Author: Mike Lillis

Massey Energy, the coal giant that owns the West Virginia mine where 29 miners were killed in a blast April 5, might be racking up thousands of safety violations at other projects since the explosion; it might have former workers decrying its safety policies; and it might be contesting more citations than any other mining company in the nation.

But that, the company said Tuesday, doesn’t give lawmakers free license to attack its safety record. Responding to yesterday’s Senate HELP Committee hearing on mine safety, Massey said it’s “disappointed” that the discussion “degenerated into political grandstanding.”

“Unfortunately, all the sound bites in the world will not improve the safety of a single miner in America,” the statement reads, adding that overzealous federal regulators — not the industry — are responsible for the enormous backlog of citation appeals.

In 2006, according to MSHA records, MSHA assessed violations against the coal industry totaling $35.1 million. By 2008, this had grown to $194.2 million. The fines levied increased 5.5 times. With the number of violations much higher and the fines per violation much higher, it is not surprising that the number of contests increased.

Of note, Democrats declined to invite anyone from Massey to testify at Tuesday’s hearing. A Senate aide said that lawmakers didn’t want to interfere with the current probe into the cause of the deadly blast at the Upper Big Branch.

But that’s a curious argument, particularly in light of the fact that the other high-profile hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday — featuring executives from Goldman Sachs called to defend their investments prior to the recent global economic meltdown — came even as the S.E.C. has filed civil charges against the company, charges that didn’t prevent Senate lawmakers from grilling those executives for 11 hours.

Republicans hoping that voter unrest is targeted largely at the majority Democrats won’t like what they see in the latest Washington Post-ABC poll. That survey found that fewer than a third of voters are inclined to vote for their current representative, regardless of the lawmakers’ party affiliation. The Post reports:

Dissatisfaction is widespread, crossing party lines, ideologies and virtually all groups of voters. Less than a quarter of independents and just three in 10 Republicans say they’re leaning toward backing an incumbent this fall. Even among Democrats, who control the House, the Senate and the White House, opinion is evenly divided on the question.

This isn’t a new trend. Indeed, elections experts were warning months ago that Americans’ distrust in Congress crosses party lines to target all incumbents. Because the Democrats control more seats, of course, they stand ready to suffer the backlash more severely. But today’s poll results are a warning to Republican leaders that, in November, they’re in for a fight as well.

President Obama speaks at a memorial service on Sunday for miners who died in the Upper Big Branch explosion. (EPA/ZUMApress.com)

Recently released inspector notes charging Upper Big Branch operators with “negligence” on safety issues offer further evidence that the mine owner, while chiefly responsible for conditions inside the mine, wasn’t solely to blame for this month’s deadly blast, according to a number of mine safety experts. Federal regulators, they charge, also dropped the ball by failing to close the mine despite its troubled history of safety violations.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

“This is a case not only of the operator thumbing his nose at the strictly legal requirements and regulations,” Ken Hechler, former West Virginia congressman who was lead sponsor of a 1969 law that overhauled mining safety, said this week in a phone interview. “It also involves a failure of the Mine Safety and Health Administration itself to act aggressively against the mine in order to ensure that either the conditions be made safe, as provided in the law, or to toughen the enforcement … to close the mine.”

Virginia-based Massey Energy, which owns the Upper Big Branch, “has a long history of having used every possible loophole to avoid the piling up of fines,” Hechler added, “which, of course, should have given the authority — which is clearly contained in the law — for [MSHA] to have closed that mine.”

A former MSHA manager echoed that sentiment this month, telling TWI that MSHA leaders — notably Joe Main, who heads the agency — haven’t done nearly enough to confront coal companies that show patterns of safety violations.

“[MSHA] was soft-pedaling — staying in the background, keeping a low profile,” the former official said. “And you can’t do that with this industry. You’ve got to use a big stick — especially with Massey.”

The comments arrive a few days after MSHA released inspectors notes charging operators at Upper Big Branch with “high negligence” and “a reckless disregard of care to the miners” just weeks before an explosion there killed 29 miners.

The handwritten notes, which provide further details surrounding the long-list of safety violations racked up at UBB this year, fly directly in the face of recent claims by Massey that safety is the top priority of its operations. Although these specific problems were eventually fixed, the notes could still lend clues as teams of inspectors begin investigating the cause of the blast — and Congress probes charges that Massey’s corporate culture prioritized profits above worker safety.

The inspectors’ notes tell a remarkable tale. One official with the Mine Safety and Health Administration visiting the Upper Big Branch on January 7, for example, found that a ventilation system — designed to flush toxic gases with fresh air pulled from outside — was pushing air in the wrong direction. “In case of an emergency,” the inspector wrote, “the men on this section would not have fresh air in primary escapeway.”

Furthermore, the mine foreman knew about the problem, the inspector noted, but when he informed higher-ups, “He was told not to worry about it.”

The vent problem, which had existed for at least three weeks prior to the inspector’s visit, “will result in fatal injuries from smoke inhalation and inhalation of harmful gases in emergency situations,” the inspector wrote, adding that such an incident is “reasonably likely to occur” in Upper Big Branch because “this mine liberates methane.”

In short, “the operator has shown a reckless disregard of care to the miners on this section and [the] men that use this escapeway,” the inspector wrote. Among those who knew of the problem, the inspector added, were Chris Blanchard and Jamie Ferguson, president and vice president, respectively, of the Performance Coal Company, a Massey subsidiary that operates the Upper Big Branch project.

That wasn’t the only instance. The same inspector, visiting another part of the Upper Big Branch on the same day, found that another vent system was pushing the toxic return air into another escapeway. The superintendent on duty knew of the problem, the inspector noted, but didn’t fix it until the inspector made a fuss.

An accident, the inspector wrote — a reasonably likely event because of the gassy nature of the mine — “will result in fatal injuries.”

“I believe [the] operator has show high negligence [pursuant] to fact of management knowing where problem is and fixing immediately,” the inspector wrote.

There are other examples:

• On January 11, an inspector cited UBB for a misaligned belt that was rubbing another structure to the point that smoke was seen coming off the belt. A resulting accident, in that gassy mine, was deemed “highly likely,” the inspector wrote. The condition had existed for “at least two months.”

• On January 20, an inspector cited a cut in an electrical cable that wasn’t sufficiently sealed. Because the area was wet, workers were at risk of fatal electrocution, the inspector said, adding that such an episode was “reasonable likely if normal mining were to continue.” The section electrician, the inspector wrote, knew of the problem.

The notes also indicate a certain disdain among Massey managers for the MSHA officials. One company supervisor, an inspector noted on January 7, “feels as though MSHA personnel come here expecting the worst and not giving them enough benefit of the doubt. I explained to him that I would be writing what I saw.”

Appearing at a Senate mine-safety hearing Tuesday, Jeff Harris, a former Massey miner, gave a damning account of conditions in the company’s mines — testimony that was strikingly similar to accounts given by other former Massey employees.

“When we got to a section to mine coal, they’d tear down the ventilation curtain,” Harris told lawmakers. “The air was so thick you could hardly see in front of you. When an MSHA inspector came to the section, we’d hang the curtain, but as soon as the inspector left, the curtain came down again.”

Massey, for its part, has denied the claims that it doesn’t take the safety of its workers seriously — a position the company was defending as recently as this week. “Our corporate culture today stresses three priorities: safety, ethics and excellence,” reads a letter given to reporters Monday. “Massey Energy’s members are among the best trained, most productive and safest miners in the world.”

The company’s website reiterates that message, claiming that its “formula for success” is based on an “S-1, P-2″ model: safety first, production second. It’s a formula that some former employees are quick to dispute.

“That’s bullshit,” Chuck Nelson, a former Massey miner who’s since become an environmental activist with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, said of Massey’s safety-first claims. “You do what you’re told.”

Bolstering the critics’ claims, MSHA officials announced Tuesday that sections of three other Massey mines were shut down in recent weeks after the agency received anonymous complaints about safety concerns there. One of those withdrawals came after the Upper Big Branch explosion.

With Massey seemingly back to business as usual, Hechler said, Congress will have to play a role if policymakers hope to prevent the next mining disaster.

“Obviously, the chief burden should be on the company,” Hechler said. “But this process of writing good laws that are not enforced somehow has to be toughened to require the enforcement.”

Just hours before Senate lawmakers met this afternoon for a hearing on mine safety — a hearing inspired by the deadly blast at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, W.Va. — the Labor Department revealed that, in response to a series of anonymous complaints, the agency has closed parts of three other Massey mines in West Virginia since March 24. One of those closures occurred on April 9 — four days after the explosion at UBB.

“When our inspectors went in those mines, we found illegal conduct that one would not think [existed] in mines today,”Joe Main, who heads the Mine Safety and Health Administration, told the Senate lawmakers.

Main said that the agency doesn’t know the identities of those who called in with safety concerns. But the “specificity” of the complaints, he added, seemed to indicate that they were probably Massey miners.

(No one from Massey was asked to appear at Tuesday’s hearing because lawmakers “didn’t want to step on the company’s toes,” in the words of one Senate aide, while the Department of Labor is investigating the Upper Big Branch blast.)

The three projects subject to the surprise raids were: Spartan Mining Co.’s Road Fork #51 Mine in Wyoming County, W.Va.; Inman Energy’s Randolph Mine in Boone County, W.Va.; and Independence Coal Co.’s Cook Mine in Boone County, W.Va. At two of the three projects, inspectors seized the phone lines to prevent mine operators from warning the miners underground that an inspection was imminent.

Details of the infractions follow:

On March 24, 2010, MSHA received an anonymous hazard complaint reporting that Road Fork #51 Mine was running two continuous miners on a single split of air. The complaint also alleged that the operation was mining into the coal face deeper than its approved plan allowed and had experienced several face methane ignitions that were not reported to MSHA. As a result of the complaint and MSHA’s surprise inspection tactics, the company was caught violating several mine standards. Eight 104(d)(2) withdrawal orders were issued for the mine’s failure to maintain the minimum air quantity ventilation requirements, accumulation of combustible materials and roof control violations. Proper ventilation is required by the law to prevent mine explosions and black lung. In one instance, the operator failed to follow the approved roof control plan by illegally mining 8 feet beyond the allowable depth of 20 feet. Miners were withdrawn from these sections, effectively stopping production, until the mine was re-inspected to make sure the problems were fixed.

Also on March 24, 2010, MSHA received an anonymous complaint about hazardous conditions at Randolph Mine just days after a small fire occurred there. Mine inspectors found that the mine operator was not providing adequate ventilation to reduce the risk of explosions and exposure to coal mine dust. The practices were similar to those found at Road Fork # 51 Mine; the operator was also caught taking illegal deep cuts into the coal. Nine 104(d)(2) withdrawal orders were issued for a variety of hazards including inadequate ventilation. Inspectors found that there was no air movement in some sections caused by line curtains (used to control air flow) being rolled up for a distance of 60 feet. There were also inadequate on-shift examinations as well as obvious and extensive accumulation of loose coal up to 20 inches deep. (Loose coal accumulations can provide the fuel for mine fires.) The section foreman was observed operating the continuous mining machine with the ventilation line curtain 29 feet from the working face where the plan required a maximum of 20 feet. Rock dust – a critical explosion protective measure – had not been applied in seven entries to the required 40-foot distance. Miners were withdrawn from the affected area while the violations were being abated.

On April 9, 2010, following the tragic explosion at Upper Big Branch Mine, MSHA received a hazard complaint about Independence Coal Co.’s Cook Mine regarding water in the escapeway. Upon inspection of the mine, six 104(d)(1) orders were issued for taking illegal deep cuts of 30 feet into the coal face when the plan allowed a maximum of 20 feet, blockage of the primary escapeway with water, inadequate pre-shift and on-shift examinations, and excessive widths beyond the roof control plan parameters. MSHA inspectors also found that numerous roof bolts were sheared off and damaged, increasing the risk of hazardous roof falls.

Jeff Harris, of Beckley, W.Va., is an underground coal miner who once worked for Massey Energy. For that experience, he was on Capitol Hill this afternoon testifying about the company’s safety record. And his story doesn’t even remotely resemble the picture Massey has tried to paint this month of a company dedicated to the safety of its workers.

“I feared for my safety the whole time that I worked for them,” Harris said, adding that he quit for that reason after about six months. “I’d rather starve to death.”

Of note, many of Harris’ experiences are strikingly similar to those of Chuck Nelson, another former Massey miner who spoke with TWI from his West Virginia home last week.

Here, for example, is Harris describing Massey’s ventilation systems:

When we got to a section to mine coal, they’d tear down the ventilation curtain. The air was so thick you could hardly see in front of you. When an MSHA inspector came to the section, we’d hang the curtain, but as soon as the inspector left, the curtain came down again.

And here’s Nelson describing the ritual of Massey officials when a safety inspector gets to the gates:

They call and tell us to start hanging our curtains, start cleaning the coal dust up, start rock-dusting the ribs — get everything right because he’s on his way in there. … But as soon as they’re on their way outside — before they get outside — these line curtains are jerked down again. They’re back to doing the same old business as usual.

Harris on Massey’s adherence to methane-detecting policies:

Sometimes, if we had heard that there was too much gas, we’d be told the problem was taken care of and not to worry. We might not believe them that the problem was fixed, but we had a job to do and we worked. Then when an inspector came by, he would find excess gas and shut us down. This showed us that the Company couldn’t be trusted.

And Nelson:

They had sniffers — what they called sniffers — and whenever you hit a pocket of methane [above a certain level], it shut the power off the [coal harvester]. … But I’ve seen these sniffers bridged out.

Harris on so-called “lost-time accidents”:

Reports about Massey’s lost time accidents are also misleading. I was lucky and never got hurt while I worked for Massey, but I know plenty of other guys who did get injured. If you got hurt, you were told not to fill out the lost time accident paperwork. The Company would just pay guys to sit in the bathhouse or to stay home if they got hurt – anything but fill out the paperwork.

Nelson discussing the same trend:

I’ve hauled people out of the mines on a stretcher, at Massey mines. … And the very next day you’ll see ‘em walking up the hill, coming back to the mine office on crutches and [in] neck braces — just to keep from having a lost-time accident, to keep ‘em from filling out an accident report.

Here’s Harris describing why workers didn’t complain about the safety conditions:

Either you worked or you quit. If you complained, you’d be singled out and get fired. Employees were scared, but like me they have to feed their family. Jobs are scarce, and good paying coal mining jobs are hard to come by.

Nelson on the same topic:

I knew that if I said something, I wouldn’t have a job tomorrow.

Harris, who has also worked for union mines, said that, on safety issues, the difference between union and non-union mines is night and day. Union miners, he said, can report safety concerns without the fear of losing their jobs. “Those men at Massey,” he said, “they don’t have that right.”

Nelson said much the same thing last week:

When we were all union, if there was something that came up, it wasn’t no problem at all to shut that mine down until everything was fixed. Non-union [workers], they ain’t got that right.

Although no one from Massey appeared at Tuesday’s hearing, Bruce Watzman, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, played the part of surrogate defender.

“I don’t think there’s much value in ostracizing an individual or an organization,” Watzman said in response to a question from Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) about Massey’s safety record. Watzman also said that policymakers shouldn’t overreact to this month’s deadly mining blast by enacting new mine safety regulations. The current safeguards, he said, are plenty tough enough when they’re properly enforced.

Congress, though, seems poised to disagree.

Quite aside from the questions about Massey Energy’s role in the recent blast that killed 29 miners in West Virginia has been the question of whether the Mine Safety and Health Administration had the power to close the mine based on its long history of safety violations.

And the answer, according to a number of mine-safety experts, is an emphatic yes.

Ken Hechler, the former West Virginia congressman who was lead sponsor of a 1969 law that overhauled mining safety, said this week that while most of the fault lies with Massey, his bill “clearly” authorized MSHA officials to close unsafe mines.

“This is a case not only of the operator thumbing his nose at the strictly legal requirements and regulations,” Hechler said in a phone interview. ”It also involves a failure of [MSHA] itself to act aggressively against the mine in order to ensure that either the conditions be made safe as provided in the law, or to toughen the enforcement … to close the mine.

“There is sufficient legal authority under the circumstances that we know are present in that mine — a highly gassy mine — [for MSHA to have closed it],” Hechler added.

Complicating the issue, Massey and other coal companies have launched a strategy in recent years of filing more and more protests against safety violations — a trend that’s created an enormous backlog of citations and prevented MSHA from establishing the “pattern of violations” required to shutter entire mines. Yet, according to some experts, MSHA could have closed that loophole on its own, but simply chose not to confront the coal companies over a reform they oppose.

“[MSHA] was soft-pedaling,” a former MSHA manager told TWI recently. “Staying in the background, keeping a low profile — and you can’t do that with this industry. You’ve got to use a big stick.”

There are signs that the administration has gotten the message. Not only has President Obama kept the story on the front pages — most recently with Sunday’s visit to commemorate the 29 miners killed in the blast — but the Department of Labor yesterday announced that it will propose new “pattern of violations” rules governing the closure of troubled mines. Critics of the current policy, though, might not be pleased about the timeline: The proposed rules are not scheduled for release until January 2011.

Speaking at a labor conference in Washington today, Hilda Solis went after Massey Energy for the company’s role in the explosion that killed 29 miners in Montcoal, W.Va., earlier this month. But the Labor secretary also laid some of the blame for that tragedy on federal regulators and policymakers for failing to enforce the safety measures that Massey has such a long history of violating.

“The science is there, the technology is there. But it’s about the employer,” Solis said at the Fairfax hotel near D.C.’s Dupont Circle. “And yes, it’s also about the regulations and the enforcement.”

Here we are in the 21st Century, and these things are still going on. … We have to have teeth that will encourage people to take care of employees in the work place.

After the speech, a handler whisked Solis away before I could ask any questions about what teeth she had in mind.

Tomorrow afternoon, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will meet to examine the country’s mine safety policies — the first such exploration since 29 miners were killed in a horrific mine blast in Southern West Virginia on April 5. And although Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) isn’t a member of that panel, he’s been asked to participate in the proceedings, his office just announced.

Federal regulators have been feeling the heat since this month’s blast, with many critics — including former federal regulators — arguing that recent safety concerns at the Upper Big Branch mine should have led the Mine Safety and Health Administration to shut the project down. Joe Main, who heads MSHA, is expected to testify at tomorrow’s hearing.

Notably, no representative of Massey Energy, the company that owns the mine, is scheduled to appear.

Even as federal mine-safety regulators are taking heat for not having done enough to close down the doomed West Virginia mine where 29 coal miners were killed this month, Massey Energy, the coal giant that owns the project, has another take: Federal regulators have been too strict in enforcing safety measures, Massey said today, forcing the company to install a “more complex” ventilation system in the Upper Big Branch mine that might have contributed to the disaster.

“It is important to note that the longwall at UBB was not operating with the same ventilation system that it began with in September 2009,” reads a Massey letter that was distributed to reporters today:

MSHA required us to change that system and we complied. Recognizing that professionals can reasonably disagree on the best method of ventilation at a mine, we have discovered the following: 1. that MSHA required several changes since that date that made the ventilation in this area more complex; 2. that the volume of fresh air to the face was significantly reduced during this period; and 3. that our engineers resisted making the changes, in one instance to the point of shutting down production for two days, before agreeing to MSHA’s ventilation plan changes.

This is quite a different explanation than the one the company was pushing in the immediate wake of the disaster, when Don Blankenship, Massey’s pugnacious CEO, was insisting that, as a result of the company’s dedication to safety, the conditions in the UBB were just fine for miners.

Ken Hechler, the former West Virginia congressman who was lead sponsor of a 1969 law that overhauled mining safety, said today that Blankenship’s early claims were “patently false.”

“You can see,” Hechler said by phone from his Charleston home, “that they’re trying to weasel their way out of the primary blame.”

Investigators haven’t yet stepped into the Upper Big Branch Mine in Southern West Virginia — the site of this month’s explosion that killed 29 miners — but experts suspect that a blast that severe could only be caused by a large accumulation of methane gas, likely exacerbated by the presence of coal dust.

Today, however, Massey Energy claimed that wasn’t the case, citing air samples taken in the hour prior to the explosion. The Washington Post reports:

Air samples did not show high levels of explosive gases just before an explosion in a West Virginia coal mine that killed 29 workers, and what caused the disaster remains unknown, the mine’s owner said Monday.

Massey Energy Co. board director Stanley Suboleski said the samples were taken by a foreman as part of a shift change exam of the mine, just “tens of minutes” before the blast. The examination also showed that air flow in the Upper Big Branch mine was fine.

Massey has been on the hot seat since the April 5 blast — not only for the sheer number of safety violations the coal giant has racked up in recent years (including citations at the Upper Big Branch related to ventilation and the accumulation of combustibles) — but for allegedly fostering a company culture where safety played second fiddle to production.  Indeed, former Massey workers have charged that a disregard for safety precautions has been Massey’s M.O. for years.

Stay tuned. This story is sure to have legs.

President Obama calls for stricter mining regulations in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 15. (EPA/ZUMApress.com)

Beckley, W.Va. — “It’s unfortunate, but every mine safety law we have on the books today was written in the blood of coal miners.”

Image by: Matt Mahurin

So said Rep. Nick Rahall, Democrat of West Virginia, just hours after an underground blast in his district killed 29 coal miners earlier this month. It’s a sentiment uttered frequently in coal country, and it’s tragically relevant again as policymakers in both Washington and Charleston are vowing to prevent the next disaster with new laws, regulations and enforcement tactics designed to improve mine safety.

On the ground in Southern West Virginia, however, many doubts persist — with good reason. For more than four decades, members of the proud mining community here have watched from afar as Congress installed a series of sweeping new oversights and precautions in the wake of some horrific mining accident, only to have another come down the pike a few years later. In short, they’ve seen this picture before, and they don’t like how it ends.

Bill Price, a native of West Virginia’s coal country who now organizes for the Sierra Club on coal issues, summarized the trend tersely: “Somebody has to die first.”

The history backs his claim. The Farmington, W.Va., blast of 1968, for example, led to a 1969 overhaul of mining safety measures. A series of fatal Appalachian accidents in the 1970s catalyzed the mining reforms of 1977. Two back-to-back coal disasters in West Virginia in 2006 cleared the way for passage of the MINER Act later that year. And now, in the wake of this month’s deadly blast at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, policymakers — both state and federal — have reacted with investigations, promises of tighter regulations, and vows of “Never Again.”

“We have the resources,” fumed Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.). “These tragedies, on this scale, should no longer be happening.”

That they are happening, many West Virginians argue, owes to a series of factors that have conspired, often with tragic effect.

• Lax Oversight: Mine-safety advocates have been arguing for years that the ties between many regulators — state and federal — and the companies they’re overseeing have grown too close, allowing the companies to skirt safety rules as inspectors look away. Lawrence Richmond, 85, a World War II vet who worked in the mines of Southern West Virginia for 34 years, said this week that that trend, though hardly recent, should change.”A lot of those inspectors overlooked things in order to keep mines operating,” Richmond said. “So if they run into some coal company that’s not obeying the laws, then it’s gonna have to be shut down, and the state’s gonna have to enforce it. That’s all there is to it.”

• Disregard for the Rules: Ostensibly, mine inspections are considered “surprise” events because the regulators often arrive to the gates unannounced. But miners have testified that there’s still plenty of time to clean the place up before those inspectors get underground.”We would know the minute they [inspectors] would come on the hill. We’d know the minute they’d get ready to come underground. We’d know what section they were going to,” one Massey deep miner said recently. “And that would give the people up on the section time to get their ventilation right, to try to get into what they should be doing all along, and stay in compliance with the laws.”

• Media Indifference: Although nearly half of the nation’s electricity is generated by coal, there remains an odd sense — both among the general public and Capitol Hill lawmakers — that mining safety is somehow an issue local to coal-producing regions. Indeed, although Raleigh County was swamped with reporters in the immediate wake of the Upper Big Branch blast — and many will surely be covering President Obama’s visit to Beckley Sunday to remember the deceased — the story faded from the front pages after all the miners were found.”You guys just disappeared,” Jerry Massie, field representative for the United Mine Workers of America’s District 29 branch in Beckley, told a reporter this week.

• Sheer power of the Coal Industry: Coal companies — no fans of tighter safety measures — hold tremendous sway over West Virginia’s lawmakers, who have accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash from the industry over the years. Critics say that it’s no coincidence that those same lawmakers have a long history of protecting the companies from tighter regulations.”This state is bought and sold by the coal companies,” said Chuck Nelson, a former Massey miner who’s since become an environmental activist with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.

• Poorly Targeted Reforms: Because congressional mining reforms have most often arrived in reaction to specific accidents, they’ve tended to target specific problems while ignoring others. For example, the 2006 MINER Act, which focused heavily on new requirements for keeping trapped miners alive after blasts, has been criticized for not doing enough to prevent those blasts to begin with.”There was nothing that come out of that MINER Act in 2006 that helped these [UBB] miners,” said Denny Tyler, an electrician who has contracted with Massey and now runs an anti-mountaintop removal website. “Nothing.”

This month’s tragedy has altered some of these powerful dynamics, at least temporarily. Indeed, West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin (D), a former coal broker with a long history of defending the industry, called recently for the state’s mines to cease production for a day in order to examine their safety measures.

“In a deep mine explosion, there’s no way to protect anybody in the mine. All you can do is prevent it from happening,” Manchin (D) said last week. “What we’re trying to do is, in their honor, re-evaluate everything we do and the practices we use to make it safe.

“Not one person should have to work in unsafe conditions,” he added. “Everyone should expect to go home at night.”

Charleston, W.Va. — In my piece today, I quoted the wife of a worker at a Massey Energy coal mine who said the company denied her husband’s request to take time off to attend the funerals of friends who died in the April 5 explosion at Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine.

I put in a call to Massey to ask if it was the company’s policy not to grant time off to attend funerals. Just now, I got a call back from Massey spokesman Troy Andes, who said, “We know of no instances when miners were denied a request to attend a funeral.”

It’s worth mentioning, though, that even if Massey has no policy along these lines, most of the mines are run by Massey subsidiaries that may have their own policies.

Our piece this morning describes the reluctance of Massey Energy workers to criticize the company for fear of losing their jobs in a part of the country where there are criminally few employment alternatives. As a result, it’s next to impossible to find miners or their families willing to talk to reporters about Massey’s safety ethic, particularly in those communities closest to the Upper Big Branch project in Raleigh County, where 29 miners were killed this month in a deep mine blast.

But don’t tell that to Jordan Freeman. The West Virginia-based filmmaker and environmental activist recently conducted this interview with a Massey deep miner. And while the identity of the miner is concealed, his message is nonetheless pretty damning.

“Production was the name of the game,” he says. “At all costs we’ve got to get X amount of footage outside at the end of every shift — for what they would say to be, to where they could stay in the business, to keep the revenue rolling.

“For me, I felt like that lump of coal was important that a human being’s life.”

With more and more stories appearing like this, it’s getting tougher and tougher for Massey to lay a credible claim to their alleged commitment to safety.

A sign outside a West Virginia vigil for coal miners who lost their lives in the Upper Big Branch explosion on April 5 (EPA/ZUMApress.com)

Charleston, W.Va. — Two weeks after the horrific explosion that killed 29 coal miners in Southern West Virginia, it’s business as usual for the owner of the project.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

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Massey Energy, the Virginia-based coal giant that runs the Upper Big Branch Mine, has denied time off for miners to attend their friends’ funerals; has rejected make-shift memorials outside the mine site; and, in at least one case, required a worker to go on-shift even though the fate of a relative — one of the victims of the April 5 disaster — remained unknown at the time, according to some family members and other sources familiar with those episodes. In short, the company might be taking heat for putting profits and efficiency above its workers, but it doesn’t appear to have changed its tune in the wake of the worst mining tragedy in 40 years.

Such anecdotes aren’t easy to come by. Massey — the top coal producer in Appalachia — has built a reputation of intimidating its workers into a type of lock-step compliance that most often takes the form of silence, particularly when the subject revolves around safety in the company’s mines. The reason is clear: Massey is the economic engine in parts of West Virginia, and there’s a lingering fear among many workers that any grumbling could leave them unemployed. Some former employees said this week that the reluctance of Upper Big Branch miners to discuss the conditions inside those tunnels prior to the blast is no accident.

“I guarantee it: Massey’s already told these guys, ‘Hey, don’t say nothin’. You’re not talking to no reporters. You’re not saying nothin’ about our safety record — or you won’t have a job,’” said Chuck Nelson, a former Massey miner who’s since become an environmental activist with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. “That’s the way they operate.”

Still, Massey’s history of safety violations — including hundreds racked up at its other Appalachian projects in the last two weeks alone — has raised plenty of eyebrows in Washington in the wake of this month’s disaster. The White House, which had responded to the blast by vowing to reinspect the country’s most problematic mines, released a list of those projects Wednesday. At least eight of the 57 mines are Massey-owned.

Still, there’s evidence that, around the Upper Big Branch, Blankenship’s idea of running the company properly is rubbing some miners’ families the wrong way.

Some residents, for example, had kept vigil candles burning until all 29 miners were discovered. Now they’re keeping them lit until another milestone is reached: They’ll keep them burning, the Massey miner’s wife said, “until there’s justice.”

Mourners held a vigil after the Upper Big Branch mine explosion in West Virginia. (EPA/ZUMApress.com)

Beckley, W.Va. — As lawmakers mull better ways to prevent mining accidents following this month’s deadly blast in Southern West Virginia, one long-time veteran of the Appalachian mines has a suggestion:

Image by: Matt Mahurin

“Break down these criminal enterprises like Massey Energy,” said Chuck Nelson, who worked for Massey in underground mines for most of the 1990s. “That is the best possible solution.”

• Mine ventilation systems utilize so-called line curtains to direct the flow of fresh air into underground work chambers in order to prevent highly combustible methane gas from accumulating. Massey, Nelson said, encouraged the miners to jerk down those curtains lest they get in the way of the heavy equipment and slow the process of harvesting coal.
• Mine operators are also required to dilute combustible coal dust through a process known as rock dusting (which usually means dousing walls with limestone dust). Rock dusting should occur throughout the day, but at the Massey mines, Nelson said, rock dusting was commonly done only at the end of the shift.
• As a protection against black lung disease, inspectors can ask miners to carry dust pumps gauging the levels of coal dust in a work chamber. It wasn’t uncommon in Massey mines, Nelson claimed, to hang those pumps near ventilation fans instead, where they’d detect only the fresh air flowing in from above-ground.

When miners learned that government inspectors were headed into a mine, Nelson added, they would race to hang curtains, fling the rock dust and generally try to get the place in compliance with the safety rules. When the inspectors left, “we were back to doing the same old business as usual.”

Don Blankenship, Massey’s hard-nosed CEO, has defended the company’s safety record, arguing that the number of violations it’s racked up — particularly at the Upper Big Branch Mine, where this month’s tragedy occurred — were comparable to other operations of similar size. Safety violations, he said in the immediate wake of the blast, are “a normal part of the mining process.”

More recently, Blankenship that the company’s long record of safety violations is irrelevant to the recent disaster. “When somebody says, ‘Did the violations have anything to do with the accident?’ — they should not,” he told Charleston’s Daily Mail. “Because every violation is abated and agreed to by everyone before there is any further mining. So you would not think that any violation of the past had any relevance.”

The White House, however, disagrees, and last week President Obama announced new steps for mining reform, including the immediate re-inspection of all mines with a troubling safety record. Congress is jumping in as well, with both the Senate and the House scheduled to hold hearings on mining safety shortly.

Meanwhile, President Obama and Vice President Biden will attend a memorial service in Beckley Sunday for the 29 miners killed this month. Obama himself will deliver the eulogy. There are many in Raleigh County who are hoping that, to prevent the next disaster, he’ll offer more than words.

President Obama might have signed the bill that allows loaded weapons in national parks, but don’t tell that to the armed activists who gathered Monday at Virginia’s Fort Hunt to showcase their Second Amendment rights. They claim to be quite threatened by the current leaders in Washington, and they were quick to lob a few threats of their own.

Here, for example, is a video of Alabama militiaman Mike Vanderboegh telling reporters that there will be “consequences” if policymakers try to restrict gun rights.

Vanderboegh: I’m calling on the government to understand that there are going to be consequences to pushing people like us any farther back.

Questioner: More Ruby Ridges? More Wacos?

Vanderboegh: Precisely.

From comments like that, you’d think that the House was about to tighten D.C.’s gun laws, rather than gutting them.

There were calls to close it in the wake of the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School, and there were more calls to close it in 2007, following the shooting massacre at Virginia Tech. But so far, Congress has done nothing to address the gun show loophole, which allows unlicensed gun vendors to sell firearms without performing background checks on the buyers. And the inaction hasn’t gone unnoticed by some of the victims’ families.

Take Tom Mauser, whose son Daniel was killed 11 years ago tomorrow at Columbine. He’s got a letter running today in both the the Denver Post and Boulder Daily Camera urging Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) to put his weight behind the Senate proposal that would close the gun show loophole.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

“Shortly after the tragedy at Columbine, 70% of Coloradans voted to close this dangerous loophole, but in many other states the loophole remains — including every state surrounding Colorado,” Mauser writes. “That means that Coloradans can still easily be victimized by guns brought here from other states. We need a federal law to close the Gun Show Loophole for good, just like we have in Colorado.”

Sen. Michael Bennet, Colorado’s other Democratic, has endorsed the proposal, but Udall has so far resisted. A call to Udall’s office requesting comment was not immediately returned.

He’s not the only Democrat being targeted today. Six voices related to the Virginia Tech tragedy — including a survivor, and parents of both survivors and those killed — have a letter of their own in today’s Richmond Times Dispatch, calling on Sens. Jim Webb and Mark Warner, both Democrats of Virginia, to sign on to the same bill.

“Everyday in the United States, 35 people are murdered with guns — that’s a Virginia Tech sized massacre every single day,” the parents write. “We have seen first hand the incredible toll that gaps in the federal background check system have on public safety … Don’t let another day go by.”

Calls and emails to Webb’s and Warner’s offices were not immediately returned.

Under current law, licensed gun dealers are required to do background checks to ensure that prospective buyers are legally eligible to own firearms. Felons, illegal immigrants and the severely mentally ill, for example, are prohibited from owning guns. These guidelines apply to licensed dealers in all contexts, including gun shows. But unlicensed dealers at gun shows — or anywhere else — are under no obligation to follow them.

The Columbine shooters bought three of their guns by exploiting the loophole. More recently, last month’s Pentagon shooter did the same, purchasing at least one of his firearms at a Nevada gun show despite a history of severe mental illness that might have prevented the sale had the vendor done a background check.

Gun reform has been a thorny issue for the White House and Democratic leaders in Congress. And the reason is clear. Although Democrats hold significant majorities in both chambers, they owe those gains largely to more moderate members, who in recent elections have won seats in a number of conservative-leaning, historically Republican districts. Indeed, when Attorney General Eric Holder last year announced his support for renewal of the assault weapons ban, 65 House Democrats wrote to the White House attacking the proposal. And that was in a non-election year.

“Law-abiding Americans use these guns for all the same reasons they use any other kind of gun — competitive shooting, hunting and defending their homes and families,” the Democrats wrote.

But don’t accuse Congress of doing nothing in the area of gun reform. This week, the House is expected to pass a D.C. voting rights bill that also includes language gutting the District’s strict gun control laws.

For the first time, President Obama today threw his support behind the marathon push to grant the residents of the nation’s capitol a voting representative in Congress. From the White House statement:

Americans from all walks of life are gathering in Washington today to remind members of Congress that although DC residents pay federal taxes and serve honorably in our armed services, they do not have a vote in Congress or full autonomy over local issues.  And so I urge Congress to finally pass legislation that provides DC residents with voting representation and to take steps to improve the Home Rule Charter.

The bill — which also gives Utah another House member — passed the Senate last year, but not before Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) successfully attached an amendment scrapping most of D.C.’s strict gun laws. Realizing that moderate Democrats in the House would support that provision, liberal House leaders have refused to bring the bill to the floor, leaving it idle for the last 14 months.

Earlier this week, there was a breakthrough: Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), a fierce opponent of the Ensign amendment, reluctantly agreed to accept some version of it for the sake of giving the District more voice in Congress.

“It is now clear that the gun amendment can be passed as a stand-alone bill or attached to another piece of legislation, and we see no better opportunity in sight for voting rights for our residents,” she said.

The New York Times disagrees. In an editorial today, the paper argues that the elimination of the gun restrictions is too high a price to pay for the underlying bill.

“The legislation would intrude on home-rule prerogatives by repealing the district’s restrictions on semiautomatic weapons, rolling back requirements for registering most guns and even dropping existing criminal penalties for owners of unregistered firearms,” the Times says.”It is a cynical, sickening compromise.”

Last night, Congress passed — and President Obama signed into law — legislation that provides a short-term benefit extension for the long-term unemployed. The bill is designed to allow lawmakers more time to negotiate a longer-term benefit extension for the long-term unemployed.

Confusing? You bet.

And there seem to be several factors contributing to the puzzlement.

1) The extension of benefits is not quite an extension of benefits. The four tiers of federal help will remain four tiers of federal help. What had expired April 5 — and what Congress just extended until June 2 — was the filing deadline for accessing the next level of benefits if (1) you live in a state that makes you eligible for the next level of benefits, and (2) your most recent benefits expired, or were set to expire, after April 5. But if you’ve exhausted all the benefits for which you’re eligible, this bill doesn’t help you. And neither will the next one.

2) The mingling of state, federal and state-federal programs — combined with the tiered system of federal benefits — is in itself baffling. The rules differ for different states, but generally it works like this:

• State benefits run a standard 26 weeks, after which the federal help kicks in.
• The federal help — dubbed Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) — is temporary, which is why Congress keeps having to step in to extend it. EUC is divided into four tiers. Tier I runs for 20 weeks; Tier II for 14 weeks; Tier III  is 13 weeks, but only for states with unemployment rates higher than 6 percent; and Tier IV is 6 weeks, but only for states where jobless rates top 8.5 percent. So altogether, EUC provides a maximum of 53 weeks of benefits on top of the 26 weeks of state help. (Max total combined = 79 weeks).
• Some states also offer something called the Extended Benefits (EB) program, which is a joint venture combining state and federal funds for a maximum of 20 additional weeks of benefits (though some states offer only 13 weeks). With state budgets in crisis mode from the recession, Congress has stepped in to assume 100 percent of the cost of this program. The bill that passed yesterday extends that enhanced federal funding to ensure that states don’t drop the program altogether. (States usually direct unemployed residents to the EB program only after they’ve exhausted all EUC benefits. EUC, after all, is guaranteed to be paid 100 percent by Washington, whereas states will eventually be responsible for some of the EB costs.)
• So all told, unemployed workers could be eligible for a maximum of 99 weeks of benefits between the three programs (26 + 53 + 20).

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal policy shop, has a nice summary of state-specific benefits here. But the best way to confirm eligibility rules is to contact your state labor department.

3) The terminology being used in this debate — particularly the vague but oft-cited “long-term unemployed” category — is beginning to lose its meaning as the jobs crisis grows longer. Meaning: The Department of Labor defines the long-term unemployed as those who’ve been out of work longer than 27 weeks — a category that now boasts 6.5 million unfortunate members (representing a startling 44 percent of all jobless Americans). Yet this could include those in the earliest stages of their EUC benefits — folks who could have nearly 18 months of benefits remaining (assuming that Congress continues to extend the deadline). And there’s very little data to break down that category further to learn, for example, how many people have exhausted all of their EUC benefits, and now have nowhere to turn for help. Anecdotally, we’re hearing of more and more folks falling into this category (just read the comment threads on this site). Yet no one seems to be counting them to gauge the necessity of, say, a fifth tier of emergency help.

The Department of Labor does break down the long-term unemployed a bit — tallying those who’ve been out of work between 27 and 51 weeks, and those who’ve been unemployed longer than 52 weeks. But those numbers are crunched only on an annual, not a monthly, basis. And, again, they do nothing to reveal how many folks might have exhausted all of their federal benefits.

Still, even those broad categories are enough to indicate a troubling trend. From 2008 to 2009, the percent of the unemployed folks who’d been out of work between 27 and 51 weeks jumped from 9.1 percent to 15.2 percent, DOL reports. For those unemployed longer than 52 weeks (the super long-term unemployed?), the rate jumped from 10.6 percent in 2008 to 16.3 percent last year.

The trend begs a question: Though the Dow has rebounded and Wall Street bankers are back enjoying their bonuses, can we really call it a recovery when millions of willing workers still can’t find a decent job?

In a swift train of events, the Senate last night passed a short-term extension of emergency unemployment benefits, which the House approved a few hours later and President Obama signed into law shortly afterward. “In these tough economic times,” Obama said, ”it is more critical than ever to bring relief to Americans who are working every day to find a job, and families that are struggling to make ends meet.”

Millions of Americans who lost their jobs in this economic crisis depend on unemployment and health insurance benefits to get by as they look for work and get themselves back on their feet.  I’m grateful that the House and Senate moved forward on this temporary extension today.  But as I requested in my budget, I urge Congress to move quickly to extend these benefits through the end of this year.  I also urge Congress to move forward on legislation to help small businesses grow and hire and other measures to increase the pace of job growth. This is my top priority, and I will fight day and night until every American who wants a good job has one.

The temporary extension — which allows unemployed workers who’ve exhausted their state-based benefits to access emergency federal help through June 1 — is designed to buy lawmakers more time to negotiate the longer-term extension that Obama is urging.