The Utah Mine Disaster: A Teachable Moment About Workplace Safety

Before the hordes of reporters move on from the Crandall Canyon Mine disaster, taking their note pads, satellite trucks, and the nation's attention with them, we should seize the opportunity to turn this tragedy into a teachable moment -- one that will allow us to look beyond the tragedy in Utah and the dreadful safety record of the mining industry, and focus on the larger issue of worker safety.

During the Bush administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the agency meant to oversee workplace safety, has been more intent on providing protection to employers than workers -- eliminating dozens of safety regulations since 2001.

"The people at OSHA have no interest in running a regulatory agency," said Dr. David Michaels, a George Washington University expert on workplace safety. "The concern about protecting workers has gone out the window."

Peg Seminario, director of occupational safety and health at the AFL-CIO, agrees: "They've simply gotten out of the standard-setting business in favor of industry partnerships that have no teeth."

Indeed, over the six and a half years Bush has been president, OSHA has imposed only one major safety rule, and has reduced the categories of recognized workplace injuries. Nevertheless, in 2005, the last year government statistics are available, 4.2 million workers were injured or became ill from on the job causes. And more than 6,800 workers died from workplace injuries.

Yet we rarely hear much about worker safety -- until high-profile deaths like the ones in Utah put the well being of American workers into the media spotlight. Why does it take a tragedy to grab our attention -- and for our government to pass and enforce worker safety laws?

The unsettling reason hangs over the Utah mine cave-in like a cloud of coal dust: as I detailed on Monday, more and more frequently, federal regulatory agencies are being used as a payback mechanism for rewarding major political donors, with industry hacks given key government positions not because they are the best people to protect the public interest but because they are willing to protect the very industries they are meant to supervise.

That's what has happened with OSHA, which is under the leadership of Edwin Foulke, a lawyer with a long history of open hostility to health and safety regulations. Earlier in his career, while serving as chairman of the federal agency that hears appeals from companies cited by OSHA, Foulke led a successful effort to weaken OSHA's enforcement power. With Foulke now in charge of his former target, OSHA has, not surprisingly, issued fewer significant standards than any time in its history.

Foulke's agency is charged with overseeing regulation of the transportation, agribusiness, and constructions industries -- powerful interests that have together contributed more than $630 million since 2000, with over $450 million of that going to the GOP.

Foulke and Richard Stickler, the fox Bush has guarding the mining industry henhouse, might as well have been presented to the GOP's big money backers with a ribbon around their heads, like the proper gift they were.

And in the Bush years you can find such overly cozy relationships between regulators and those they regulate throughout the government.

The Food and Drug Administration, for example, has long been under the thumb of the very pharmaceutical companies it is supposed to oversee. This dysfunctional dynamic has proved especially deadly, with numerous drugs being pulled off the market after causing multiple deaths and serious injuries in patients.

Following the money once again, we see that Big Pharma spent over $170 million on lobbying in 2006, and has contributed over $66 million to federal candidates since 2002, with over $46 million of it going to Republicans.

In return, the Bush administration has served up FDA commissioners like Lester Crawford who was forced to resign after failing to disclose that he owned stock in companies regulated by his agency, and current FDA commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach, a vocal supporter of faster drug approvals.

The Bush administration has also given back to big business interests by taking away: the FDA is conducting only half the food inspections it was doing in 2003, and safety-testing of U.S.-produced food has dropped nearly 75 percent since 2003. This despite an upswing in highly publicized food recalls and outbreaks of food poisoning. And with more and more of our food coming from other countries, how does it make you feel to know that just 1.3 percent of food imports were physically examined by FDA inspectors in 2006?

The bracing truth is that we now have a regulatory system in which corporate greed, political timidity, and a culture of cronyism are the order of the day.

It was announced today that after Labor Day, the Senate will hold hearings on the Utah Mine disaster. And, in the House, Reps. Lynn Woolsey and George Miller have promised a probe into the Utah disaster and its aftermath. Such congressional investigations are essential. But they need to focus on more than what happened at Crandall Canyon Mine - and even on more than just mine safety. They should also focus on exposing all the reasons in our political system that make it so easy for the health and safety of U.S. workers and consumers to be reduced to an afterthought - -moved to the front burner only when tragedy strikes. And then only for a short while.

Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff

Comments

[tcagle]

With coal, it's either the pits, or you get the shaft.
Save the coal and petroleum, and use renewable sources.

[viflyer]

Have you heard ONE Democratic presidential candidate talk about his issue?? Edwards is the only one that has even skirted the edges of the issue.

Can you imagine a QUESTION at a Democratic debate related to workplace safety or the corruption of our regulatory agencies? We will run this entire Presidential campaign without broaching the subject.

WHY?

[GJKBEAR]

Well, perhaps someone should ask this question! I have not heard one Republican being asked this question either! Workplace safety should not be a partisan issue.

[viflyer]

Come on give me a break! Yes the Dems are bad, but the Republicans ENTIRE workplace saftey agenda is to turn the clock back to 1889!! It's a discrace!

[epmahc]

Once as an 18 year old kid I was visiting my grandmother in WVA. For the summer. Having nothing to do I got a job working in one of the areas coalmines. Well to make a long story short there was a cave in. I was trapped with 4 other miners for 13 hours. It was the most horrific thing that has ever happened to me. When they finally dug us out I walked up to the foreman and quit. Being a company man the foreman told me "Oh this stuff happens all the time you are not going to let a little thing like that stop you are you". Being from chicago I told him that I would rather take my chances getting shot in a drive by than go back into that mine. I think cnn dropped the ball. I'm glad the Huffington post picked it up.

[Raven]

Arianna, as is so often the case, you're right on target.

But I'd disagree that it's a systemic problem that made it easy for our entire regulatory system to fall apart.

It was not at all easy. It took years to dismantle even as the final collapse happened shockingly quickly.

But the weakness was there since those glorious Reagan years.

This is not a systemic failure so much as a planned corruption of a complex system meant, above all, to maintain dignity for all its citizens.

It took work to break it apart.

And the traitors who did that - with cunning and intense effort - should pay.

Granted the idiot is, well, an idiot.

But his friends and supporters did the real work.

Leaving American workers to pay the price.

In my mind, something's really wrong with that picture.

And, if American workers are going to lead the world again, we're going to have to figure out a way to change it.

[missette]

"And, if American workers are going to lead the world again, we're going to have to figure out a way to change it."

For starters, workers can stop voting for politicians who appeal to their ignorance, fears, and religion. For too long, since Reagon really, they've been easily led to believe that no regulations are necessary even in matters of life and death and that if, say, a mine collapses, it was all God's will. In short, they need to stop voting against their own interests (politicians are now using immigration to appeal to their fears and maintain the status quo), and demand change.

[RobD]

Leaving American workers to pay the price . . . that's the name of the game, get with it, the new world order is here.

Why do you and I and millions think there's something wrong with that? Because we've been duped into thinking things will be as we were told they should be, not as they are, and will continue to be.

That we "have to figure out a way to change the world" is folly. Those who run the world, think it's perfect, and the whimpering of the common soul is background noise, easily quelled by holding a carrot over their heads that says, "Some day you will lead the world again."

[Dirkh]

Since at least the days of Lincoln Steffens, investigative reporters have documented the many ways in which regulatory agencies metamorphose into shills for the industries they were created to regulate. This excellent article continues that tradition by highlighting an appalling contemporary example.

[ikkytito]

I'd like to aee the historical record-how many mines in the last 30 years been sealed up with bodies inside? Is it a common practice?

[WoodyCPM]

The history of mining, not just coal mining but especially coal mining and coal owners, in the U.S., is simply fantastically brutish and corrupt. To read the history is to swear you're reading about some third world country, or China.

[ikkytito]

what is interesting to me- is the fact that this is a mine so unsafe they cannot even bring out the bodies-WOW. Capitalism at its best huh?

[viflyer]

It's ONLY become unsafe since men died. Sad state of affairs. AND, if Murray could get away with it he would be back in there in a heartbeat. He probaly lies awake at night thinking about the remaining coal he can't get at because of those pesky dead guys.

Let things calm down for acouple of months and he will be back in the hill under a different name in a "safe" location. Mark my words!

[ikkytito]

Thanks for the groundwork-this kinda stuff requires lots of research-thank God for the internet and Arianna Huffington

[viflyer]

Remember when Joe Scarbourough and the rest of the Republican clowns took over Congress? They got there by convincing the public that regulation was destroying the country. Every American family was paying $2000.-/ye­ar in unnecesary regulation. The "faceless" beauracrats were stealing the money out of their pockets. It was a great "joint" effort between corporate donars and the Republican Party. Heck, the public bought into it to the point where the Clinton Administration was spouting the same houy. Regulatory agencies needed to be "parteners" with industry. Fines only made things worse for the public. It was up to the government to clean up polution, NOT the violators. The whole system got turned on it's head.

The public still buys it. You know, the government can't do anyhting right, get the Government out of the way. Just this afternoon I heard Tucker Carlson going off on this identical RANT.

It would take YEARS to again protect the publics interests, and build back the ability of Government Regulatory agencies to protect the publics health and wellfare. BUT, the corporations have done their job. The public has been fed so much anti government propaganda that Americans now hate their government, and don't trust it to protect their interests.

A country that doesn't TRUST it's own government to protect it's interests is doomed!

[missette]

That was the point. Claim government is ineffective to a consumeris­m-controll­ed dumbed-down electorate despite years of evidence to the contrary (it wasn't corporate American that led the charge to he moon, the interstate highway system, lifting the elderly our of poverty with social security, keeping our drinking water clean, ensuring we aren't required to work seven days a week, insisting on equal pay for equal work - it was government), and then proceed to dismantle and destroy government by appointing cronies as department heads instead of professionals and dismissing all warnings of catastrophe adhead, be it terrorist attacks or Class 5 hurricanes. Mission accomplished!

[WoodyCPM]

I do believe that you're correct. The neocons game plan all along has been to make government even more useless and obstructionist, more bloated and incompetent, so that more people, the same one's who aren't paying attention, can then be reeled into the neocon orbit by propaganda about how ineffective and wasteful government is. Their entire aim has been to make government dysfunctional.

[Tom95134]

Good work on bringing the mis-management (can we hope a charge of negligent homicide?) of Bob Murry to the attention of the world. It was obvious to any thinking person that his hand-wringing was all show and done for the benefit of the cameras and possible litigation. Earthquake my ass. When I saw to first reports and then the mining plan it was obvious that what had happened was an inward explosion of the walls of the coal seam. Those miners peobably didn't hardly know what hit them.

[ikkytito]

of course it was tom. Murrey was mining the coal pillars to get the last ton out before the friggin thing collapsed. but a tragic thing happened on the way out of the mine. Oh well 170 miners died in Chine the other day. its ok-we need the coal.

[universalhealth]

I agree that there isn't much, if any interest and activism on the part of progressives about worker safety. I maintain a health blog called Universal Health. The majority of readers - and commenters - are right wing regressives who spam and make ad hominem attacks. Progressives very rarely visit and comment, although I've made repeated invitations to do so. The Pump Handle is a public health blog that has diligently covered mine safety, worker safety and regulatory issues. It has done stellar reporting about the Utah incident, and yet, none of the major blogs, the Huffington Post included, has given it even a passing glance. We health bloggers have been ignored and taken for granted by the progressive blogosphere.

I don't have the answer except to say that with prolonged indifference to us, we probably will be less and less of a presence until we just die a death that isn't even recognized, let alone acknowledged by progressives. Ignore us at your peril - and the nation's health also stays imperiled.

[only1Demvoter]

universalhealth : There are reams of data out there... ( I need say no more... Your point is well put )
I am on my way over to Universal Health weblog now. I will do my best to spread this link throughout­...
( * Note post from 714Day above ).
More to follow. -ralph

[714Day]

Boy, the lack of comments from readers is a good indication about the level of concern out there.
The common good is passe, obviously. How can that matter in the country that won't pay enough for their goods to allow an American worker to make a decent wage. We are all a part of the problem.
Keep raising the flags for the things that count, Arianna. Everyone else is too busy counting something else. See how well that's worked out?

[Jjc2006]

Sadly the meme of how Unions have hurt the workplace and OSHA is bad has been ground into the minds of young people who came of age in the 80s.

I cannot tell you how stunned I get when I hear these 30 somethings who support the Bush administration talk about how they "KNOW" unions made things worse and that OSHA just makes it impossible to make profits.

[ShanghaiGuy]

It's so interesting as an American living in Shanghai to observe the many ways in which China is becoming more like the USA ...

...and the USA is becoming more like China.

[Bad actor]

It is the reflection of the New World Order that you see. Project it 20 years and ask yourself if China will be democratic or the USA will be communistic/fascist dominated by corporate power and a ruling elite. Bush Sr. used to deride "that vision thing" (the lofty goals associated with freedom, justice and a better life for all people) with a sneer. Starting with the Reagan era,the "vision" became GREED IS GOOD and it has overwhelmed the purpose that made our nation great.

[provgrays]

This is not a teachable moment for corporations because safety cuts into the bottom line. Workers themselves must organize, strike and win bargaining power by shutting down mines, factories and other work places where safety is not valued or provided.

There are no new issues, only the endless repetitive cycle of fighting again for basic rights and dignity. For workers, that begins with a picket line and the courage to threaten the stockholders with diminished returns.

We may have to repeat the brickbat era of the early unions, but it beats disposable lives to plump up the annual report.

[sbrownmiller]

Yes. We must remember that Crandall Canyon was not a union mine. And that the UMW spokesman spoke truth while owner Murray dissembled and dissembled and dissembled with a false smile on his face.

[QuestionReality]

Unfortunately, as my friend, the safety mgr mentioned below has found out, union workers tend to hate safety people. When an unsafe condition is found and work is stopped, everyone is sent home and not paid. Most of them, in his experience, would rather not report an unsafe condition than to have to go without a day's pay.

[homerwill77]

we need to read the life of MOTHER JONES to get the real story of mines and miners she fought for the rights and safty of all workers she was a true american

[only1Demvoter]

Thank You Arianna... I am disabled for life due to a workplace accident that could have been prevented with proper OSHA oversight of the employer.
The accident also made me a victim of The Terminator's Workers Comp. Reforms in California.

Protect the Working Class!!
More to follow. -ralph