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Crandall Canyon: ‘Putting Production and Profits Ahead of People’ |
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In the first two weeks after six coal miners were trapped Aug. 6 deep inside a Utah coal mine, the most familiar face to TV news viewers, following the rescue attempts, was Murray Energy President Robert Murray. He ranted against the Mine Workers (UMWA), pointed to phantom earthquakes and rambled on about his life in the mines—all the while claiming, “This isn’t about Bob Murray.”
In a column posted on the Huffington Post, UMWA President Cecil Roberts writes:
Bob Murray is right about one thing: This isn’t about him. It’s about the more universal practice, old as the history of mining, of putting production and profits ahead of people. And while mine operators have usually been the culprits, in recent years they’ve been ably assisted by MSHA. That agency’s leadership under the Bush administration rejected important safety reforms proposed during the Clinton administration and ignored the agency’s sole reason for existence—to enforce the law and do everything in its power to protect the health and safety of miners. They abandoned that mandate and shifted the agency’s focus to regulatory “compliance assistance.”
Murray was right. The Crandall Canyon story is about the six coal miners now presumed dead, the three rescue workers killed attempting to reach them. And it’s about why such a dangerous and deadly situation in the Crandall Canyon Mine was allowed to exist.
Click here to read Roberts’ entire column and here and here for our most recent coverage of the disaster.
2 Comments
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I had the privilege of hearing Cecil Roberts speak about the Sago Tragedy at Workers’ Memorial Day 2006 in Pittsburgh. His analysis of corporate greed and lack of regulatory oversite by government agencies is an issue that needs to be heard.
As my brother, Gary Puleio, http://garypuleio.blogspot.com was killed at Meadville Redi-Mix Concrete on 8/15/2001, due to unsafe working condition, I am painfully familiar with a system that puts profits and greed before workers’ lives. He had been employed there as a cement truck driver and fell 25 feet to his death, from a cement tower, while shoveling gravel off the hopper to clean it. OSHA accepted Redi-Mix’s claim that Gary just “wandered up there on his own” rather than being assigned this task, and after admitting no wrong doing, the company paid a $6000 fine for REPEAT violations for not posting danger signs at a confined space and not implementing measures to prevent unauthorized entry. This company had multiple serious violations issued only months before Gary was killed which were informally settled with reduced fines.
Corporations routinely “negotiate” with OSHA to downgrade fines through a process called “abatement” Aggrieved families of dead workers have no such access to OSHA.
In the past 20 years, 170,000 workplace fatalities occurred but only about 1700 were considered by OSHA to be due to the “willful” violation of safety laws. Without a “willful” designation it is difficult for prosecutors to make a case that an employer was criminally liable and civil suits pursued by families are not likely to succeed. The percentage of cases being downgraded from “willful” to less serious violations has been rising steadily. In 2001, the year my brother was killed, 60 percent of all cases were downgraded. Of the mere 1700 “willful’ cases out of 170,000 fatalities in the past 20 years, only 196 were referred to prosecutors. In these 20 years there were only 81 convictions and only 16 carried jail sentences.
It is a MISDEMEANOR to kill a worker by willfully violating safety laws. The maximum sentence is 6 months in jail.
OSHA fines are not issued as punishment and no amount of money can ever compensate for the loss of life. However the issuance of trivial fines and citations results in no accountability nor any acknowledgement of responsibility on the part of the offending company.
Donna Puleio Spadaro, MD
Workers’ Memorial Day Committee
Allegheny County Labor Council AFL-CIO
more information on Gary Puleio http://garypuleio.blogspot.com
That’s only 1% !! (and dpuleio, I am very sorry for your loss). In just about every corporation, fines are imposed as a mere slap on the wrist for anyone violating safety, environmental or basic human rights laws, and because the fines are so ridiculously low, most companies chose to pay them rather than protect workers or actually obey the laws. And of course, no one goes to jail for these violations. How have things gotten so bad in this country?!? One answer, of course, is that our government turns a blind eye, and insists that businesses and corporations can police themselves. We all know that just doesn’t happen. It’s like the fox guarding the hen house. But the bigger issue is that our government protects these businesses and corporations, because our political leaders are profiting from the status quo, and it has no desire to change things.
Well, things have got to change, because American workers are the backbone of our nation, and they are getting screwed by the companies they work for and by the government that should be in place to protect them.
Perhaps the most important quality we should look for in our next president is one who is pro-union and whose main focus is protecting our people here at home. Having compassion for Americans and American workers is a first step back to a true democracy. Other countries will take notice as our lives are turned around for the better.
Another thing that has to be done is that our government has to impose very heavy fines on those that break the rules and violate workers rights. The owners and corporate heads should be jailed, and their companies should be shut done, with workers collecting unemployment compensation, until they meet the strictest safety and environmental standards. I’ve said this before - make it hurt them, and things will change!