Sixteen tons
January 4, 2006
And I walk down in that cold, dark mine;
I say a prayer to my dear Savior,
Please let me see the sunshine one more time.
When oh when will it be over,
When will I lay these burdens down?
And when I die, dear Lord in heaven,
Please take my soul from ‘neath that cold dark ground.
What is there to say about the tragedy in West Virginia? Last night it seemed the miners had miraculously survived, but then this morning we found out the truth. False hope turned into dust. What is there to say?
Jordan Barab over at Nathan Newman’s Labor Blog points out that 15 people die in workplace accidents every day across the country, largely forgotten even by their hometown newspapers. He also points out that the Sago Mine has been cited by the government for safety violations more than 200 times this year alone, and had an accident rate three times the national average:
The fact is that President Bush has not requested budgets for OSHA or MSHA that even keep up with the rate of inflation and mandatory pay increases over the past several years while penalties for OSHA or MSHA violations remain laughably low. The highest penalty of the more than 200 citations received last year by the Sago mine was $878. But that was the exception. Most of the others were $250 or $60. At that rate, it’s hardly a good business decision to even bother fixing anything. And the administration has shut down any new worker protection standards in OSHA and MSHA.
Pennsylvania alone has lost over 51,000 workers in mining accidents. Yet in the end, the history of American mining is an optimistic one. Things are much, much better than they used to be. I’m reminded of this story from last spring, which is one of the best essays on the mining industry I’ve ever read:
But again, it’s not like that any more. Ventilation of the mines is now done by incredibly powerful fans that circulate clear air right up to the mining face. No mine in the US today uses dynamite. Instead, they use either “continous miners” (machines that cut through the coal with a device that looks like a huge thread spool covered in teeth) or “longwall machines” (which intentionally let the roof fall while holding open a safe pocket with steel plates). Miners in indoctrinated in safety every hour of the day. The average miner spends hours in safety training each week. Companies police safety now at a level that government inspectors of the past never even approached. The results of this drive to safety and improved equipment are clear. In 2002, 29 coal miners died in the United States. China, which still uses the old methods and whose safety efforts are about fifty years behind the US, lost more than 6000 people in the same year.
Coal mining is not only not one of the top ten dangerous jobs, it’s not even close. In fact, you’re more likely to be injured working in a fast food restaurant than in a coal mine (in the United States, at least. Just don’t ask me to get near a mine in China). And the reduction in deaths don’t stop with those unfortunate enough to die underground. One of my grandfathers died, in part, from “black lung.” My father-in-law is living with that same disease today. Black lung is caused by breathing in tiny particles of coal and has killed more miners than all the mine accidents put together. But again, there’s a happy ending - the circulation of air through modern underground mines is so good, that the air is actually better than that in many office environments.
There’s a reason things are so much better than they used to be, and it’s not because of deregulation, or the free market, or “right to work” laws, or “tort reform” to limit corporate liability for abuse and negligence. Things are better because of OHSA, MHSA, the EPA, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and a host of other governmental programs and regulations. Things are better because union workers fought and died to make things better.
The coal industry has done all those neat things. They’ve made it safer. Made it cleaner. Reclaimed the land. Why did they do it? Because we friggin’ made them do it, that’s why.
Mining is a critical part of our industrial economy, and it can be done safely, responsibly, and in an environmentally sustainable way. But we owe it to everyone who works in the mines — we owe it to everyone, really — to make sure that our mining companies follow the law. We need to make sure that, when tragedies strike, it is not because of neglect, or because some cost-benefit analyst told the company not to implement necessary safety precautions.
My prayers go out to the miners who died in the Sago Mine, and to their families. Their loss serves as a reminder to all of us, of the need to give working Americans a fair deal. It reminds us of the constructive role government regulation can play in building a better America. It reminds us that, in the end, we are all connected to each other, and our nation will move forward together, or not at all.