The Labor Department Should Stop Making Excuses About Mine Safety
When nine miners died as a result of the August 6 collapse at the Crandall Canyon Mine and during the ensuing rescue operation, the first thought a lot of people had was: Not again.
In 2006, 47 coal miners died in the nation's coal mines, starting with the 12 miners who died at the Sago mine in West Virginia, and people were right to wonder if this seemingly endless string of tragedies would ever come to a stop.
A common feature of many of these tragedies -- including the one at Crandall Canyon -- is that they were likely preventable. (I have a lot of questions about what happened at Crandall Canyon, and my Congressional committee has begun an investigation into the disaster. But the U.S. Labor Department has refused to fully comply with our request for the information we need to conduct that investigation, forcing us to issue a subpoena last week).
Preventable tragedies could continue to happen if we don't improve safety in the nation's mines, and Congress has a role to play in that effort. Right away, however, it's critical for the Department of Labor to stop putting the interests of coal mining executives ahead of the safety of the nation's miners. The Department has got to start aggressively implementing and enforcing the laws on the books.
Yesterday, my committee heard testimony from family members of miners who died at Crandall. Sheila Phillips, one of the witnesses at the hearing, lost her son Brandon in the Crandall disaster. She testified while her 5-year-old grandson, Gage, sat on her lap. "It is hard to have hope, only to have your heart broke," she said. "It is hard to see your grandson left fatherless."
I've seen this anguish from too many mining families, and I'm going to do everything I can to improve mine safety laws.
It's time for the coal mining industry and the Labor Department to stop making excuses and start doing everything possible to make mines safer.
Follow Rep. George Miller on Twitter: www.twitter.com/askgeorge
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The libertarian argument that the consumers will punish the unsafe coal companies is nonsense! With deregulated electricity I don't even know which powerplant my electicity comes from, much less whose coal they buy. If there are no unions and/or government regulation of safety the market may actually reward the unsafe operations, rather than the safe ones.
Workplace safety has to have some regulation from the government, if it is to be. The old "libertarian" spiel about the unsafe companies will go out of business is nonsense. If a mine owner saves a lot of money by working unsafely he may very well be more successful than the people with conciences, then that drags down the working conditions for all the miners. And the winger b.s. about "well more people get killed in Chinese mines" needs to stop too, we should be the leaders of the world, not a follower of China.
Representative Miller , With all due respect Congress should get off their dead bottoms and make it happen.
With well merited contempt-the 110th Congress still funds W & Co's wars, won't even think of impeaching W &/or Cheney and you expect them to give a raunchy, red rodents, rosy red rectum about the safety of under ground coal miners. Wait for the spin about blowing off mountain tops to get to the coal cheaply benefiting miners since the miners won't have to risk going into a mountain coal pit to get the coal. West, by God, Virginia was acres of green valleys and proud mountains before they blew the tops off the mountains and filled the valleys with over burden plus trash &/or garbage trucked in from other states.
"If government is necessary, bad government, at least for conservatives, is inevitable, and conservatives have been exceptionally good at showing just how bad it can be. Hence the truth revealed by the Bush years: Bad government--indeed, bloated, inefficient, corrupt, and unfair government--is the only kind of conservative government there is. Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well.
Three examples--FEMA, Medicare, and Iraq-- should be sufficient to make this point. Because liberals have historically welcomed government while conservatives have resisted it, it should come as no surprise that FEMA worked well under Clinton and so poorly under Bushes.
Upon assuming office, George W. Bush turned to former Texas campaign aide Joe Allbaugh to run FEMA and then shifted it into the new Department of Homeland Security (whose creation he had opposed). Allbaugh, and his hand-picked successor Michael Brown, like so many Bush appointees, were afflicted with what we might call "learned incompetence." They did not fail merely out of ignorance and inexperience. Their ineptness, rather, was active rather than passive, the end result of a deliberate determination to prove that the federal government simply should not be in the business of disaster management. "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management," Allbaugh had testified before a Senate appropriations subcommittee in May, 2001. "Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level." There was the conservative dilemma in a nutshell: a man put in charge of a mission in which he did not believe."
From "Why Conservatives Can't Fovern": http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0607.wolfe.html
It's simply part of their Economic Libertarian/Objectivist ideology. People die because of poor safety standards? Customers will simply "change vendors".
1. Government for the PEOPLE by the PEOPLE, not US PERSONS (Corporations)
2. Good unions. Easy to form.
Including you, sir.
Is it true that the owner of the Crandell mine, Bob Murray, is "One of the five finest men in America"?
Is it true that those words are attributed to Mr. Murray by the Senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell?
Is that same Senator that is married to the Secretary of Labor?
Elaine Chao. Is it not the duty of Labor Secretary to oversee mine safety?
The above three are alive and well (off), the workers...?
Thanks for standing up for miners, Rep. Miller, but you must know that the best way for miners themselves to improve their own safety situation is to JOIN THE UNION! The miner at your own hearing said it, and I'd sure like to hear you say it, too!
Union mines are safer mines, plain and simple. Of the 72 killed at coal mines in the last 21 months, six were UMWA members. That's 8%. About 32% of all miners are union members. I'm just a coal miner, so I don't know if that means you're three times as likely to die working nonunion, but I do know there is a huge difference.
I'm in favor of anything that will enhance safety in mines and in any other workplace environment.
One of the most effective ways to improve worker safety is not from top-down dictates by government or management, but through empowering workers and worker unions so they can determine first-hand what is best for themselves.
The time for a major revamp of our quaint, overly business-friendly labor legislation is long past due.
Anything? How about requiring everyone wear bubble wrap over their whole bodies just in case they fall down?
Over0g,
I'm sorry.
Your response is just mean.
Bubble wrap?
Would you face a family member and say such a horrid thing to their face?
I hope your next response is more gentle.
All the best,
Ani
Mr. Miller,
Please find a way to keep the general population aware of the many transgressions of the mine owners and their enablers in Congress. I am not a member of any miner's family but have read over the years of the infamous methods that mine owners have used to keep miners in a weak position to defend their rights. I read how the coal mine owners in the last century in Colorado called in a private goon squad of Pinkerton men to threaten and even shoot miners trying to form a union. I have no doubt that the owner of the Crandall mine would use the same tactics if he could get away with it.
Make the Dept. of Labor enforce the laws that are on the books. Investigate and show all of America what a mockery this administration has made of the miner's sacrifices.
I still see that Sego mine scene when those people went from euphorisa to greif in a split second because they were told all were alive and then that report was reversed to all dead.Yet that still was not enough to make our Congress and our government care enough to stop the underhanded mining pratices or hire enough honest inspectors to fine and/or close these unsafe mines.We have examples all over the world of safe mining yet we still allow greed and corporate liars like Bob Murray to run rough shod over the little people and cost them their llives.No more heatings ,no more words,it is time to act and not direspect the voices of these peole with hearings but grace them with mine safety that will enable them to live and work generation after generation knowing the roof of theri office will not cave in and kill them any longer.
Why isn't Mr.Murray behind bars?If a boss of a building anywhere in our nation let an office deteriorate to the point where the roof caved in to for the sake of his own bottom line he would be in jail.Why is this any different?Why are you having this same discussion again after that moving Sego family hearing I watched last year?I will never forget that young teen telling us how her Dad was her hero .Sadly now the best he can be is her guardian angel.Now you sir can be her hero along with your fellow legislators and end this long sad saga for our miners and their families.I hope you can be that man sir for her if for no other reason sir- for that girl.
Politicians are the most pathetic or people. Wait till people die in an accident (mines, bridge collapses etc), then use the "opportunity" for pub/action. Get over yourself congressman.
If there are Illeagals that were killed in that mine the owner should face even more charges.
OPEN AND HONEST GOVERNMENT! BUSH HAS SAID THAT TOO MANY TIMES. TIME TO PUT YOUR WORDS INTO ACTIONS BUSH.
Or is this just another Bait and Switch?
ya can't have 'open and honest' government with all the secrecy that Bush wants, just ain't gonna happen.
Congress should stop making excuses.
Everything has an excuse.STOP
Kudos Rep Miller but there is one thing wrong with your letter to us, you stated the dept of Labor when in fact it should State the dept of corporate "Interests", nothing more and nothing less.
The Dept of labor is nothing more than an office for the shills of this administration and its effects are telling as your letter so aptly illustrates, Sago not withstanding.
Since the anointment of this administration we have seen nothing but rampant Corporate crony ism at the expense of labor, and the devastating effects has been illustrated one to many times,.
(Big John Big John)
Every mornin' at the mine you could see him arrive
He stood six foot six and weighed 2-45
Kinda broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hip
And everybody knew you didn't give no lip to Big John
(Big John Big John) Big Bad John (Big John)
-Jimmy Dean
I don't think there's anyone that's ever
worked in or around or even heard of mining
that doesn't realize it's a Really Dangerous Job. Gravity sucks, and when you mole around
underneath hundreds and thousands of tons of
rock and dirt, you're literally taking your
life in your hands. Every year you read
about cave-ins, every year they go back to
it eventually, people want the minerals,
coal, or whatever it is they're digging for,
hats off to the miners, condolences for the
families that lost loved ones...hopefully the
future will see more robots. A robot can be
rebuilt, or replaced if there's a cave-in.
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