Over at B’s place, taddyporter has a post up today about the West Virginia mine disaster that I’m going to steal in its entirety (except for a photograph):
The handsome gent at the center of the photo on the left, the one with the impressive soup strainer, is Bennie Willingham, a coal miner at the Upper Big Branch coal mine and an employee of Mr. Blankenship.
Mr Willingham has been swept away by the gigantic methane explosion at the Upper Big Branch. He is lost to family, gathered around him in the photo, and friends.
Mr. Willingham regularly worked 12 hour shifts 1000 feet below the ground at the Upper Big Branch. He moved tons of coal for the Massey Energy Company.
We don’t know what Massey Energy paid its miners since it is not a party to collective bargaining with the United Mine Workers of America. If it were a party, Mr Willingham would have been paid $22.42 per hour in the final year of the contract, 2014.
Mr Blankenship, who, so far as anyone can tell, hasn’t dug a teaspoon of coal for Massey Energy, was paid $40 million dollars for the two year period ending 2007, the last year for which I’ve been able to find any figures for his wages. I’m not sure what that comes to per hour. Its clearly a better deal than he would have got from the UMWA contract. And, he works in a nice office, ten stories above the ground. So, you know, its a good deal.
Still, you have to wonder who is more valuable to the shareholders of Massey Energy; the people who actually dig out the commodity that pays the bills or the bosses who run up the bills? Apparently, there is an inexhaustible supply of the former and a nearly pinched out premium supply of the latter, if we assume that the vaunted free market in coal determines wage costs in the coal fields.
These explosions have got to be damned expensive. The order to focus on nothing but running coal has resulted in an absolute halt to running anything. It turns out that protecting workers, operating a safe workplace, mitigating hazards, is good business. Who knew?
After the Sago mine outrage, the UMWA investigated and released a report on causes and corrections. You can read it here.
We won’t know for some time what caused the explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine but the UMWA report gives some items to look for. The top three conditions I’m looking for in news reports are as follows:
1) were the abandoned areas of the mine sealed off with permanent bulkheads or temporary foam barricades?
2) were lines of communication between surface and underground armored or were they run through plenum?
3) is the mine’s safety and rescue team an outsourced contract team, unfamiliar with the Upper Big Branch operation or is it a standing team of workers who know the Upper Big Branch mine?
Its reported that when Mr Blankenship visited with miner’s families and loved ones Tuesday morning, he was escorted by more than a dozen police officers. Evidently, no expense public or private, is spared when it comes to Mr Blankenship’s safety.
Perhaps this principle could be extended to the operations of his mines. What if Mr Blankenship’s office were located 1000′ under the roots of the West Virginia mountains instead of ten stories above the commerical district of Richmond, Virginia? What if Mr Willingham and Mr Blankenship shared the risks of their business, even if they didn’t share the rewards?
I bet you if that were the case, you could eat off the floor of that mine. And Mr Willingham would be home with his family, right now.
I always feel a bit embarrassed when I fall hard for this kind of man-the-barricades, tug-at-your-heartstrings, aimed-at-red-diaper-babies prose. But that’s probably because the narrowing Overton window with regard to discussions of class inequities long ago choked off the oxygen feeding my basic decency.
11 comments
April 7, 2010 at 10:04 am
Robin Marie
Some coal miners are still working 12 hours shifts in 2010? That’s incredibly depressing.
April 7, 2010 at 10:46 am
kid bitzer
if you’re outsourcing the blogging today, you might also give a h/t to ta-nehisi, who has one of the most beautifully disdainful, contemptuous point-and-laugh posts about neo-confederate republicans that i have ever read.
“If you are a “Real American” with no demonstrable interest in “Real America” then, by God, this movement of alchemists and creationists, of anti-science and hair tonic, is for you”.
oh god. the “hair tonic” is the absolute coup de grace.
not to take anything away from taddy, however, who is also excellent.
April 7, 2010 at 10:51 am
ari
I think some of us might be considering our own posts about Virginia’s decision to honor its treasonous past. But yes, that post was awesome sauce (homage intended).
April 7, 2010 at 12:42 pm
matt w
Interesting and horrifying fact — when I did a search for a phrase from the post kid quotes above, the first hit was from Little Green Footballs. Republicans, you’ve turned Charles Johnson into a voice of reason. (Linky to the T-NC piece.)
As for Blankenship, he murdered those twenty-nine men to make money, just as if he’d been cracking a safe and used a little more dynamite than he intended. I don’t see why white-collar thieves and murderers aren’t prosecuted like other thieves and murderers. If Blankenship were to serve twenty-nine consecutive life sentences, I bet this number would go down a touch.
April 7, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Walt
That’s an incredibly moving passage.
April 8, 2010 at 8:31 am
Sir Charles
ari,
I think you feel embarrassed because sophisticated thinkers are not supposed to believe that there is simply a right side and a wrong side to an issue — everything is supposed to be laden with nuance and colored in shades of grey. But sometimes — hell, I’d even say often times — these things really do come down to fundamental questions like “which side are you on” and there isn’t much in the way of ambiguity. (I was actually listening to Billy Bragg’s awesome version of this timeless tune the other day in response to this tragedy.)
I remember getting furious many years ago when the movie “Matewan” came out and the smartass woman who reviewed film for the Washington Post criticized its lack of balance. Yeah, one really wishes that the coal barons and the Pinkertons could have been shown in a more positive light.
I have to say that I am shocked that no one has ever taken a shot at Blankenship.
April 8, 2010 at 12:01 pm
John B.
The miners.
April 8, 2010 at 6:11 pm
zunguzungu
A shameless thread-jacking plug: my mom is the director of an WV environmental group that’s been tilting with Massey and Blankenship for years, and some time ago filed an intent to sue that lovely human being and his company for several thousand water pollution violations. I think Massey is the biggest mountaintop removal operator in WV, and the devastation that that does to nearby homes and communities is sort of hard to exaggerate (but here are some pictures from a Massey fill disaster in 2002). And one of the more silent ways companies like Massey destroy people’s lives is by so thoroughly screwing with the water systems as to increase the damage from floods by exponential factors. When you bury the streams and strip the hillsides, floods rise so fast and strong that people and their houses get carried away (and then company spokespeople carefully clarify that it was an “act of God, not of man”)
If you want to be involved in any way, the link is there.
April 8, 2010 at 6:13 pm
zunguzungu
That first linbk didn’t work, for some reason; it was to have been:
http://www.ohvec.org
April 8, 2010 at 6:14 pm
zunguzungu
That first link didn’t work, for some reason; it was to have been:
http://www.ohvec.org
April 9, 2010 at 9:14 am
Rebecca Clayton
When I first moved to West Virginia 12 years ago, I was amazed by Don Blankenship–surely no one could be 100% Charisma Free. Unfortunately, the prose you’re interpreting as warmed-over lefty rhetoric is simple unvarnished description. There’s no need for public relations spin when you’ve bought the judges and politicians, and your company is the economic mainstay for Southern West Virginia.