The boom that coal companies are trying to take advantage of today was featured in the business section of the November 20 New York Times. “Energy companies in the United States have announced plans to build more coal-fired power plants in the last 12 months than they did in the last 12 years,” said the article titled “Fuel of the Future? Some say coal.” More than 100 coal-fueled power plants are vying for permits to operate—the largest such increase since the 1970s, according to the Times. The projected investment for all of these projects is more than $100 billion.
More power plants means more mines opening or reopening, and more miners being hired. In the Price area, the center of underground coal mining in the western United States, two idled mines have reopened this year and two more are projected to open in 2005. As a result of the long drought in coal mine hiring, which stretched through the 1980s and ’90s, coal companies throughout the West and the rest of the country are scrambling for experienced miners, and rushing to train new miners.
Many coal companies are now working around the clock, seven days a week. This massive push for production and the diminishing percentage of experienced miners is a cause for growing concern among many miners that an already dangerous occupation is becoming more and more perilous.
At the Dugout mine near here, owned by Arch Coal, a serious roof fall accident occurred November 22. Experienced miner Pat Dirks suffered multiple broken ribs, and back, face, and pelvis injuries. As is common in many mine accidents, the bosses and the government blamed the miner for putting himself in harm’s way. According to workers at the Dugout mine, the Mine Safety and Health Administration report on the accident cites Dirks for working past the last row of roof bolts in the mining section. The MSHA report also cites the two workers who rushed to his aid and removed a massive rock from him for not placing jack stands in the area before helping him.
In a meeting with Co-Op miners on November 29, who were protesting lax safety enforcement at the mine where they work in Huntington, Utah, MSHA officials reiterated their stance that the accident at Dugout was the miner’s fault, and they claimed the company had no responsibility. The government officials do not even acknowledge that the company’s production push is having anything to do with the accident.
This stance by the MSHA flies in the face of reality. Arch Coal maintains a bonus program designed to force miners to work injured and under great pressure to meet high production goals. Under the program, failure to meet production standards results in the automatic loss of a large amount of the bonus. For each worker injured on the job 20 percent more is deducted from the bonus of everyone. Under this program, workers say they labor injured rather than report an accident and be “responsible” for their co-workers losing bonus money.
The Co-Op miners, through their struggles on the job for safe working conditions and the fight for a union at the mine, are setting an example for miners throughout this area for why workers need to organize themselves to improve safety. “The stakes for miners in enforcing safety protections are high in the face of the coal mining bosses’ drive for greater and greater productivity and profits,” said Bill Estrada, one of the leaders of the union-organizing effort at the Co-Op mine, in a November 29 statement to the press (see box on this page).
The Co-Op miners sent a card to Dirks following the accident to express their solidarity with him and his family. The card, signed by more than 30 present and former Co-Op miners, read in part, “We know that the coal companies are always pushing so hard for production and that is what causes accidents. Coal miners have to depend on ourselves for safer mines. Get well soon.”
Related articles:
On eve of union vote, Utah miners fight firings of UMWA supporters
Press campaign to expose job safety violations by Co-Op bosses
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