by Mike Hall, Nov 2, 2007

Mitch shafts mine workers. But why stop there? He also votes against children’s health care.

Many U.S. senators and representatives are taking the lead in the fight to toughen up the nation’s mine safety laws. There is a desperate need for stronger mine safety rules, as tragically demonstrated by this summer’s Crandall Canyon Mine collapse and last year’s Sago, Darby and Aracoma mine disasters.

Sen. Robert Byrd (D) and Rep. Nick Rahall (D), West Virginia lawmakers who represent thousands of Mountain State coal miners, are pushing hard for improved safety legislation, as are longtime champions of job safety like Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who would be hard pressed to find a coal mine in their states.

But Louisville Courier-Journal columnist David Hawpe writes there is one senator whom you might expect to be concerned about mine safety who is glaringly absent from the debate—Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell. Hawpe writes in an Oct. 31 column:

Sunday night there was another death at a coal mine where the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration [MSHA], overseen by Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, is behind schedule in conducting required annual safety checks.

MSHA has been cramped by Bush administration cuts in budget and staffing, but you haven’t heard the senior senator from the state with the most coal mines, Mitch McConnell, Chao’s husband, raising the Capitol roof about that.

“Ineffective enforcement, outdated technology and inadequate safety standards are the heart of the problem,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., told a mine safety hearing earlier this month. He was able to figure that out, despite representing a state that’s short on coal mines.

Unlike McConnell, he also has noted the miserable record of workplace safety enforcement posted by the Bush administration in other industries.

Hawpe goes on to note that Peg Seminario, AFL-CIO health and safety director, told a Senate committee that under the Bush administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration “has abandoned it’s leadership role in health and safety” and snuggled up to employers. Yet:

You didn’t hear McConnell…call for action.

McConnell has never been known as a job safety advocate. Take a look at this October 2006 article by Lexington Herald-Leader staff writer John Cheves, in which he explores how McConnell and Chao have operated as a “tag team” when it comes to sacrificing worker safety in favor of employers’ interests.

When it comes to workplace-related issues such as mine safety, the McConnell-Chao marriage presents an intriguing target for industry donors. At the Labor Department, Chao has taken what some reports say is a relaxed attitude toward the regulation of coal mines and an approach that labor unions perceive as hostile.

Sometimes Chao achieves what her husband cannot in the Senate, such as a wage freeze her department instituted on certain farm workers.

Chao attends her husband’s fund-raisers, chats with his donors and seeds her agency with his former aides. Chief among them is Deputy Labor Secretary Steven Law, whose last job was helping McConnell tap donors—Bob Murray included—at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. They collected an impressive $187 million in four years there.

For more on McConnell, his close relationship with Big Business, his fund-raising and other issues, click here to check out Cheves’ series of articles. For a more grassroots look at McConnell, visit Ditch Mitch KY, BlueGrassRoots and the Hillbilly Report.

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