No coal miner has to die!

The following statement was released Aug. 17 by Osborne Hart, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of New York.

With increased international demand coal production is going up for the first time in years. And so are the deaths of miners on the job. Dog-eat-dog capitalism and its profit-driven coal bosses are to blame. No miner has to die!

So far this year 11 miners have been killed in the U.S., already more than in all of 2016. The majority have lost their lives in the eastern coalfields, where falling demand and higher production costs led to bankruptcies and mine closures. The mine bosses are opening new mines, more and more of them non-union. In their drive for profit, they push speedup and cut corners on safety. The result is death, injury and an explosion in the scourge of black lung disease.

Those killed include a number of miners — both experienced and inexperienced — working in new mines. Coal giants like Peabody Energy and Arch Coal that went bankrupt, seeking to get the union off their back, have restructured and reopened mines.

The response of Washington’s Mine Safety and Health Administration to the body count is to send inspectors to review training programs and observe young miners on the job, while promising the coal bosses they won’t report safety violations they see. United Mine Workers of America representatives aren’t required to accompany inspectors in union mines! But it’s only miners through their unions who can and will fight for safety.

Worldwide the capitalist system is in a deepening, long-term crisis of production and trade. The capitalist rulers are trying to boost their profits on our backs. They push fewer workers to produce more in a shorter period of time for less pay and benefits. It’s not just in coal. Workers face dangerous conditions in rail, meatpacking, construction and other industries across the board.

To roll back the death toll we have to organize, unionize and fight together for workers control of safety on the job — including the right to stop work whenever we face unsafe conditions. It’s a life and death question.

By organizing and fighting for workers control, we will gain the experience, class consciousness and confidence to fight to overturn the dictatorship of capital and replace the political power of the propertied rulers with workers power. We need to reorganize production to satisfy human needs, not private profit, as Cuba’s revolutionary workers and farmers did nearly 60 years ago.

This is the road toward a society where no coal miner or any worker has to die on the job.

This is the goal of the Socialist Workers Party. Join us in this struggle!

Related articles:
On The Picket Line
Coal miner deaths rise as bosses push more speedup
Frame-up trial against Quebec rail workers to begin Sept. 11

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