Letters of March 12, 2010

Miners’ Death Rate: 75 Times General Population!

The April 28 issue of CHALLENGE reported on the recent deaths of 29 miners in West Virginia’s Massey Energy coal mine. One article mentioned that since 1900 over 100,000 miners have died in U.S. mining “accidents.” It also said that every day three miners die slower more painful deaths from black lung disease, just from breathing the air in the mines.

While the number of sudden violent deaths from U.S. mining “accidents” has decreased to a rate of about 30 a year (with an even higher death rate among Chinese miners), the average number over the last century has been close to three per day. That’s three per day from “accidents” plus a similar number from black lung disease, or close to six coal miners dying per day in the U.S.

Now the estimates of deaths among the entire U.S. population from a variety of lung diseases (including emphysema, asthma and lung cancer) range as high as 100,000 per year, or almost 300 per day, from the smog and general pollution caused by the burning of coal and oil (fossil fuels).

The death rate then from coal mining (and other fossil fuels) is six per day per 80,000 coal miners, or about 75 per million miner-days. Yet in the general population the death rate from coal and oil burning is 300 per day per 300 million people, or about 1 per million person-days. In other words, while the death rate among the general population is outrageously high, and absolutely avoidable with the ending of the use of fossil fuels for electricity and transportation, the rate among coal miners is 75 times higher!

And while pollution from fossil-fuel burning causes hundreds of thousands of U.S. deaths per year, with a couple of million such deaths worldwide, a more long-term and potentially more serious problem for the world’s working class is the production of global warming from fossil fuels. (See article on global warming on back page and www.plp.org).

The only explanation for this “weapon of mass death and destruction” is the demands of the profit system. The only solution is to destroy the profit system and create a communist system ruled by the working class, one based on workers’ needs, not bosses’ profits.

Saguaro Rojo

Working-Class Solidarity Makes Cops Back Off

The last issue (CHALLENGE, 4/28/10) had very informative coverage of struggles in the mining industry. On vacation recently, we stopped for lunch in the small town of Boron, California where another important battle is raging.

Boron is where Rio Tinto, an English and Australian multi-national mining conglomerate, operates California’s largest open pit mine. This mine contains the largest concentration of borax in the world. Borax is used in the manufacture of many products such as soap, glass and automobiles.

The profits of Rio Tinto are enormous. (In 2009, net earnings of almost $5 billion on revenues of $44 billion). In order to compete in the global economy, Rio Tinto tried to “modernize” its work practices. They are imposing slave labor and poverty wages on the 600-member workforce, organized in the ILWU (International Longshoremen and Warehouse Union).

According to one ILWU member, Rio Tinto wants to turn all workers into “day laborers” by ending benefits and part-timing the work. The ILWU and the workers rejected this cruel offer, which is just one more effort to destroy a section of unionized workers who have fought for and won a little extra out of the profit margins of the employers. In January 2010, Rio Tinto immediately hired scabs and locked out the union members. They have used the full force of the government — police blockades, arrests and the courts — to keep production going. They claim that the unions are “out of touch.”

Workers from South Africa, Australia, Turkey, New Zealand, Canada, Europe and Papua New Guinea have expressed solidarity with action and support for the locked-out Boron miners. The battle rages.

While there, we ate in a small Mexican restaurant. A sign in the window, from the ILWU, stated that the restaurant supported the locked-out families of the Rio Tinto mine. The atmosphere was very friendly with people greeting each other as they came in. There was a low murmur of conversation going on and the normal sounds of people eating their meal.

This background noise was suddenly interrupted when three big cops came into the restaurant appearing to be searching for someone. A silence fell over the restaurant and all the customers were glaring at the cops. The tension in the place was palpable. It was class-consciousness becoming a material force. The three cops, almost in military fashion, made an about-face and scurried out the door. The low murmur resumed.

One day this working-class solidarity will be led by the revolutionary communist PLP. The workers will do a little “modernizing” of their own and we will find out who is “out of touch.”

Rio Tinto, or any other capitalist venture, will not be needed in the production of the needs of the international working class.

We felt very proud to witness this show of working-class solidarity.

Retired-but-still-active Red