Vol. 74/No. 18      May 10, 2010

But absent from the discussion is what’s really needed—to organize the mines and use union power to enforce safety on the job.

Speaking at a memorial meeting in Beckley, West Virginia, April 25, President Barack Obama said that miners’ were aware of the inherent “risks” and “perils” of working in the mines. “They knew their wives would wait for a call when their shift ended saying everything was okay. They knew their parents felt a pang of fear every time a breaking news alert came on, or the radio cut in,” he said. All this was just part of these miners’ “pursuit of the American Dream.”

Obama said, “We are all family and we are all Americans and we have to lean on one another.” But “we”—the coal miners and other workers—have nothing in common with “them,” the boss class.

Mining is not inherently unsafe. The “risks” come only from the coal bosses’ control over production and their insatiable drive for profits, which makes assaults on miners’ safety rights an everyday occurrence.

Obama’s talk at the memorial service said not one word about taking action against Massey Energy for the disaster at the Upper Big Branch Mine. Nor did he mention the fact that the Mine Safety and Health Administration, a government agency, knew for years about the hazardous work conditions imposed on these miners and took no action to shut down the mine.

Consider some of the latest revelations to surface about this mine. According to the New York Times, an unnamed “longtime” foreman at the Upper Big Branch Mine said that a major source of the methane gas buildup that exploded there was a coal shaft, unused for years, that was never properly sealed. Rags and garbage were used to create a sealant, the foreman said, and “every single day, the levels were double or triple what they were supposed to be.”

In January the air flow was going in the wrong direction, according to an MSHA report, but no steps were taken to shut the mine.

In response to inadequate ventilation, miners demanded the company cut through rock to create a dedicated air pathway, but the company rejected this “along the lines of: We dig coal, not rock,” according to the Times.

Unsafe working conditions at Upper Big Branch Mine and other Massey operations are not unique to this company, though it has been one of the leading companies compiling safety violations. In mid-April a congressional panel on mine safety released a list of 48 mines cited for serious safety violations. But no preventative action was taken. Among them was Upper Big Branch.

In the late 1960s a fighting union movement emerged in the coalfields determined to get rid of a union leadership that looked the other way at employer safety violations and bargained away miners’ rights at every contract time. That movement revolutionized the United Mine Workers of America, and took great strides forward for miners’ safety and health. Union safety committees were empowered to shut down production in response to unsafe working conditions. It’s this course of action that’s needed today.

Organizing the mines and using union power becomes all the more important today. Just three weeks after the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion another miner was killed. Jama Jarrett, 28, was crushed to death between a continuous miner and the mine wall at the Pocahontas Mine in southern West Virginia. The owner of this mine, International Coal Group, also owned the Sago Mine in that state where an explosion in 2006 killed 12 miners.
 
 
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