Labor Update: Massey Mine, Methane, and Maximizing Profits

[kernelfarmer]

Labor Update: Massey Mine, Methane, and Maximizing Profits

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by Tracy Kurowski

No one questions whether mining is a dirty and dangerous business. The history of coal mining is filled with stories of deadly explosions, poison gases, and black lung disease which have plagued mine workers and their families over multiple generations.

However, there are degrees to all things, and what has become clear in the week since an explosion at the Massey Mine in West Virginia is that the shocking number of safety violations at the non-union company over its history, and even recent months, should have been enough to shut the company down and avoid such a tragedy.

But the bureaucracy, corruption, and consolidation of mining over a generation all but guaranteed such a tragedy. Massey Mine has been cited with over 450 violations in the past year, 57 in the past month alone including 60 orders issued to close part or all of the mine down. Their ugly safety record isn’t isolated to one particular mine. The 29 miners who died in West Virginia last week are among 45 miners who have been killed at Massey’s mining operations since 2000. http://wvgazette.com/News/201004080359

Massey Mine is among a group of international mining operations that have consolidated unprecedented power over world mining rights. Just last month it acquired Cumberland mines in Appalachia. http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20100316-908168.html?mod=wsjcrmain

The Massey Mine in West Virginia produces coal, and one of the byproducts of its extraction from the earth is methane. The failure to properly ventilate this toxic and flammable gas, as documented by the above-mentioned safety violations, likely caused the enormous explosion.

FULL STORY AT LINK

http://www.blogforiowa.com/blog/_archives/2010/4/12/4503046.html