Because everyone should go home from work alive and healthy

The mining business is a dangerous one. Over 2600 people died in mining accidents in China last year, which perhaps gives some perspective on the 25 deaths at the Upper Big Branch Mine this week.

Except … it doesn’t.  Not really.

Mining is dangerous.  But y’know what?  I work for a major international engineering firm.  We have people — engineers and construction and maintenance personnel — at some pretty dangerous locations, too.  Chemical plants.  Petroleum refineries. Road and bridge and building construction sites.  And, yes, mine sites.

Every injury, let alone any death, whether one of our own or a subcontractor, is considered unacceptable.  Any workplace injury that causes lost time or a doctor’s visit is reported up to the CEO within 24 hours.  That includes motor vehicle accidents on company business.  It’s analyzed for the root cause.  For how people and practice failed.  Every injury, let alone any death, is considered a failure on the company’s part. Our goal is to drive below zero accidents, to make sure that every employee, every sub, goes home each night to their family safe and whole.

Any activity that might cause danger is analyzed, and a safe plan of action is drawn up.   If dangerous circumstances are found — and they are actively sought out, whether in the field or at the home office — work stops, reports are made, the situation is corrected.  Initiative is rewarded, even when it costs time and money.

It’s not easy.  As I said, engineering and construction can be dangerous.  Moreover, it requires us to force subcontractors to act more safely than they might otherwise.  It requires us to force our clients to act more safely than they might otherwise, to convince them that safety is the most important thing they should be concerned with.

And it works.  We have one of the industry’s best safety records.  And that still isn’t enough.  As long as anyone is being injured or killed, it’s not enough for our management, myself included.

And then there’s this:

Blankenship Branded Deadly Fire At Dangerous Aracoma Mine “Statistically Insignificant.” In the most egregious case of preventable death before the Upper Big Branch explosion, Massey’s Aracoma Coal Co. agreed to “plead guilty to 10 criminal charges, including one felony, and pay $2.5 million in criminal fines” after two workers died in a fire at the Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine in Melville, West Virginia. Massey also paid $1.7 million in civil fines. The mine “had 25 violations of mandatory health and safety laws” before the fire on January 19, 2006, but Massey CEO Don Blankenship passed the deaths off as “statistically insignificant.” [Logan Banner, 9/1/06; Charleston Gazette, 12/24/08]

Federal Mine Inspector Who Wanted To Shut Down Mine Told To “Back Off.” Days before fire broke out in the Aracoma mine, a federal mine inspector tried to close down that section of the mine, but “was told by his superior to back off and let them run coal, that there was too much demand for coal.” Massey failed to notify authorities of the fire until two hours after the disaster. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/23/06]

Blankenship Memo: “Coal Pays the Bills.” Three months before the Aracoma mine fire, Massey CEO Don Blankenship sent managers a memo saying, “If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal . . . you need to ignore them and run coal. This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills.” [Logan Banner, 9/1/06]

I don’t know about the legality — though reckless disregard is usually considered a factor in homicide investigations — but I can say without hesitation that this is highly immoral.  Sinful, if you will.  It’s valuing things over people, and willfully being negligent for the purposes of greed.

And, as my own company indicates, it’s unnecessary, which makes it, if possible, even worse.

The government cannot impose morality, but it can restrain immorality.  That’s what regulation is about.  Regulation is not a dirty word, no matter what the pro-business pols tell you.  The complicity of the government — more specifically the Bush Administration — in enabling Blankenship and Massey Energy to treat profit as more important than safety, even when it cost lives and health — stands as stark testimony as to why government regulation is needed.

Not for the sake of bureaucracy.  Not for some anti-business Marxist utopian ideal.   But because the alternative is injury and death.  The crippling or ending of human lives. People like you, or me, or those 29 miners in West Virginia, and the families and friends they leave behind.  And anyone who says that’s acceptable, or pragmatically necessary, is complicit in that crime.

And, dare I say it, sin.