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    • Devastating news
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    • Workers Memorial Day
    • The Dangers below
    • Connecting dots, to Delphi’s Miller
    • Life on Line
  • Union Front
    • Company postpones filing court motions
    • Workers authorize strike
    • Anti-union group grasping at straws
    • Dana workers choose the UAW
    • Election results may be key to passage
    • Member minute
    • Organizing Roundup
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Photo:MARK WILSON / GETTY IMAGES

Makeshift memorial for four Barbour County,
W. Va., miners who died in the Sago disaster.

The DANGERS below

Mine tragedies are grim reminder of need for union protections

The tragedy of 12 miners who died after a Jan. 2 explosion at the Sago coal mine in Tallmansville, W. Va., saddened workers across the country. The state’s worst mining disaster since 1968 caused workers everywhere to question just how safe they are at their own workplace.

When two more West Virginia coal miners were killed three weeks later in a fire at the Alma mine, the questions got bigger.

And when two miners were killed in separate incidents on Feb. 1, Gov. Joe Manchin requested that all coal mines stop production for a “safety stand down” and ordered immediate safety inspections of all 544 mines in the state.

It was too late for 16 dead West Virginia miners and nothing new for miners across the United States. It’s clear the Bush administration has turned a blind eye to worker safety – eliminating ergonomics rules, refusing to set air quality standards, cutting safety enforcement budgets and developing a so-called “partnership” with employers for voluntary compliance with suggested standards.

That means the best way to set and enforce safety in the workplace is when workers have a voice through a union. That was painfully clear in these mine disasters.

“We have no protection for our workers. We need to get the United Mine Workers (UMW) back in these coal mines,” John Bennett told NBC’s “Today” show as his father, Sago miner Jim Bennett, lay in a makeshift morgue nearby.

“Union representation in a mine means it’s a lot safer mine and workers have a safer workplace,” said UMW spokesman Phil Smith. “I’m not going to say there are no accidents in union mines, but the fact is union mines are safer mines.”

Just three weeks before the explosion that trapped the 12 miners, a section of the roof collapsed. In fact, Sago was cited for 208 safety violations in 2005, 96 of which were considered significant by the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

And when the mine exploded, it took seven hours before the first emergency rescue team arrived. They had to wait nearly four more hours until a backup crew arrived before they could enter the mine.

By law, every coal mine in the United States must have at least two rescue teams. Most don’t even have one.

“Many union mines have even more safety violations on record than the Sago mine,” said Smith. “The difference is those violations get fixed. Sago had violations repeatedly cited that were never addressed.”

That’s what you get with a “voluntary” compliance policy. “We know from decades of experience the importance of health and safety, and it starts at the bargaining table,” said UAW President Ron Gettelfinger. “This union always has – and always will – be strong on workplace safety.”

Investment group W.L. Ross & Co. is expert at union avoidance. It owns the International Coal Group (ICG), which runs the Sago mine. Known as a “vulture capitalist,” Ross buys so-called distressed industries that are often in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. (See next story.)

These industries usually have voided their union contracts or extracted major concessions.

They also foist their pension responsibilities off on the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. When the company emerges from bankruptcy, having broken its promises to workers, Ross scoops them up at bargain prices.

Not one of ICG’s mines has workers represented by a union. Even when some Sago workers and the families of the deceased asked the UMW to represent them in the accident investigation, the ICG refused them entrance into the mine until a federal judge ruled they had to.

It’s too late for these workers, but on Jan. 23 the West Virginia Legislature passed mine-safety reform laws that included emergency oxygen stockpiles and the use of communication systems a few weeks after the tragedies.

It’ll be too late for too many workers until the kind of safety you get in a union contract becomes the standard for all.

Larry Gabriel