SEARCH
Sago Families Share Sorrow, Demand Answers |
After working in the Sago coal mine for decades, James Bennett would have retired last month. But he didn’t get the chance. Bennett and 11 others were killed in January after being trapped underground for more than 12 hours after an explosion at Sago.
Choking with tears as she described how her father’s life was unnecessarily taken, Bennett’s daughter was among family members of the Sago disaster victims testifying yesterday at a federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) public hearing in Buckhannon, W.Va. Photos of the 12 miners lined the wall behind the main podium.
Family members also questioned the company’s assertion that lightning caused the explosion, angrily shouting when International Coal Group (ICG) officials blamed lightning. In addition, family member Peggy Cohen questioned the disappearance of a notebook in which Sago Mine manager Fred Jamison had recorded what he saw when he inspected the mine early on the morning of Jan. 2. The notebook would have revealed conditions immediately prior to the explosion.
In a letter to the victims’ families, the blast’s lone survivor, Randall McCloy, wrote that four of the oxygen self-rescuers the trapped miners tried to use did not work and they were forced to share the devices, which contain about an hour’s worth of oxygen. Several family members demanded answers about the faulty self-rescuers.
The family members were allowed to directly question Sago officials and MSHA representatives after initially being told they could only submit questions through a third party. But the angry outcry from the families and others forced hearing officials to reverse the ban on direct questioning.
However, questions from the public, state lawmakers, safety advocates and other concerned groups must still be routed through a third party. That rule eliminates the chance for tough follow-up questions if witnesses duck or evade the families’ questions. The Charleston Gazette reports:
United Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts said his organization represents some of the Sago miners, but was shut out from asking any questions.
Roberts, like other members of the public, was allowed to write questions on index cards and hope that hearing organizers would ask them.
“When I have a question, I write it down and pass it to the teacher,” Roberts told reporters in a briefing during a break in the hearings. “I’m a little frustrated by the process.”
Monday, we reported on a carbon monoxide alarm, which should have prompted a mine evacuation, that went off 20 minutes before the explosion. In a new post, Jordan Barab at Confined Space looks at that and several other aspects of the Sago blast, including the company’s claim that lightning was the cause.
After the disaster, the UMWA, at the request of the families, sought to participate in the investigation and accompany MSHA agents to the mine to help determine the cause of the tragedy. But ICG fought the union, taking it to court to prevent UMWA access. Eventually, as a result of a court order, union safety and health experts were allowed into the mine. Although the Sago Mine was not unionized, federal law states that a person or organization designated by two or more miners has the right to represent the miners and participate in investigations.
The UMWA emphasizes workplace safety and health measures that exceed those of federal mine safety laws. Miners at UMWA coal mines work under a contract that outlines miners’ safety rights, enabling workers to withdraw from an area considered unsafe without reprisal, establishing safety and health committees with the power to conduct their own regular inspections and assuring workers the right to accompany all federal inspectors on their rounds.
At a recent AFL-CIO mine safety forum, Roberts discussed the culture of safety at union mines, where new miners are “mentored” by veterans who don’t let them out of their sight and are restricted from certain jobs until they acquire sufficient experience. A culture of safety gives miners the rights and the protection to question and object to unsafe conditions and practices, he said.
No one can say with certainty that if workers at Sago had been represented by a union the explosion would have not happened or that the dozen miners would be alive today. As Roberts told the forum, “every time a coal miner goes into a mine, he could get killed.”
However, in an April 29 column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, professor Charles McCollester makes the case that “a union presence at the Sago mine might well have prevented the disaster.”
McCollester teaches in the Department of Industrial and Labor Relations at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and directs the school’s Center for the Study of Labor Relations. He writes about union contract provisions that require extensive training for emergency situations, escape drills, inspection rights and other safety issues that set UMWA mines apart from nonunion mines.
He also examines ICG’s claim that the firm inherited the safety problems when it took over the mine last year:
Wilbur Ross is the billionaire investor who formed International Coal Group in May 2004. He disavowed responsibility for the explosion, claiming ICG had only taken over Anker Coal’s Sago operation in June 2005. In reality however, Mr. Ross had been deeply involved in Anker for a decade as an investor. By early 2001 WL Ross & Co. controlled 40 percent of Anker stock.
All of ICG’s underground mines in West Virginia have accident rates that are worse than the national average. Anker’s Stoney River Mine has a rate 4.3 times and Sago mine three times the national average. Safety at the Sago Mine actually deteriorated after June 2005 when ICG took over managerial control of the mine.
All of ICG’s Anker mines are nonunion.
No Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
