New Mine Safety Chief: The Change We Needed
Today, the U.S. Senate confirmed Joe Main—by unanimous consent—as the new leader of the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA).
Main is a longtime advocate for safety and health in the mining industry. He worked 22 years as director of Occupational Health and Safety for the Mine Workers (UMWA). That’s a huge change from the Bush-era head of MSHA, coal-industry lobbyist Richard Stickler, who came under fire for failure to enforce mining safety laws.
BushWatch: Job Safety and Health Took Big Hits
This is our second look back at eight years of BushWatch. Today we review an area where outgoing President George W. Bush’s actions have a daily, and maybe deadly, impact on men and women who go to work every day—job safety and health.
Whether it was via regulation, legislation, executive order, policy decision or inaction, Bush repeatedly carried out the wishes of Big Business—less enforcement, weaker safety laws, lighter penalties or no regulation at all.
If there was any doubt whom he served, Bush erased that when he ended decades of practice and refused to name union representatives to serve on job-safety study and advisory groups, which also include academic, professional and management representatives.
Here are just some of the lowlights. For the complete accounting, go to BushWatch and click on Health and Safety in the top box.
