Sorry, business can’t police itself…
There’s an ongoing debate in the country over whether we need government to intervene sometimes in order to keep the nation’s businesses from screwing workers.
A debate over this was even sparked yesterday on this blog when I talked about the increase in minimum wage.
Well folks, unfortunately, we can’t rely on the business world to police itself. Money is involved. When that happens, men and women sometimes don’t do the right thing, and sometimes it’s more than a worker’s wallet that suffers. Sometimes it means death.
Yesterday the U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA fined the operator of the Crandall Canyon Mine in Emery County, Utah, to the tune of $1.85 million for “violations that directly contributed to the deaths of six miners last year.”
Do you all remember the Crandall Canyon mine collapse. Not only did those six miners perish, but two mine employees and an inspector from the MSHA also died when they went in to help the men.
It was a tragic story and the CEO, Robert E. Murray, of the mine kept insisting it may have been an earthquake that led to the tragedy. I wrote about it a few times since then.
Turns out someone should have been policing Murray.
Crandall is operated by Genwal Resources Inc., which is owned by Murray Energy Corp.
This from the MSHA statement:
“MSHA’s investigation found that Genwal Resources recklessly failed to immediately report three previous coal outbursts that had occurred, two in March 2007 and one just three days before the August 6th accident,” said Richard E. Stickler, acting assistant secretary of labor for MSHA. “These reporting failures were critical, because they deprived MSHA of the information it needed to properly assess the operator’s mining plans. MSHA also found that the operator was taking more coal than allowed from the barrier pillars and the floor. This dangerously weakened the strength of the roof support.”
Here’s how the agency claims the company screwed up:
– The mine operator did not immediately contact MSHA after coal outbursts threw coal into the mine openings and disrupted regular mining activities for more than one hour on three separate occasions prior to the August 6 outburst.
The mine operator failed to propose revisions to the roof control plan when conditions (coal outbursts) clearly indicated that the plan was inadequate and miners were being exposed to dangerous conditions.
– The operator violated the approved roof control plan by removing coal that was required to support the roof.
The operator’s outside engineering firm failed to recommend safe mining methods and pillar/barrier dimensions, and the operator failed to maintain pillar dimensions that would effectively control coal outbursts.
Unfortunately, this is not an unfamiliar story.
Recently I wrote about the dramatic rise in cell tower climber deaths and how many speculated a rush to build out the cell system in the United States may have attributed to their deaths.
And a Wall Street Journal story today uncovers a huge jump in deaths in the steel industry and many believe pressure to meet exploding demand for steel may be the culprit.
We all hope that people do the right thing and not allow the greed factor to impact their decision making, especially when those decisions could hurt the very employees that are a big reason for their economic gains. But alas, hope is not enough.
July 25th, 2008 at 9:57 am
While I agree that more should be done to ensure safety rules are followed, part of me wonders if the increase in death and injury rates in some of these professions is due to other changes in our work environmenet. Most specifically, the change from life-long careers with a single company to the modern concept of working many different jobs in a lifetime (it was eight the last time I remember reading about this).
I’m not suggesting that as an excuse. If anything, that should be a primary reason for companies to beef up their safety training programs. When people were with one company for most of their careers, they had more opportunities to learn the nuances of working in their respective environments. This even includes the fact that workers learn from mistakes and tragedies experienced by others. I once had an acquaintance with a Louisiana shrimper. He took his first job while he was a teen, and he was in his 40s when I met him. He told me how his view of the job changed after he saw another crew member have a serious hand injury while handling some of their gear. For him, it changed the way he looked at his job–it focused his mind on safety.
With all the churn in various industries, not only are people not on the job long enough to develop a sense for the various subtleties of their work environments, but oftentimes the “long-timers” who act as cultural guides for the newcomers, teaching them not only the informal communications network but also many of the safety rules and tips that they’ve learned over the years (often in the form of stories that start “You don’t want to do that”).
Think about it. Doesn’t that happen in every career path? As a journalist, didn’t you have mentors who helped you learn the ropes? It happened for me in the technical field. The biggest difference is that, for you and me, we’re less often dealing with situations or technologies that put our lives in danger.
July 25th, 2008 at 10:04 am
I think you may be onto something HikingStick. There is a lack of mentors out their to show you the ropes because so many people aren’t at one particular job for years anymore. But I can’t help but sense an overall fire under industry to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible. That’s been the mantra since the late 1970s.
But indeed, if we had more of the old salty dogs around younger workers would benefit and do their jobs better and more safely.
July 25th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Absolutely we need government policing! Granted, I used to work for the SEC, so I *would* say that. But if there’s one constant in financial services it’s that, with so much money flowing around, SOMEONE is going to want to stick a hand in and skim off what they don’t deserve. The temptation is just too strong, and the information disparity between industry and customers is too great to expect the customers to know what’s going on.
Because the information disparity means the market can’t fix itself, there simply must be an outsider to keep an eye on the system. Sure, the industry can self-police — a lot of that goes on, and it’s often a well-balanced solution. But even then, you need the government to oversee and make sure that the “police” part of the equation actually happens, without the industry starting to look out mainly for its own….