I read that this mine, in recent years, has been cited for 168 safety violations. Usually, when you get cited for a safety violation, there's a relatively hefty fine. Like a traffic fine, something to deter future incidents like that which caused the fine in the first place.
So I looked up the Sago Mine in West Virginia on MSHA's website myself. Being once a union organizer who had a lot of background in spotting safety violations I wanted to find out for myself why a mine with 168 violations could not have possibly been shut down already or been fined to high heaven with prohibitive fees.
And what I found should not have been as disappointing to me as it was. You see, since 1994 OSHA changed dramatically in how it has undergone its enforcement authority.
Today, an OSHA inspector needs to provide PRIOR WARNING to an employer at least 24 hours before an inspection. Why? Because of GOPers such as Cass Ballenger. He headed the Employment and Workforce Committee and played a major role in deforming it in the 90s.
Where OSHA was once effective at pursuing law breakers and fining them, OSHA has now been defanged as enforcement money was earmaked for "non-enforcement" programs that would do relative harm to all those poor small businessmen Ballenger would always champion.
And who are they? Any employer with less than 250 employees at a given plant. That, to Ballenger, is a small business.
So I looked at the Mine's violations, and I found a lot of them. A heck of a lot. Most for about $60 (less than a speeding ticket), some for as much as $200 at some times and wow, there was even one for $440! Now that's tough enforcement!
In reality, the slow creep away from enforcement, led by people like Cass Ballenger and Peter Hoekstra and their GOP allies is what really caused this. Just think, what is more profitable?
Paying a total of $3,600 for 168 fines or paying a couple hundred thousand to fix those problems?
Sad as it is, it's more profitable to pay those cheap fines, especially when you know the inspectors are going to come ahead of time anyways.
And when you know he media isn't going to barely say a thing about why you never abated any of the probelems that may have led to the deaths of all those workers.
And when the media, in today's day and age, interviews a mine foreman or company spokesperson, but acts like the most histpric organization in that state, the United Mine Workers, doesn't exist.
Has anybody seen the mine workers on television? No. Why not? Because they're not media saavy? No. They invented media saavy for unions during the old coal strikes. Because they don't want to talk to the media? No. They do. Because it's a non-union mine? No. That doesn't stop them as probably being the biggest authority on mine safety.
No, it's because the mine workers will actually sympathize for those families and do more. They will question the system that led to these deaths. They will expose where the blood of these workers, if found dead, lie. On the hands of the Republican Party. The same party who sold out these workers as collateral damage so that they could please their big business friends.
And we will hardly hear a teardrop about it.
http://www.msha.gov/drs/ASP/MineAction.asp
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