{"id":543684,"date":"2010-04-26T10:19:42","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T14:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.southernstudies.org,2010:\/\/5.12237"},"modified":"2010-04-26T11:09:52","modified_gmt":"2010-04-26T15:09:52","slug":"voices-preventing-the-next-mine-disaster-through-unionization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/543684","title":{"rendered":"VOICES: Preventing the next mine disaster through unionization"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Danny Chiotos, It’s Getting Hot in Here<\/a><\/p>\n


<\/i><\/p>\n

\n

Say, did you see him going; it was
\nearly this morning<\/p>\n

He passed by your houses on his way to the coal<\/p>\n

He
\nwas tall, he was slender, and his dark eyes so tender<\/p>\n

His occupation was
\nmining, West Virginia his home.<\/p>\n

It was just before 12, I was feeding the children<\/p>\n

Ben Moseley came
\nrunning to bring us the news<\/p>\n

Number eight is all flooded, many men are
\nin danger<\/p>\n

And we don’t know their number, but we fear they’re all doomed.<\/p>\n

— “West Virginia Mine Disaster,”<\/a> by Jean Ritchie<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"miners_service_obama.jpg\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Coal mining is dangerous business and the people of the Appalachian coalfields, from Tennessee to West Virginia to Pennsylvania, have come
\nto expect disasters out of the mining industry. Mining is a job that’s
\nfull of risks and packed with hard work. Miners have come to be proud
\nof the work that they do which truly has had a great role in powering
\nthe United States for more than the last century. It’s been work that’s
\n populated Appalachia with amazing people but has kicked up a lot of
\ncoal dust in the process all over our great state of West Virginia.<\/p>\n

After 9\/11, where I was less than 10 miles from the Pentagon and
\nremember hearing fighter jets and helicopters flying over my house
\nthroughout that tense night. I never thought I would feel that tragic
\nemotion that brought anger, anticipation, fear, mourning, and pride
\ntogether into one horrendous stomach ache again. Then came the disaster
\n at Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

I could not work all week. I could not stop refreshing the WSAZ news page<\/a>
\n and the Coal Tattoo
\nBlog <\/a>for updates. I could not get my mind off the basic question of
\n whether there is good in the world where 29 hardworking men are killed
\nbecause of Massey Energy’s disregard for miner safety. I could not get
\noff the phone talking with students I work with and my own family
\nmembers who were grieving like I was for these men and holding out hope
\nthat the four missing miners would be found alive. They were not.
\nAnd we continue to mourn through the weekend.<\/p>\n

Both my great-grandfather and grandfather helped to pull 11 bodies
\nout of the Nellis mine which is a hair under 33 miles away from the
\nMontcoal mine. On November 8th, 1943, which was a Monday, his family
\nwas watching a movie in Whitesville and they were rushed out of the
\ntheatre to Nellis. His mother and sisters were sent home to pray for
\nsurvival, his father hurried down in the mine to search for life and my
\ngrandfather stood sentry at the mouth of the mine with not much to do
\nbut hope to see those men walk out of the mine. He was 13 at the time
\nand he saw those 11 bodies come out of the mine in a railcar without a
\nbreath among them.<\/p>\n

He is now the ripe age of 80, and once again mourning, this time for
\nthe 29 miners that were killed in the Upper Big Branch mine. He and no
\none in the coalfields should have to witness a disaster like this and be
\n reminded of a disaster they lived through 67 years ago. We have the
\nmeans and technology to make these kind of massive disasters a thing of
\nthe past that exists only in our memories and history books.<\/p>\n

Worker deaths should not happen, and we should be pushing to prevent
\nthem whenever possible. The debate becomes about what is the safest
\nmethod of mining coal, since we will be mining coal for a long time
\ncoming. Even if we quickly transition from burning coal for
\nelectricity, there are a ton of uses for coal (including using metallurgical coal for
\n the production of steel, <\/a>which is needed for wind turbines) which
\nwill keep it as part of Appalachia’s economy. For a point of
\ninformation, the Upper Big Branch mine was mostly a metallurgical coal
\nmine and the coal mined is used for steel-making rather than
\nelectricity production. Massey is known to export their metallurgical
\ncoal overseas, so the 29 miners probably lost their lives not to power
\nthe re-industrialization of the United States with renewable energy, but
\n to power the industrialization of countries like China and India. So,
\neven if we run a completely renewable energy economy, we need to keep a
\nfocus on how we can mine coal in the way that’s most beneficial to the
\ncommunities under the safest possible conditions.<\/p>\n

Flying in the face of these horrible realities, there has been the
\ndisturbing development that mountaintop removal proponents have been
\ncoming out with recently. From supporters of Massey CEO Don Blankenship to Congresswoman
\nShelley Moore Capito<\/a>, there has been an effort to use this horrible
\nmining disaster to spread support for strip mining and mountaintop
\nremoval.<\/p>\n

Countering this opportunistic assertion is the main point of this
\npiece.<\/p>\n

Never mind the horrible leveraging of this disaster to increase
\nsupport for the form of mining that employs
\n the least number of people<\/a> and
\n causes the most damage to Appalachia<\/a>. While there is truth in the
\nstatement that surface mining is safer for workers than underground
\nmining, the Blankenships and Capitos of the world would have you believe
\n that everything is hunky-dory and safe as grandma’s apple pie on a
\nstrip mine.<\/p>\n

The way that the Blankenships of the world make the argument is that
\nwe could simply shift from underground mining to strip mining is a total
\n oversimplification of the realities of mining. The Upper Big Branch
\nmine was more than a thousand feet
\nunderground<\/a>. To get that coal, it takes underground mining, plain and simple. So we need to
\ntalk about what the safest ways of mining are and what makes the biggest
\n impact on increasing worker safety.<\/p>\n

As I’ve heard more of the pro-mountaintop removal opinion getting out
\n there, I became more interested in knowing the facts. I’ve been
\nhearing that strip mining was dangerous work, but I’ve never really
\nknown just how dangerous. I came to the point of wanting to counter the
\nclaim that the Blankenships of the world were making, but I didn’t know
\nthe facts. So, I started crunching some numbers, making Excel
\nspreadsheets and asking friends for help. What I found didn’t really
\nsurprise me, but it gave a sense of concreteness to talk about how
\nimportant unions are to worker safety.<\/p>\n

What I found was that union strip mining was the safest for miners
\nand that non-union underground mining was the most dangerous. That
\nsaid, there is little way that we can or should be using that as a
\njustification for more strip mining. Seeing as how coal that’s mined a
\ncertain way is generally mined that way for whole host of reasons, the
\nBlankenships of the world are oversimplifying it. If we look at the two
\n forms of mining independent of each other, because strip vs. underground
\n mining is generally not interchangeable, we can easily see that whether
\n a mine is union or non-union is incredibly important to worker safety.<\/p>\n

I am using the very basic ratio of worker deaths per 10,000 miners to
\n create four statistics which compare both strip vs. underground mining,
\nand union vs. non-union mining. This leaves out a ton of really
\nimportant information, like worker
\n injury rates<\/a>, black
\nlung<\/a> and silicosis<\/a>,
\n effects
\n on the communities around the mines<\/a>, the different safety rates of
\nthe different
\n forms of underground and strip mines<\/a>, the
\ndifferent safety rates at different companies<\/a>, etc. etc. etc. But
\nwhat this analysis does is further the fact-based conversation about
\nwhat the safest forms of mining are in the real world.<\/p>\n

Here are the stats that I developed using statistics from 2002-2008
\n (it’s pretty obvious what the stats would be for 2010 with the Upper
\nBig Branch disaster, but it’s too early in the year for good statistics
\nto be out there). The following chart summarizes the comparisons that I
\nwrote about earlier.<\/p>\n

\"mining_deaths_chart.png\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"Worker<\/a><\/p>\n

So, what you can see is that in each form of mining, union mining
\nclearly makes for safer mining than non-union mining. Underground
\nnon-union mining is the most dangerous forms for five out of the six
\nmeasured years. Underground union mining is about even with non-union
\nstrip mining in terms of worker safety — with non-union strip mining
\nhaving a higher worker death rate than union underground mining.<\/p>\n

The most important thing is for unions to be able to organize mines,
\nwhether they be strip mines or underground mines. In almost every case,
\n union mines are safer than non-union mines. Worker safety depends on
\nthe unionization of the workplace, not on a largely fictitious choice
\nbetween strip & underground mining.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/span><\/p>\n

The United Mine Workers of America<\/a>
\n have been longstanding leaders for coal miner safety. One of the most
\nimportant things that the media is missing in covering this disaster has
\n been the discussion about the UMWA. The UMWA had three different attempts to unionize
\nthis mine<\/a> and Don Blankenship personally visited this mine to break
\nthe union drive. One drive in particular had more than two out of three
\nworkers signed onto a union card, but the official vote failed. If we
\nhad the Employee
\n Free Choice Act<\/a> as law, the Upper Big Branch mine would be a union
\nmine as 2\/3 of the workers supported a union before they were
\nintimidated. We need to see this law passed so we can see safer mining
\nthrough a unionized workplace.<\/p>\n

When workers knew Blankenship would have them fired if they voted for
\n the union, they stepped back from voting it in. Workers need a united
\nvoice in the workplace. We can have the best regulations in the world
\non the books but if workers are not organized to be able to speak up —
\nthose regulations are worthless. As far as I’m concerned, miner
\nunionization is the best possible solution to preventing disasters like
\nthis in the future.<\/p>\n

We’ll be mining coal for a while and we need to be real about what
\nmakes the biggest impact on worker safety in the mines. We don’t need
\nanother Monongah (1907, WV, 362 killed), Farmington (1968, WV, 78
\nkilled), Sago (2006, WV, 12 killed), Crandall Canyon (2007, UT, 9
\nkilled), or Montcoal (2010, WV, 29 killed).<\/p>\n

I hope the
\n words that Former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall issued in
\n1968<\/a>, “let me assure you, the people of this country no longer will
\naccept the disgraceful health and safety record that has characterized
\nthis major industry,” and the
\n words of President Barack Obama<\/a> 42 years later, “I refuse to
\n accept any number of miner deaths as simply the cost of doing
\nbusiness” will one day ring true and we can at least, today, have an
\nhonest discussion about what the safest ways to mine coal are.<\/p>\n

Danny Chiotos is the West Virginia youth organizer for the Student Environmental Action Coalition<\/a> and president of the West Virginia Environmental Council<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

(In the official White House photo by Pete Souza, President Obama walks with Linda Davis, the grandmother of deceased Upper Big Branch miner Cory Davis.)<\/font>
<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Danny Chiotos, It’s Getting Hot in Here Say, did you see him going; it was early this morning He passed by your houses on his way to the coal He was tall, he was slender, and his dark eyes so tender His occupation was mining, West Virginia his home. It was just before 12, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":247,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-543684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/247"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}