COMPREHENSIVE REPORT: ‘PROFOUNDLY RECKLESS’ COMPANY
CULTURE OF SAFETY VIOLATIONS LED TO UPPER BIG BRANCH
By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer
CHARLESTON, W. Va. (PAI)—The first comprehensive report on last April’s explosion at Massey Coal Company’s Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia shows a “profoundly reckless” company culture of ignoring safety led to the blast, which killed 29 miners in the worst such disaster in 40 years. Conditions were so bad that poisonous methane gas was flowing the wrong way – into the mine – at the time of the explosion.
The report, by a team led by former Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) chief J. Davitt McAteer, whom the state named to run its investigation, placed the blame squarely on Massey and said the blast and deaths were preventable.
Massey “operated its mines in a profoundly reckless manner, and 29 coal miners paid with their lives for corporate risk-taking,” McAteer concluded.
McAteer’s report, released May 19, is the first of several comprehensive studies of the explosion, and comes just after congressional panels held hearings in early May on mine safety. The Republican-run House Education and the Workforce Committee doubts more mine safety laws are needed. It favors better enforcement of existing laws.
Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts, who testified before Congress on the issue, wasn’t surprised by McAteer’s findings about the comprehensive culture of safety disregard at Massey. He previously told lawmakers more enforcement is not enough.
“Mine management failed to carry out even the most basic functions required of it to keep the mine safe,” Roberts said May 19.
“Proper ventilation was nonexistent, fireboss runs were not made, essential gas detection equipment was not turned on, water sprays on equipment were not properly maintained, coal dust was allowed to accumulate on the floor and the ribs of the mine and required rock dusting to hold down potential explosions was not done.
"These are all things any company that cared about its workers' safety would not allow to happen. But because of the safety-last culture that developed at Massey, there was no emphasis on maintaining the mine within even the most basic of safety parameters,” Roberts declared.
In his testimony on May 4, Roberts cited the Upper Big Branch blast in arguing for tougher laws, not just better enforcement. McAteer’s report backs him up.
McAteer reported Massey, under then-owner Don Blankenship, had a corporate culture that put coal production ahead of worker protection. Massey, the fourth-largest coal company in the U.S., has since been sold to a competitor, and Blankenship retired.
"Evidence suggests that a great number of deviant practices became normalized at the Upper Big Branch Mine," McAteer’s report said.
The report showed widespread violations of safety rules, intimidation of workers and – as MSHA records also show – a company that contested safety rulings every step of the way, at Upper Big Branch and its other mines.
One flaw in mine safety law is that necessary safety fixes are delayed when a company appeals violations, Roberts pointed out, again, to the House panel.
"The disaster at Upper Big Branch was man-made and could have been prevented," McAteer concluded.
Roberts made many of the same points two weeks before. “One thing is clear: When Congress acts, miners’ lives are saved,” he declared.
“Operators should be required to make better efforts to prevent illnesses and injuries in the first place,” he added. That should be done through legislation, Roberts said, since past history shows coal company self-policing does not work.
Besides ordering the mines to buy and install more modernized safety equipment, such as personal atmospheric and coal dust monitoring equipment, Congress should give MSHA more teeth, Roberts said.
That includes higher fines for safety violations, criminalizing mine operators who warn their shift supervisors of safety inspections in advance – thus allowing violations to be hidden – and focusing “extra resources on rogue violators,” such as Massey.
Roberts also called for “open investigations” of “multi-fatal accidents,” stronger whistleblower protections, full participation rights in mine investigations for miners’ representatives – usually the UMWA, which has the expertise on the issue – and subpoena powers for MSHA.
And he pointed out, responding to McAteer’s report, that Massey intimidated miners – and potential whistleblowers – too.
McAteer’s “report details how the culture of intimidation and repression of workers and their voices at work, always so prevalent in a nonunion workplace, was
taken to an even greater level at Massey. In the wake of this report, I don't know how anyone can argue against not just protecting basic rights at work for coal miners but expanding them,” Roberts commented.
And he had told lawmakers that when MSHA must shut a mine for safety reasons, the miners and their families now receive only one week’s pay as compensation. Roberts called that sum inadequate in the coalfields, where alternative work “is often nonexistent.”
As a result, “Too often miners have to make the choice between putting food on the table and protecting their own safety. By expanding the compensation provisions, miners’ health and safety would be better protected.”
Massey’s safety violations are continuing. On April 29, MSHA issued more citations against Massey’s Randolph Mine in Boone County, W. Va.
After seizing control of the mine phone system to prevent advance warning of their arrival, MSHA inspectors found many ventilation violations, among others.
“This condition exposed miners to respirable dust hazards that could result in permanently disabling injuries such as black lung and other diseases,” said MSHA. And “combustible materials in the form of loose coal, coal dust and float coal dust were allowed to accumulate in active workings, which can contribute to a mine explosion.”
“The conduct and behavior exhibited when we caught the mine operator by surprise is nothing short of outrageous,” said MSHA Administrator Joe Main. “Despite the tragedy at Upper Big Branch last year, and all our efforts to bring mine operators into compliance, some still aren’t getting it.”
###
