Miner Safety Bill Will Save Lives, Ensure Culture of Safety, Witnesses tell House Committee
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Legislation responding to the nation’s worst mining tragedy in four decades will save lives and hold mine operators accountable for putting their workers in unnecessary danger, witnesses told the House Education and Labor Committee today.
The Miner Safety and Health Act (H.R. 5663) would provide stronger tools to ensure that mine operators with troubling safety records improve safety and empower workers to speak up about safety concerns. Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch explosion in April killed 29 miners and highlighted serious flaws in existing laws including the difficulty of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to bring tougher sanctions against the country’s most dangerous mines. “The Upper Big Branch mine tragedy is the perfect example of how current law is inadequate, especially for those operations that do everything to flout the law,” said U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the committee. “Despite a pattern of serious violations, there was little MSHA could do to get Massey to turn this operation around. The millions of dollars in proposed fines over the years didn’t work. Dozens of temporary closure orders didn’t work. Reform of mine safety laws is essential.”
The bill would revamp the criteria for ‘pattern of violations’ sanctions to ensure that dangerous mine operations fix chronic problems. MSHA would have authority to close down the mine once a ‘pattern of violations’ status is triggered, and in order to reopen, mine operators have to comply with a remediation plan and be subject to more mine inspections and additional reporting requirements.
“The Mine Act’s ‘pattern of violations’ provision is intended to provide MSHA a powerful tool to deal with mine operators who demonstrated, through continued significant and substantial health or safety violations, a disregard for the health and safety of miners. Instead, the ‘pattern of volitions’ provision is an empty vessel,” said Joseph Main, the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health. “I believe this bill will save lives and prevent injuries by enabling MSHA to act quickly to enforce compliance with the Mine Act at operations with high levels of violations.”
Stanley “Goose” Stewart, a miner who was working in the Upper Big Branch mine on the day of the explosion, testified that the widespread fear of losing their jobs prevented miners from speaking out on safety problems.
“In my years working for Massey, I feel they have taken coal mining back to the early 1900’s using three principles; fear, intimidation and propaganda,” said Stewart, who also testified at the committee’s May hearing in Beckley, West Virginia with family members of lost miners. “If this bill is passed, hopefully enough miners will feel they can stand up to the Massey empire or any other rogue company and protect themselves without retaliation.”
The legislation also responds to a number of recent deadly explosions at refineries, power plants and food processing facilities. It would extend similar worker protections to all workplaces in order to hold employers accountable if they knowingly put their workers in danger.
“Every day in this country we have a Sago mine disaster, every two days an Upper Big Branch, and every month the loss of a fully loaded Boeing 747. These tragedies happen in every corner of the country, usually one at a time, far from the evening news and the morning headlines,” said David Michaels, the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health. “Clearly, whether a worker leaves home in the morning on his way to a mine or on her way to a refinery or construction site, every worker needs and deserves equally effective protections.”
For instance, whistleblower laws would be strengthened to the level of other federal whistleblower laws already on the books. In addition, penalties would be increased for the second time in 40 years and indexed to inflation.
“We believe this provision will go a long way toward restoring the OSH Act’s deterrent effect, and will make it harder for employers to treat OSHA penalties as simply a cost of doing business,” said M. Patricia Smith, the Solicitor for the U.S. Department of Labor. “The criminal penalties in this bill are based on similar provisions in the Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, meaning that killing a person will be treated just as seriously as killing a lake.”
Also testifying in support of the legislation were, R. Larry Grayson, a professor of mining at Penn State University; Lynn Rhinehart, general counsel of the AFL-CIO; and Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America.
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