The Black Death
by ilene - April 12th, 2010 11:05 pm
The Black Death
By RALPH NADER, writing at CounterPunch
The tragedy at the Massey Energy Company’s very profitable Upper Big Branch coal mine at Montcoal, West Virginia, which so far has cost 25 miners’ lives, is another reminder of the immense human and environmental cost of this fuel.
More coal miners have lost their lives from cave-ins, explosions and lung disease since 1900 than all the Americans who died in World War II. The devastation extends to chronic sickness from breathing coal dust and to maimed coal miners, often seen walking on crutches in the hollows of Appalachia.
During our struggle in the late sixties and seventies to get Congress to authorize the federal government to regulate these pugnacious corporations, and protect among the most defenseless workers in our country (try working 700 to 1800 feet underground six days a week), coal company executives perpetuated a culture tolerant of safety violations. Coal companies are known for greasing their way with political campaign contributions, gross underpayments of property taxes and intimidation of people in poor coal mining country who had few alternative employment opportunities.
Safety and health improvements finally came from the forces of the law 
(especially the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969) and from an awakened United Mine Workers union. The safety efforts have had to overcome industry lawyers, lobbyists, corporate cover-ups, refusals to pay fines and other misbehavior stemming from unaccountable corporate bosses sitting in fancy offices far from the coal fields.
Half of the nation’s coal companies were fined a modest total of $7 million under the first Bush Administration for faking coal dust samples in 847 underground mines. This is just a cost of doing business instead of a serious deterrent to an epidemic of deadly coal miners pneumoconiosis.
Until new leadership came under Joseph Main in 2009 to run the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), Richard L. Trumka, former coal miner and head of the United States Mine Workers (UMW) union and now president of the AFL-CIO, said that George W. Bush converted “MSHA from an enforcement agency to a business consulting group” to King Coal.
With the sharp decline of UMW workers, as non-union strip-mining expands, studies have shown a consistently better safety record of unionized coal mines. The devastated Massey mine was non-union.…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site