No Mine Safety; M.S.H.A. “riddled with loopholes”; 28 Dead.
April 15, 2010
Congrats to all the corporate thugs putting profits ahead of human safety,
President Obama on Thursday ordered a fresh round of coal mine inspections and a far-reaching review of mine safety, and said the federal government was partly to blame for the explosion that claimed 29 lives at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia this month.
"There’s still a lot that we don’t know," Mr. Obama said, during a brief appearance in the Rose Garden. "But we do know that this tragedy was triggered by a failure at the Upper Big Branch mine - a failure first and foremost of management, but also a failure of oversight and a failure of laws so riddled with loopholes that they allow unsafe conditions to continue."
the mine had previously been cited for hundreds of violations, many of them serious. Massey officials have contested many of the citations, a move that delayed their enforcement. Massey officials said Thursday that the agency had presented the company with three "Sentinels of Safety" awards in 2009, the highest number of such awards ever received by a company in a single year. [Further prof of corruption in the Mining co. and in the MSHA]
Meanwhile, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the federal oversight agency, has been roundly criticized as weak and inefficient.
Mr. Obama ordered a review; on Thursday, before his Rose Garden appearance, he met privately with Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and top officials from the mine safety agency, who presented their preliminary findings. Their report found that the Upper Big Branch mine "experienced a significant spike in safety violations" in 2009; the mine safety agency issued 515 citations and orders at the mine that year, and 124 in 2010.
"In short, this was a mine with a significant history of safety issues," the report said, "a mine operated by a company with a history of violations, and a mine and company that M.S.H.A. was watching [ignoring] closely."
The review called for new authority for the mine safety agency, including changes that would make it easier to list mines as repeat offenders, grant subpoena power for its investigations and give it the ability to increase criminal penalties for violators.
In response, Mr. Obama said the government would move quickly to get more inspectors out to mines, and he directed Ms. Solis to work with Congress to strengthen federal laws and with the Justice Department to pursue leads in the investigation.
In a clear criticism of his predecessor, George W. Bush, he said that the mine safety agency had for too long been "stacked with former mine executives and industry players." Mr. Obama has installed a team of former miners and health experts, including Joseph A. Main, the agency’s chief, who is a former safety official with the United Mine Workers of America. But he said the administration nonetheless needed to "take a hard look" at its own practices.
U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration faces training and oversight problems
By Ed O'Keefe, Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, April 7, 2010
The federal government's mine safety agency is facing a mounting backlog of appeals of health and safety violations from mining companies, according to concerned government auditors and lawmakers.
The agency stepped up its efforts after the 2006 Sago (W.Va.) mine disaster killed 12 workers and prompted the federal government's first major reforms in almost three decades.
A little over half of MSHA's roughly 2,400 employees perform inspections of the nation's coal mines, gravel pits, quarries and gold and silver mines, the agency said. Hundreds of new inspectors have joined the payroll since the Sago blast, expanding MSHA's inspection force by more than 26 percent.
But a government audit released last week faulted the agency for poorly training its inspectors. District managers have not been held accountable.
Enforcement was so lax that a new recruit performed inspections without completing minimum entry-level training and without defined circumstances that permitted recruits to skip training, the report said. Auditors recommended that MSHA hold supervisors accountable if inspectors failed to complete retraining and suggested suspending an inspector if they failed to complete retraining. Agency leadership agreed with the recommendations and said they will hold district managers, assistant district managers and field supervisors accountable if inspectors fail to complete retraining.
But stricter enforcement has prompted more appeals from mining companies looking to avoid paying bigger penalties. The companies may challenge violations and penalties to the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission.
Commission Chairwoman Mary Lu Jordan told a House panel in February that the length of the appeals process has grown in the past three years from an average 178 days to 401 days.
The Obama administration's fiscal 2011 budget includes funding to add four more judges to the commission's 10-judge panel, but the commission has said it needs a total of 26 judges to significantly reduce the backlog.
Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, credited the agency for beefing up enforcement and faulted companies for delaying the process.
"Miners' lives are in the crosshairs," Miller said at the hearing.
In an interview Tuesday, Wagner said that the agency's employees have a sense of mission.
"A number of people have told me -- even people who are in office jobs -- that they have relatives, fathers, brothers, cousins, who have been miners and how that's motivated them to really devote their careers to improve protection for the health and safety and well-being of miners," he said.
October 21, 2009
A career union official and mine safety expert, Joseph A. (Joe) Main’s selection as Assistant Secretary for Mine Safety and Health in the Department of Labor represents a dramatic turnaround for the leadership of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which favored the coal and other mining industries during the Bush administration, even after several high-profile mine disasters killed dozens of workers. Main was confirmed by the Senate on October 21, 2009.
Main graduated from the National Mine Health and Safety Academy as part of his five-decade career in the mining industry. He began working in coal mines in 1967, and it wasn’t long before he became a union safety committeeman and served in various local union positions for the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA).
In 1974, Main accepted a position as Special Assistant to the International President of the UMWA. Two years later he joined the union’s safety division, serving as a safety inspector, administrative assistant, and deputy director.
In 1982 he was appointed administrator of UMWA’s Health and Safety Department, where he would remain for the next 22 years and manage the international health and safety program and its staff.
After retiring from the UMWA, Main began working as a mine safety consultant. His recent work has focused on international mine safety, research and analysis projects on preventing mining accidents, and development of training programs and facilities to prepare miners and emergency responders for mine emergencies.
Labor leaders were delighted by Main’s nomination to takeover the Mine Safety and Health Administration. “I don’t think Obama could have chosen anyone better for the job,” Tony Oppegard, a Lexington, KY, lawyer and mine-safety advocate, told McClatchy Newspapers. “Joe has done more for mine safety in the U.S. than anyone in the past 25 to 30 years.”
Oppegard added that Main’s nomination signaled a change of direction in terms of mine safety in this country. “It’s a 180 degree shift from the policies of the Bush administration and its favoring of coal industry executives.”
Not surprisingly, coal industry executives were not happy when they heard the news about Main. “It’s going to be frustrating having somebody with an agenda that is pro-union,” said Bill Caylor, president of the Kentucky Coal Association. “We’re not looking forward to it.”
[good!]
-Noel Brinkerhoff
contact Obama! 