The recent mining disaster April 5
in West Virginia, which claimed the lives of 29 miners, was the result of criminal
negligence. The CEO of Massey Energy called these deaths “inevitable” in the
coal mining business. Such deaths are preventable, but not when you have a
union-busting, profit-hungry CEO like Dan Blankenship of Massey Energy.
 Don Blankenship, capitalist criminal. |
“Every year, like clockwork, at
least one person has been killed since 2000 on the property of Massey or one of
its subsidiaries. … No other coal operator even comes close to that fatality
rate during that time frame,” United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts said
in a statement following the disaster.
The miners, who along with
thousands of other working people in the United States have died on the job as
a result of workplace accidents and injuries caused by unsafe work conditions,
are victims of capitalism. In order to achieve greater profit for the company,
Massey Energy forced its workers to speed up production at the expense of job
safety. Twenty-nine died in the
mine explosion last week, but more than 104,000 miners have lost their lives in
coalmines in the past century.
An extensive history of violations
Massey Energy has an extensive
history of violations that put its workers’ lives at risk. There have been
120 safety violations filed against the mine in the last year alone. In fact, Massey Energy’s Upper
Big Branch Mine, the site of the deaths, has been cited 1,342 times for safety
violations since 2005. Eighty-six of those violations were for an inadequate
ventilation plan to prevent the very type of explosion that caused the deaths
of the workers.
Massey settled criminal charges
along with civil violations for $4.2 million in criminal and civil penalties,
which was the largest financial settlement in the coal industry’s history. When
corporations are guilty of crimes, they don’t go to prison, they don’t forfeit
their freedom—they just get fined, which often amounts to a slap on the wrist,
a cost of doing business.
Massey Energy is the fourth
largest producer of coal in the United States and the largest producer in
Appalachia. Massey Energy Company made $104.4 million in profit last year alone
at the expense of the workers.
Blankenship has done everything he
could to increase profits, putting the workers’ lives at risk. In a 2005 memo,
he told miners that if their bosses ask them to take safety precautions like
building roof supports, “ignore them and run coal.” Terry Holstein,
who worked at Upper Big Branch until 2006, quitting after 10 years because he
didn’t like the way Massey ran the mine, says, “[T]hey wanted production
more than they wanted safety.” (MichaelMoore.com)
Workers need a union
The workers have little ability to
fight back against the greedy criminal bosses without a union. “I can
absolutely say that if these miners were members of a union, they would have
been able to refuse unsafe work … and would not have been subjected to that
kind of atrocious conditions,” said Leo Gerard, president of the Steelworkers
Union. “In some places like in Australia and Canada, this kind of negligence
would result in criminal negligence [charges] being brought against the
management and the CEO.”
Without a union and thereby the ability to
file a grievance, a worker can be replaced at any time. In the Massey mines,
bosses are salaried and make sure the workers produce regardless of how deadly
the work conditions are. In a union mine, the union can inspect the mine for
safety and ensure that the workers’ lives are not at risk.
One of the biggest causes of
worker injury and death in non-union mines in the United States is the absence
of a designated union leader who is on the job monitoring job safety. Massey
has done everything it can to bust unions and make sure the workers do not
organize and file grievances against the safety code violations. In fact, in
2009 the National Labor Relations Board had Massey rehire 85 miners who they
had discriminated against because they were union members.
(www.digitaljournal.com/)
Mine workers have the right to go
to work without fear that they may not come home. They have the right to be supported by a union and know that
safety violations will not be paid off or ignored. They have the right to have
their lives put before the profits of their bosses. We demand CEO Dan
Blankenship be charged with murder.
