan Fetty at the WV Mine Safety Project say the current State whistleblower law is so cumbersome and ineffective that few WV miners have successfully won their safety discrimination cases.
Howard A. Heit, MD and a pain management specialist at Georgetown University offers an informed perspective on “painkiller abuse” among coal miners, in response to the Washington Post’s article “A Dark Addiction.” He writes:
“I don’t believe the majority of these miners have the disease of addiction….[instead they] are seeking medications appropriately or inappropriately as a result of significant undertreatment of pain.”
The U.S. House of Representatives debated today the Supplemental Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act (S-MINER, H.R. 2768) which would require, among other things, closer review of retreat mining plans, allow independent investigations (outside of MSHA) for multiple fatalities, and update permissible exposure limits. The White House issued a veto threat, saying the bill would “place in jeopardy meaningful achievements and efforts currently underway”…”weaken several existing regulations” and “impose burdensome and unrealistic time requirements.” Likewise, the National Mining Association said the bill “would interfere with mine safety progress.” In contrast, families from Kentucky and Utah, who lost loved ones in mining disasters, sent letters of support for the bill (here and here).
As I listened to the debate on C-SPAN radio, I heard a lot about ”drug use” by coal miners and reference to the Washington Post article called “A Dark Addiction” that I blogged about yesterday.
The front page of Sunday’s Washington Post (Jan. 13) featured the blackened face of coal miner Forest Ramey, 24, but the story was not about a deadly explosion or workers trapped underground. A Dark Addiction, by the Post’s Nick Miroff, gives us a peak into the lives of coal miners who are struggling with painkiller abuse.
“Tazewell County, Va. The crowd is gathering early in the dirt parking lot outside the Clinch Valley Treatment Center, the only methadone clinic within 80 miles. …It is 2:45 am…the clinic does not start dosing until 5 am. …Many of the patients who fill the lot one recent morning have jobs in far-off mines that start at 6 or 7. They sleep upright in their vehicles, slumped up against the steering wheel, dressed for work in steel-toed boots and coveralls lined with orange reflective strips.”
Several months ago, I tried to get a simple question answered by NIOSH about part of its process for awarding mine safety research grants. The technical staff with whom I spoke probably knew the answer to my question, but they weren’t sure whether the information could be disclosed or not. Fair enough. They suggested that I file a FOIA request which I promptly did. More than 4 months later, I’m still waiting for an answer.
Granted, this is nowhere near the worst FOIA performance (see annual Rosemary Award), but my question to NIOSH was straightforward, and I guarantee they have at least one document which would be responsive to my request.
I guess President Bush and Secretary Chao are stickin’ with Richard Stickler afterall. A personnel announcement this afternoon from the White House says:
“The President intends to designate Richard Stickler, of West Virginia, to be Acting Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health.”
Note the use of the word “designate” not ”nominate.” And now the webpage featuring Mr. Stickler’s photo is back up on MSHA’s website. My previous posts on this are here, here, and here. Oy!
Yesterday afternoon, if you happened to MSHA’s website and click on the Asst. Secretary’s button, you’d see this, with the ominous caption:
“The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.”
That was a tell-tale sign that Richard Stickler’s recess-appointment tenure as MSHA’s chief has come to an end. Ken Ward of The Charleston Gazette reports today in “Stickler out at MSHA” that a political appointee named John Pallasch is now the acting Assistant Secretary for MSHA.
A coal mine operator in Hazard, Kentucky received a $220,000 penalty from MSHA for flagrantly violating electrical lockout/tagout procedures (such as padlocking an on/off switch to ensure that a machine is not unexpectedly turned-on, plugged in or energized while it is being serviced.) The hefty monetary penalty was authorized under the 2006 MINER Act for flagrant violations, defined as:
“a reckless or repeated failure to make reasonable efforts to eliminate a known violation of a mandatory safety and health standard that substantially and proximately caused, or reasonably could have been expected to cause, death or serious bodily injury.”
In this case, it was an electrician working at the Teco Energy Perry County Coal’s E4-1 mine in June 2007 who received an severe electrical shock and burns because of the company’s disregard for safety. MSHA’s investigators found that failing to lockout/tagout equipment was “a common practice at the mine, and one in which mine management was fully aware. Furthermore, miners were instructed to operate equipment without being properly trained.”
Every few months like clockwork, news stories have been appearing to report a rise in incidence rates for coal workers’ pneumoconiosis (CWP). The format goes something like this:
- Headline: Black lung on the rise!
- Lead: NIOSH reports sharp increase in black lung cases
- Body: How can this be? It’s so perplexing.
You’d think they’re talking about a never-seen-before viral disease. Instead, it’s all about CWP, a disease that is 100% preventable, yet it’s being treated as if it is a mystery that can’t be solved.
As the year is winding down, one question on the minds of many MSHA inspectors, managers and staff has to be: Will Stickler be here in 2008? The MSHA chief, Richard Stickler, received his job from President G.W. Bush on a “recess appointment,” which expires at the end of the current U.S. Senate session. If the Senate adjourns (as it usually does) for the Christmas and New Year holidays, Mr. Stickler’s appointment would officially end. This would leave MSHA without a politically-appointed Assistant Secretary. Would that be a good thing for miners’ health and safety?
The Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act (H.R. 2262) would revamp the 1872 federal law governing hardrock mining (mining for metals and gems, not for coal), and a new article from Business Week reports that the Act has the support of many local officials who worry about mining’s effects on air, water, and tourism.
Industry officials don’t like the House bill – which isn’t surprising, because they’ve been getting such a sweet deal for more than a century. The General Mining Law of 1872 was intended to create incentives for settling the West, and it let miners take minerals from public lands for free. Robert McClure and Andrew Schneider described the uneven exchange in a 2001 Seattle PI article (part of an excellent PI series on mining):
The New York Times’ headline read:
350 Men Entombed in Mine Explosion. Rescue Force at Work in the Debris of Two Shattered Mines at Monongah, West Va. Poisonous Gas Pours Out.
At about 10:00 am on Dec 6, 1907, a violent explosion of methane gas and coal dust killed hundreds of workers at two adjacent underground coal mines owned by Consolidated Coal Company. The official death toll is listed at 362, but in Davitt McAteer’s new book Monongah, his research suggests the disaster claimed the lives of more than 550 men and boys.
It’s been nearly four months since nine men were killed at the Crandall Canyon mine in Emery County, Utah. Congressman George Miller (D-CA) held a hearing in early October on the disaster, but a Senate hearing, scheduled for Dec 4, for which the mine operator Robert Murray had been subpeonaed, was cancelled. The Salt Lake Tribune’s Mike Gorrell and Robert Gherke reported recently on photographs taken inside the mine:
“If there was any question about the power of a mine bounce–created when the immense pressures on the coal pillars supporting the roof cause coal to blow out of the walls or fall from the roof—the photographs of the Crandall Canyon aftermath put them to rest.”
It’s that time of year—time for the Secretary of Labor to issue her semi-annual regulatory agenda. Look for its publication in the Federal Register around the second week of December.
I’ll be curious to see OSHA’s timetable for action on diacetyl, the butter-flavoring agent associated with severe lung disease in exposed workers.
- Will OSHA list diacetyl on its reg agenda?
- Will it provide a target date for publishing a proposed rule?
The chairman of the University of Kentucky’s (UK) mining engineering department wrote in a recent op-ed of his strong oppposition to a new mine safety bill (HR 2768) which is making its way through Congress. The legislation will address long-standing health and safety hazards faced by miners such as disease-causing coal dust and silica, belt-air ventilation, flammable conveyor belts, among other things. In “New Mining Bill Premature,” printed in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Professor Rick Honaker says it is “incomprehensible” that Congress is attempting to place new safety requirements on coal operators.* He claims new mandates will “serve no useful purpose” and will “only undermine the efforts of those trying to implement” the 2006 MINER Act. That’s some tough criticism.
On closer look, I notice that neither the op-ed itself nor the professor’s byline mentions his university department’s financial connection to mining industry—an industry that also strongly opposes HR 2768. These ties include a large financial endowment established by the mining industry, called the Mining Engineering Foundation. The Foundation was created in 1983 with a $1 million endowment, which included a hefty donation of $500,000 from Mr. Catesby Clay, president of Kentucky River Coal.** Interest from the fund now provides financial support to school’s mining engineering department.
The Mine Safety and Health Administration has been in the news again lately. The Labor Department’s Inspector General released a report stating that the agency failed to conduct required inspections at more than one in seven of U.S. underground coal mines last year (budget constraints and a lack of management emphasis on worker safety by the Bush administration get the blame). In a separate audit, the IG also found that the U.S. Department of Labor’s procedures for counting mining deaths are inconsistent and don’t follow the agency’s own written rules.
Charles Thomas, a 16-year veteran of the agency, has just been selected for MSHA’s newly established Office of Accountability – and he’ll evidently have his work cut out for him.
Mining is under scrutiny in other countries, too. A new report documents poor conditions at a Mexican copper mine and links them to workers’ respiratory disease, and in China, last year’s official coal mining death toll was 4,746.
In other news:
While families in eastern Ukraine are mourning the death of 90 coal miners from the Zasaidko coal mine, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych said:
“This accident has proven once again that a human is powerless before nature.”
This disaster was no accident. This was no unpredictable force of nature. It was a massive methane explosion that could have–should have–been prevented. Shame on Yanukovych for suggesting the Ukrainian coal industry is powerless to stop them.
What does it take for MSHA’s Richard Stickler and the Solicitor of Labor to do their jobs?
- Front-page newspaper stories about MSHA’s failures?
- A letter from a grieving mother?
- A petition signed by other family-member victims of workplace fatalities?
Apparently, it took all this and more for MSHA finally to decide that the November 8, 2005 coal truck accident at the Alliance Resources’ Metikki Mine which killed Chad Cook, 25, was work-related.
Tyler Kahle, 19, (photo) and Craig Bagley, 27 (photo) were killed four months ago at the NovaGold Resources’ Rock Creek mine near Nome, Alaska. MSHA is completing its investigation; so far, all the Kahle family has been told is that the lift basket was 90 feet off the ground and ”it tipped over.” Sadly, what the Kahle family has learned, is that mothers, fathers and other family-member victims of workplace fatalities have few if any rights, the exclusive liability provision of state workers’ compensation laws is a cruel joke, and families are excluded from the fatality investigation process.
This harsh reality compelled a group of families to develop a “Family Bill of Rights” to provide fundamental rights to loved ones left behind by workplace fatalities.
The House Education & Labor Committee has approved a bill (the Supplementary MINER Act) that would speed up deadlines for several mine rescue requirements passed by Congress last year, and require more oversight by the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Ken Ward Jr. has the details about the bill’s provisions – and MSHA head Richard Stickler’s criticisms of it – in the Charleston Gazette. In West Virginia, where tougher requirements were adopted after the Sago and Aracoma mine disasters in that state, approvals for wireless communications and tracking systems are already being sent to mine operators, and the first airtight emergency shelter chamber has been shipped to an underground coal mine.
REMINDER: Some of our colleagues missed the Salt Lake Tribune’s excellent series on occupational illnesses and injuries in Chinese workers (the series is by Loretta Tofani, and we blogged about it when it was published in late October). If you haven’t already, you should read it, bookmark it, and share it with your friends.
In other news:
The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward, one of the few reporters in the country who writes consistently about worker health and safety issues, is featured on EXPOSE: America’s Investigative Reports. The episode entitled “Sustained Outrage” depicts Ward’s approach to covering coal mine disasters like the 2006 Sago tragedy:
“When other reporters are zigging, I’m zagging,”
describing his talent for investigating these fatalities well beyond the headline and long after the cameras are turned off. The 24-minute episode describes how Ken Ward created a database using information from more than 300 MSHA investigation reports covering the last 10 years. His story “Disasters make headlines, but most miners killed on the job die alone” is familiar to all advocates for workplace safety improvements. “Sustained Outrage” also features Sara Bailey and Stella Morris (family member victims of coal mine fatalities), the Gazette’s Tara Tuckwiller and editor Robert Byers who says that Ken Ward can be a tough reporter to manage (because of his sustained outrage and persistence), can be viewed on-line .