by Tula Connell, Jul 7, 2006

Looks like Bush made another move behind the back of Congress. The Labor Department recently hired as a mine safety adviser Richard Stickler, whom the Senate in June refused to confirm as head of the nation’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA).

Knowing they didn’t have the support to win confirmation, Senate Republicans pulled back a scheduled vote to confirm Stickler, a coal industry executive whose nomination was opposed by the union movement and safety and health proponents.

Worker advocates opposed Stickler in large part because of his troubling track record on mine safety—and the importance of mine safety is again highlighted in an MSHA report published today.

The report found Darby, the eastern Kentucky coal mine where five men were killed in an explosion May 20, received several safety citations deemed “significant and substantial” less than two weeks before the blast, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal, which filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the report.

Federal mine inspectors found an accumulation of loose coal and combustible dust up to 30 inches deep in some places at Kentucky Darby Mine No. 1.

Quoted in the Courier Journal, Tony Oppegard, a former state and federal mine safety official who represents the families of four of the five miners who died in or after the explosion, yesterday said the report is:

indicative of a mine that doesn’t pay attention to safety.

At a time when the nation’s miners need—and deserve—the strongest possible ally to enforce the nation’s mine safety laws, Bush nominates Stickler, who managed mines from 1989 to 1996 that incurred injury rates at double the national average, according to statistics assembled by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) before Stickler’s appointment to head the Pennsylvania Bureau of Deep Mine Safety.

Worse, it looks like Stickler’s Labor Department post could be a temporary stint until Bush tries again to get his nomination through Congress. As SusanG puts it on the Daily Kos:

Even more comforting, of course, is the fact that a White House spokesperson denied that Stickler’s hiring signals that the administration has given up on his MSHA appointment; he’s simply being paid (by us, of course, as well as the taxpaying families of miners everywhere) as a consultant until his proverbial “up or down vote” (yes, this tired phrase was trotted out) comes to pass.

As always, get more great information on Jordan’s Confined Space blog.

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