So, how long has Massey, et al, been gaming the system? But, who would’ve thought?

Mining, by nature is dangerous work. We don’t need owners and operators who never venture into their own hell holes making it more dangerous. Ore mining doesn’t touch the dangers associated with coal mining, which are specific to that product. It’s time to nix coal as a power source. “Clean coal” is the biggest boondoggle of an oxymoron in the entire history of the English language. I understand that it will take time to wean ourselves from coal but that fact is no excuse for not beginning the effort immediately.

This is very impressive Micheal

If the chart could be labeled union / non-union that might be informative.

I’m guessing that most, if not all, are non union

Thank you for helping me to answer a question that occurred to me this morning.

I am a travelling consultant, currently working in the eastern portion of PA. This morning in the hotel, I saw a gentleman wearing a MSHA shirt. Looked pretty real and it apparently was. Looking at the list, there’s a mine (non-coal) on the list that is apparently in the same county the hotel is in. For the record, they must be good – it was a Holiday Inn Express! LOL.

But yes, I’m almost 100% certain that the fellow I saw is handling that mine review.

I agree, Margaret, but at the same time, if this were any other industry, the getting away with it part wouldn’t be so rampant. The owners have bought and paid regulators, judges and congresscritters with the millions of dollars they get for running the mines that should be put into safety instead.

But I have a problem with folks such as my significant other (who has a very safe desk job) saying that the government has no business being involved with regulating safety in a business that is inherently dangerous. That just boggled my mind.

I sure on the plane ride in don blankenshit’s plane from Florida, in the wake of this last disaster, The West Virginia Governor decided to make it almost impossible not to support the organizing of the unions in these death traps.

I’m trying to find the speech where he supports the many workers over the few owners so I can post it. SNARK

you betcha!

Really great idea – I’ll see what I can do on that.

Thanks for posting this Michael.

I was surprised to see that AZ has a coal mine with the largest number of employees on the list, and that coal mine’s operator does not contest violations.

I was also surprised to see that, AZ being the “Copper State”, has no mines listed on the Metal/Non-Metal list. According to wiki:

In 2007 Arizona was the leading copper-producing state in the US, producing 750 thousand metric tons of copper, worth a record $5.54 billion. Arizona’s copper production was 60% of the total for the United States. Copper mining also produces gold and silver as byproducts.[1] Byproduct molybdenum from copper mining makes Arizona the nation’s second-largest producer of that metal.

Yet a cursory search of the internet indicates that AZ seems to have a fairly good safety record for the last decade. Yet:

Statewide injury rates are consistently above the national rate, and safety fines against the state’s biggest mine operators have increased, according to an Arizona Republic analysis of publicly available data from the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration and figures the agency provided upon request.

Some have attributed the recent rise in the number of injuries to a hiring boom two years ago that brought in a number of inexperienced employees. Still, the first and only fatality in AZ in 2009 came in Sept. when a haul truck driver drove over a barrier of at least 12 feet of rock and overturned.

When we moved to AZ, Phelps Dodge was in the news frequently. Again, according to wiki:

The Phelps Dodge copper mine at Morenci, Arizona was the site of a violent strike from 1983 to 1986, culminating in one of the largest union decertifications in American labor history.[3]

Hmmm…I wonder if the rising number of injuries could just as easily be due to the lack of unionization?

I would love to see some data on the comparative profitability of these mines. Supposedly, Blankenship and some of his cronies have done so-called cost-benefit analyses and decided that ignoring safety rules and contesting citations led to higher profitability despite the increased costs from mine accidents. (I assume this analysis also included consideration of the increased financial burden of paying death benefits to the miners killed in these accidents, similar to how the Ford auto company included anticipated legal settlements for accident victims in its cost-benefit analysis when it decided to market the Pinto years ago.) Aside from the grotesque immorality of counting human lives as nothing more than a line on a balance sheet, my guess is that any increased profitability for Massey and the others is fairly minimal.

I wonder in Hillary Clinton (or Bill) still has stock holdings in Lafarge?

That kind of data will never become public, unless there are VERY aggressive investigations by Congress and others.

For the individual corporations involved, for example, it would require subpoenas of boatloads of company documents – and then DOJ criminal investigations of enormous scope.

The american system is run on a risk analysis rather than hazard analysis. That’s a central arguement to David Micheals(now head of OSHA) book “Doubt is their product.”

@Becca there’s a really high MSHA:FACILITY ratio(which is a good thing- the point I’m trying to make is they’re there alot and isn’t necessarily due to the chart). The problem is the backwords way fines are handled and, as with OSHA, it’s incredibly difficult to get the highest violation. For example, companies have got out of willful violations after having been cited for the same violation before.

laborite might know the actual ratio, but every MSHA facility is inspected I believe at least once every 6 months vs osha facility which is once every 120 years