With friends like these, coal miners at risk
Political coal warriors are not necessarily friends of miners or their families, as Kentuckians Mitch McConnell and Brandon Smith demonstrate.
Smith, R-Hazard, is a state senator who admits the Kentucky Coal Association wrote a bill he’s sponsoring that would roll back one of the landmark mine-safety reforms that Smith and the rest of the legislature unanimously enacted in 2007 after Kentucky and West Virginia were shaken by a rash of highly preventable underground fatalities.
In Harlan County alone, nine miners died on the job during a 10-month span in 2005 and 2006.
Smith’s Senate Bill 224 would end a requirement that mine foremen receive six hours of safety training from the state each year and instead allow their employers to provide the training. The industry-written bill makes it sound as if coal companies would be complying with “federal mine foreman training requirements” when, in fact, no such federal training requirements exist.
Foremen play critical roles in keeping miners under their supervision safe. One strength of the 2007 state law is that foremen gain knowledge and expertise specific to Kentucky — for example, about retreat mining, when coal pillars supporting a mine roof are removed, allowing the roof to collapse, a practice that is illegal in some states.
The state training informs foremen about the rights afforded to miners under mine-safety laws a topic the companies would not be expected to stress.
Smith told the Herald-Leader’s John Cheves, “We’re in a crisis mode, and over-regulation, in my opinion, is the cause of that.” In other words, a powerful industry in decline should be freed to cut corners, even if it endangers workers?
Surely, lawmakers don’t think miners deserve even less protection from job-related dangers now than in the past. If anything, miners are more at risk because the decline in coal production makes it pretty much impossible to walk away from a dangerous mine and find a job with a safer company.
(Who are we kidding? The state mine safety budget has been decimated in recent years, and in 2014 Republican lawmakers tried unsuccessfully to reduce state safety inspections from six a year to four.)
On a more hopeful note, McConnell, the majority leader of the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate, seems to be easing his opposition to a bipartisan plan for shoring up coal miners’ retirement and health care plans.
McConnell excluded the pension rescue from a massive budget deal in December, as The Washington Post recently confirmed, even though the plan had the support of President Barack Obama and key lawmakers from both parties.
The United Mine Workers of America supported McConnell’s Democratic opponent in 2014. Shoring up the UMWA pension and health funds was about the only ornament left off the Christmas tree of a spending package in 2015.
About 120,000 former miners, their families and their local economies depend on the funds, some of which are teetering on insolvency as the number of working miners has fallen and major coal companies declare bankruptcy. The federal government promised after World War II to secure miners’ pensions; Congress renewed the pledge in 1992.
Obama included the rescue plan in his 2017 budget, and on Tuesday the Senate Finance Committee will hear a plan backed by the UMWA — a sign that McConnell is relenting.
His office told us, “Sen. McConnell continues to believe this is a very important issue that deserves open, transparent debate through regular order. The Senate Finance Committee recently announced it would be holding a hearing on multi-employer pension issues to examine a number of challenges in the pension world, including how to help retired coal miners.”
No impartial expert predicts a coal industry turnaround any time soon, or, in Eastern Kentucky, ever. The industry will try to escape its legacy obligations, whether to its current and retired workers or to clean up its environmental messes.
Public officials, including the Bevin administration, should be on guard to protect the public’s interest.
This story was originally published February 25, 2016 at 6:16 PM with the headline "With friends like these, coal miners at risk."