MONTCOAL, WV, April 8 — There is probably no greater exposé of the failure of reforms than the murder of 29 miners in the Massey Energy-owned Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine here. The statements coming from Obama and his Secy. of Labor, from this state’s Senator John D. Rockefeller IV and this district’s Democratic Party Congressman, from the various Mine “Safety” officials and from the company’s CEO, Donald Blankenship, reek with hypocrisy. Their “cries” for these dead miners ring as hollow as anything the politician-servants of U.S. capitalism have ever come up with.
Since 1900, 104,000 miners have been killed in this country’s mines. (NY Times, 4/6) Laws have been passed, regulations have been instituted, “safety” bodies have been established, fines have been levied, and still the killing rages on. The death toll in the UBB mine was the deadliest in 40 years.
The ruling-class mouthpieces decry these “tragic accidents.” But they are NOT “accidents. If workers’ safety trumped mine-owner’s profits — an impossibility under capitalism — there would be no “accidents.”
Federal Mine Safety administrator Kevin Strickland admitted that, “All explosions are preventable. It’s just making sure you have things in place to keep one from happening.” (NYT, 4/7)
But according to an internal memo sent by boss Blankenship to his underground mine superintendents, those “things” occupy last place. His instructions were “to place coal production first. ‘This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills.’” (NYT, 4/6) Furthermore, “If any of you have been asked…to do anything other than run coal…ignore them and run coal.” (NYT, 4/7)
Under that dictate, the miners slaving away for Massey Energy — a company with $3.8 BILLION in assets — produced $200 million in net profits in the 18 months from July 2008 to December 2009. The fact that the bosses’ government cited Massey Energy with 1,342 safety violations since 2005, 458 of them just last year, 122 since this past January, 53 of them in March and two more on the very day of this explosion (!), doesn’t faze Blankenship one iota. “Violations are…a normal part of the mining process,” he boasts. “There are violations in every coal mine in America.” (NYT, 4/7)
It was one of those “normal violations” that killed two miners at a Massey subsidiary, the Aracoma Coal Co., in 2006. They were unable to escape a fire and suffocated to death because the company failed to replace some ventilation controls it had removed inside the mine. Massey later pleaded guilty to ten criminal charges, but still the killing goes on. Even a $2.5 million fine means little to a company with nearly $4 billion in assets.
The miners’ families recognize Massey’s priorities. When boss Blankenship, protected by a dozen state cops, was trying to address a crowd about the deaths, “people yelled at him for caring more about profits than miners’ lives….And…that he was to blame [for the death toll].” (NYT, 4/7)
The UBB mine was evacuated three times in the previous two months because of “dangerously high methane gas levels,” which — along with a build-up of deadly coal dust — appears to have caused this violent explosion that murdered these 29 miners. Three months ago Massey was cited for having fresh-air systems flowing the wrong way near two escape routes. (Associated Press, 4/6)
While the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration keeps citing Massey and the other mine-owners with thousands of violations, the bosses end up paying token fines (averaging $3,700 per worker death) as the “cost of doing business” and pass on the expense to consumers. And although Congress “overhauled” federal mining regulations in 2006, “Federal mining data indicates that only one in 10 underground mines nationwide have met the law’s requirements.” (NYT, 4/8)
Obama can send “condolences” for what he claims is a “tragic accident”; this district’s Democratic Congressman Rahall can whine that “something needs to be done”; Obama’s Secy. of Labor can even admit that these miners “died unnecessarily” and say that the “best way to honor them is to do our job.” But that “job” seems to be playing footsie year in and year out with outfits like Massey.
None of these bosses’ politicians, nor their “safety” agencies, nor their laws and regulations seems to stop CEO’s like Blankenship from steaming ahead accumulating hundreds of millions in profits, ignoring the regulations and paying token fines. (It also didn’t stop him from donating $1 million to the racist Tea Party’s 2009 Labor Day celebration.)
In the early days of the Russian Revolution, one of the first changeovers from capitalism instituted by the Soviets was to award miners a six-hour day, five-day week, with access to any needed hospital care, along with 5-6 weeks vacation in Crimean resorts. (UBB miners are ordered to work 12-hour days.)
The “reforms” governing the mining industry simply allow the mine-owners to literally get away with murder. Every day, three miners die of black lung from years in the hazardous mines. The only way this carnage can end is for the miners themselves to run the mines, placing safety as the top priority. And that can only happen when a communist-led workers’ revolution overthrows these bloodsuckers. That’s what PLP is fighting for.