No Miracles

People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad.

~Marcel Proust

4 Missing W.Va. Miners Found Dead

Rescue workers located four bodies deep in a West Virginia coal mine, dashing any faint hopes of finding more survivors of a deadly explosion that has claimed 29 lives, the worst U.S. mining disaster in a generation.

Officials announced the grim discovery at the Upper Big Branch Mine early Saturday, after first notifying family members.

"We did not receive the miracle that we prayed for," Gov. Joe Manchin said. "So this journey has ended and now the healing will start."

Until late Friday, officials had held out a slim chance that four missing miners may have made it to an underground refuge chamber which held enough oxygen and water to survive for four days.

"None of the chambers had been deployed and none of our miners suffered," Manchin said.

Mine rescue effort turns to recovery

President Barack Obama said Saturday that steps must be taken to make sure such an explosion does not happen again.

"We cannot bring back the men we lost," he said in a statement. "What we can do, in their memory, is thoroughly investigate this tragedy and demand accountability."

Deadly Record: Massey’s Mine In Montcoal Has Been Cited For Over 3,000 Violations, Over $2.2 Million In Fines

This deadly mine has been cited for over 3,000 violations by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), 638 since 2009:

• Since 1995, Massey’s Upper Big Branch-South Mine has been cited for 3,007 safety violations. Massey is contesting 353 violations, and 127 are delinquent. [MSHA]
  
  
• Massey is contesting over a third (34.7%) of the 516 safety citations the Upper Big Branch-South Mine received in 2009, its greatest count in the last 15 years. [MSHA]
  
  
• In March 2010, 53 new safety citations were issued for Massey’s Upper Big Branch-South Mine, including violations of its mine ventilation plan. [MSHA]

. . .
Massey is now contesting $1,128,833 in fines for safety violations at the deadly Upper Big Branch-South Mine, with a further $246,320 in delinquent fines:

• Over $2.2 million in fines have been assessed against Massey’s Upper Big Branch-South Mine since 1995, with $791,327 paid. Massey is contesting $1,128,833 in fines. Massey’s delinquent fines total $246,320. [MSHA]
  
  
• Massey is contesting $251,613 in fines for citations for Upper Big Branch-South Mine’s ventilation plan. [MSHA]
  

. . .
Massey’s corrupt CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce board member Don Blankenship, has previously told employees that it was more important to “run coal” than follow safety regulations.

In 2002, President George W. Bush “named former Massey Energy official Stanley Suboleski to the MSHA review commission that decides all legal matters under the Federal Mine Act,” and cut 170 positions from MSHA. Bush’s MSHA chief, Dick Stickler, was a former manager of Beth Energy mines, which “incurred injury rates double the national average.”

The Politics of Life and Death in West Virginia

In the wake of the Massey Energy tragedy that killed 29 coal miners in West Virginia, there appear to be two steps that could improve worker safety there. First, as the mine accident record of the last decade suggests, join a union. Second, put Democrats in the White House to reverse the GOP's nationwide gutting of federal regulation and oversight. Sadly, both trends in West Virginia have been moving the opposite direction.

Worker Safety Call Out

Thank goodness there are a few responsible people willing to call something out for what it is. And what this is, is a call out to right-wing BS.

For any of those who may have a real conscience, consider this as a call out. For any of those who don't, consider this as contempt for your lack of morals...

Ed Schultz, April 7, 2010 transcript excerpt:

SCHULTZ: It’s going to take a miracle for rescuers to get to the four trapped West Virginia miners and get them out alive. That mining company had thousands of safety violations over the years. This has me convinced that we need an investigation into criminal negligence. I’ve got a commentary next here on MSNBC.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCHULTZ: Rescue crews were not able to rescue and resume the search. Methane gas levels underground are still too high. Crews continue to drill holes to ventilate the area and hopefully restart the search. Meanwhile, the Labor Department is launching a special investigation into safety conditions at the mine, and they should.

“The Charleston Daily Mail” reports that the mine has had 3,000 safety violations in the past 15 years. It was cited as recently as last month for improper ventilation. Last night United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard told me the mine would have been much safer if workers had been unionized.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEO GERARD, PRESIDENT, UNITED STEELWORKERS: The CEO of Massey promotes himself as a union buster. He promotes himself as having a record of fighting unions wherever they show up in his workplace. If he spent as much time helping the workers get a union, helping us then clean up his workplaces, we wouldn’t have these fatalities and he wouldn’t have these fines.

SCHULTZ: Mr. Gerard, are you willing to say tonight that if these workers had been members of a union, this would not have happened?

GERARD: I can absolutely say that if these members had been member of a union, they would have had the right to refuse unsafe work in our collective agreements and they would have been able to refuse that work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHULTZ: And I have to tell it like it is tonight, folks. This is all about the man, the man in the front office who took home over $19 million in income in 2008. This is about the man having his foot right on the neck of the middle class, having his foot right on the neck of those mine workers.

In an economically depressed area of West Virginia where there is no economic development, this is what they do. And in the midst of all of that, without regulation, they’re allowed to abuse workers. You see, because if they don’t go down in that hole they lose their job. And all these right wingers in this country who are attacking the middle class and attacking labor in this country, you need to go to these funerals because there’s going to be 25 of them and maybe more. We don’t know what’s going to happen to the other four. It doesn’t look real good at this hour.

But here’s the point. Unions not only — this is just — I can’t believe we’re having this discussion in this country as if we have to vilify collective bargaining, where a family can be protected from dangers in the workplace and there won’t be the man on the neck of that worker, the neck of that family and those kids who are now missing a loved one.

Criminal negligence, homicide, you name it. The Congress has to get into this once and for all. President Obama, you need to get involved in this.

This is what the Employee Free Choice Act is all about. Where there’s not going to be intimidation, where there’s not going to be retribution against employees who just think about organizing in the workplace because they’d like to go down into a workplace where they’re not going to lose their lives. Where it will just increase the safety in their area. Is that asking too much? Is it all for the dollar bill in America? This is morally wrong. There is absolutely no difference between what these guys did in the front office at this Massey Energy Company than what these guys did down the street on Wall Street to folks who were ripped off. This is a matter of life and death. That’s what this is.

And you know what we’re going to do right now as Americans? We’re all going to sit at the dinner tables tonight and we’re going to ask ourselves, what are we going to do about it? And so when I see these rallies out there with Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann and they claim to be for the working folk of America, show me.

Have the guts to stand up for these families that are now in tragic loss. Show me, you Republicans, show me you care. Show Americans that you have a heart and you have a soul and that you don’t despise American workers who just want a fair shake in the workplace. I’m really biting my tongue right now.

Sometimes I wish I was on HBO, but this is where I belong, and I started this show a year ago to fight for the middle class and now we have some dead people on our hands. And now we have Republicans who are saying that, well, the Employee Free Choice Act is not the right thing to do. We have the United States Chamber of Commerce throwing lobbyists and millions of dollars against those families who would like to have a chance to get some protection in the workplace.

Do you believe that this company was genuinely addressing the safety violations? No. I could go on for hours, but this is where we stand in America. It’s an ideological divide. Some people care about the working folk of America. And some people flat-out don’t give a damn. I don’t think Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, I don’t think they give a damn.

I couldn’t support a Republican right now if you cremated me with them. I couldn’t warm up to a Republican if you cremated me with them right now.

They are against the middle class in this country.

Mine deaths spark criticism of operator's record

Mine owner ran up serious violations

Mine cited for broken fresh-air system

Extracting coal remains a dangerous proposition. Could more labor unions help?

Want Safer Mines? Unionize Them

Without the big move to non-union operations that has been plaguing the coal industry for more than two decades, there's a good possibility that 25 dead and four missing miners in West Virginia tonight would be sitting down to dinner with their families instead of being mourned by them.

For those in peril in the dark...

The CEO of Massey Energy is Don Blankenship. The same Don Blankenship who invented a scandal and funded it to the tune of $3 million to run one one state supreme court judge out of office for the crime of siding with workers. The same Blankenship who was photographed cavorting along the French Riveria with another justice while his company had a $77 million case before the court. The same Don Blankenship who regularly condemns the whole idea of environmental protection, saying that global warming does not exist and that asking people to conserve is tantamount to communism. The same Blankenship and the same Massey that last year was convicted of massive and systematic age discrimination. The same Blankenship and the same Massey who were ordered to pay $30 million in environmental damages after running up fines that actually topped $2.5 billion.

Most critically this is the same Blankenship and the same Massey who lost miners as recently as 2006 due to lack of safety equipment. At the end of that case, the widows of the dead men refused to accept the settlement, stating that it was clear that the company executives had placed profit ahead of safety. [...]

Whatever happens, let's not forget that without constant attention and championing of the cause of safety, it's all too easy for any company to forget that these are men and women in their charge, not just corporate assets.

Blankenship's Bloody Coal Mine: A Deluge of Violations

Over $2.2 million in fines have been assessed against Massey’s Upper Big Branch-South Mine since 1995, with $791,327 paid. Massey is contesting $1,128,833 in fines. Massey’s delinquent fines total $246,320. [MSHA]

Massey is contesting $251,613 in fines for citations for Upper Big Branch-South Mine’s ventilation plan. [MSHA]

Compare those fines to coal mine owner Don Blankenship's compensation package of $19.7 million in 2008. He could pay those assessments out of the change in his sock drawer. He fights them and runs a delinquent account instead.

If your friends are conservatives then you won't need any enemies

Just in case you don't know how the conservative money machine works, the American Conservative Union got caught in the shakedown in a legislative dispute between FedEx and UPS.

The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group’s endorsement in a bitter legislative dispute, then flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.

For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included: “Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU’s board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)”

The conservative group’s remarkable demand — black-and-white proof of the longtime Washington practice known as “pay for play” — was contained in a private letter to FedEx , which was provided to POLITICO...

In the three-page letter asking for money on June 30, the conservative group backed FedEx. After FedEx says it rejected the offer, Keene signed onto a two-page July 15 letter backing UPS. Keene did not return a message left on his cell phone.

The whole dispute is about a bill which would make it easier for the Teamsters union to unionize FedEx. UPS is already organized by the Teamsters. FedEx has resisted unionization but UPS and the Teamsters believe that organizing FedEx would help ensure uniform labor standards throughout the industry.

As a supporter of unions as a progressive force for workplace rights and equality (in fact I once helped start a union at a former workplace,) I back UPS in the dispute. I'm up front about that and certainly don't expect anything for my support. I support the legislation because I believe it's the right thing to do. One would think that principled conservatives if they really believed that unionization was a bad thing wouldn't have to ask for money to support FedEx in this case, but would do it just because that's what they believe in. Ah, but that assumes that conservatives have principles. And at least in the case of the American Conservative Union, it appears that they don't have any, at least any that can't be bought.

Oh, yeah. They do apparently have one.

Maury Lane, FedEx’s director of corporate communications, said: “Clearly, the ACU shopped their beliefs and UPS bought.”

ACU's executive vice president, DENNIS WHITFIELD, SAID THAT NEITHER THE GROUP NOR DAVID KEENE, THE CHAIRMAN, TOOK ANY MONEY FROM UPS.

Just two weeks earlier, ACU had offered its endorsement to FedEx, saying in a letter to the company: “We stand with FedEx in opposition to this legislation.”

But there was a catch — an expensive one. ACU asked FedEx to pay as much as $3.4 million for e-mail and other services for “an aggressive grass-roots campaign to stop the legislation in the Senate.”

Granted, it's hard to believe anything that the ACU says about this but if Mr. Whitfield's assertion is true, then they endorsed UPS's position on the legislation for a different reason-- solely that they were rebuffed by FedEx. In which case they do stand for something-- SPITE!

"You don't let us watch your back, then we stick the knife in it ourselves."

Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby would be proud.

Round Up For The Week, January 31, 2009

• Obama signs first major piece of legislation: the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act

• The House Vote Was Not a Failure for Obama

• Conservatism: Debt, Death, and Destruction By Way Of Tax Cuts

• Conservatives Distort Research To Claim They’ll Create 6.2 Million Jobs

• The Republican Abyss -- 10 Miles Down and Sinking Faster

• A partial list of what republicans don't think Americans need

• Clueless STILL!

• Republicans' Bizarre Collective Response to Obama's Economic Recovery Plan: We're Out to Lunch

• The Economic Recovery Plan’s Bold Move To Repower America

• House Republicans "delighted" and "elated" and "celebrating" over their zero votes to save the economy

• Heckuva Job, Boehny!

• Senate Republicans Gearing Up To Filibuster Recovery Package Despite Promises To The Contrary

• Senate Republicans May Filibuster Obama Stimulus Package

• Conservatives' Profoundest Fear: What if Obama succeeds?

• Democrats use Limbaugh to slam GOP on stimulus bill

• Obama: big Wall Street bonuses 'outrageous'

• Dodd Is Looking at ‘Every Means’ to Reclaim Bonuses

• Sen McCaskill "A Bunch Of Idiots Up On Wall Street! Kicking Sand In The Faces Of Americans!"

• The Rich Got MUCH Richer!

• 400 richest Americans’ incomes doubled under Bush

• Bailed-Out Bank Uses Taxpayer Cash to Fight Employee Free Choice

• Corporations use bailout money to organize against Employee Free Choice Act

• Reich: Why We Need Stronger Unions

• Obama launches task force on middle class

• Obama seeks to reverse Bush labor policies

• Biden to lead middle-class task force

• Unlike Cheney’s energy task force, Biden’s middle-class task force will be transparent

• A union-friendly White House

• Transcript: The President's Remarks On The Middle Class Task Force

• SCHIP passes the Senate

Senate GOP Class Warriors Head For Hooverville

Countdown Friday:

GOP VS. GM

Epic Bail: Our fifth story tonight, the end of an era, as we learn that Senate Republicans are now willing to kill GM, regardless of whether it's good for our country, in order to kill the union of GM's workers.

GOP: 'Action Alert - Auto Bailout'

Countdown has obtained a memo entitled "Action Alert - Auto Bailout," and sent Wednesday at 9:12am, to Senate Republicans. The names of the sender(s) and recipient(s) have been redacted in the copy Countdown obtained. The Los Angeles Times reported that it was circulated among Senate Republicans. The brief memo outlines internal political strategy on the bailout, including the view that defeating the bailout represents a "first shot against organized labor." Senate Republicans blocked passage of the bailout late Thursday night, over its insistence on an immediate union pay cut.

From:

Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 9:12 AM

To:

Subject: Action Alert -- Auto Bailout

Today at noon, Senators Ensign, Shelby, Coburn and DeMint will hold a press conference in the Senate Radio/TV Gallery. They would appreciate our support through messaging and attending the press conference, if possible. The message they want us to deliver is:

1. This is the democrats first opportunity to payoff organized labor after the election. This is a precursor to card check and other items. Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it.

2. This rush to judgment is the same thing that happened with the TARP. Members did not have an opportunity to read or digest the legislation and therefore could not understand the consequences of it. We should not rush to pass this because Detroit says the sky is falling.

The sooner you can have press releases and documents like this in the hands of members and the press, the better. Please contact me if you need additional information. Again, the hardest thing for the democrats to do is get 60 votes. If we can hold the Republicans, we can beat this.

What’s good for the GOP is not good for GM

Dec. 12: Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter talks with MSNBC’s David Shuster about the effort by some Republican Senators to turn the issue of the auto bailout into a debate over organized labor:

7:36

"Herbert Hoover Time"

Robert L. Borosage, HuffPo:

In their last obstruction, "Dr. No" Mitch McConnell's Senate Republicans blocked a bridge loan for the auto companies, unwilling even to sustain them long enough for a new administration to sculpt a responsible response to their crisis.

What was the sticking point? It wasn't getting rid of the CEOs that drove the companies into the ditch. It wasn't forcing the creditors to cut their loans in exchange for stock, giving them a stake in the future. It wasn't accepting an auto czar to enforce the agreement and drive a transition to fuel efficient cars. That was agreed to. No, led by benighted Tennessee Senator Bob Corker -- known previously solely for his "call me" race bait campaign ad that helped him win election -- Republicans wanted to break the union, and punish the workers. [...]

For Republicans, the problem wasn't the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. It wasn't wrong-headed management that was skewered when soaring gas prices wiped out their SUV cash cows. It wasn't the Wall Street dominated trade policies that sacrificed US manufacturing behind a high dollar that made it profitable to move plants and production abroad and aided foreign competitors. It wasn't the burdens of health care costs that make US manufacturers less competitive.

No, for the Republican Senators, the bailout was a chance for a little class warfare. Why should an autoworker make $50-60,000 a year, plus health care? The workers should accept half that and be happy. Autoworkers have agreed to wage givebacks and benefit cuts over the last years. They pledged even deeper cuts in relation to the agreement. But their sacrifices weren't great enough nor the cuts fast enough for Corker and the Republicans. [...]

Forget about the deepening recession. The Senate Republican position was essentially that the price of bailing out GM and Chrysler was to insure that the union was broken and the workers went bankrupt. [...]

There are defining moments in politics. Here Republicans defined themselves. They are not free market conservatives, for they were willing to do the bailout. They don't object to nationalizing the banks or micromanaging the auto industry on the fly. They are class warriors, willing to risk a worse global economic calamity in order to break a union, to force workers into bankruptcy. Herbert Hoover time. Let's not forget this last ignoble obstruction, committed just as the Senators went home for the holidays.

Wal-Mart pressuring its employees to vote Republican

I've posted before that I have no love lost for Wal-Mart, which is in trouble every year it seems for various exploitative labor practices. In the past decade or so, Wal-Mart has been caught violating child labor laws, hiring illegals for $2/night to clean its stores, discriminating against female employees, forcing employees to work on their lunch breaks and sending out a memo on how to get rid of employees who have six years working with the company in order to deny them retirement benefits they would have become eligible for when they hit the seven year mark. In most of these cases they've either had to pay a fine or settled out of court, though in the gender discrimination class-action lawsuit they took it all the way through and lost.

And that's not even counting the non-illegal things they've done, including buying products produced in foreign sweatshops, selling products in targeted communities at below cost in order to force local small business competitors out of business, giving employees welfare applications as part of their 'benefits' package, going so far as to close entire stores in order to avoid unionization and only grudgingly, after many years, agreeing to offer health insurance once several states passed legislation which for all practical purposes forced them to.

But now they've gone to a new level: telling their employees how to vote. Oh, of course they say they are NOT telling them how to vote, before telling them how to vote.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change Federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies-- including Wal-Mart.

In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.

According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise....

The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don't specifically tell attendees how to vote in November's election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.

"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.

It should also be pointed out that Wal-Mart is possibly in violation of the law with these meetings: Federal election rules permit companies to advocate for specific political candidates to its executives, stockholders and salaried managers, but not to hourly employees. While store managers are on salary, department supervisors are hourly workers.

Of course they've been in violation of many laws before and seem to consider the resulting fines to just be part of the cost of doing business.

Now, I know, I know. If you are a conservative your knee-jerk reaction to Wal-Mart pressuring its employees in this way will probably be viscerally positive (i.e. it depends on whose ox is getting gored.) So let me turn it around for you:

Suppose that a publically funded institution were to do the same thing. Suppose for example that employees of a public school were called together and told (by their immediate supervisor, who incidentally has a lot of say about their continued employment) that "I'm not telling you how to vote but you should know that if Republicans win in November then we may face massive budget cuts, so that some of you may lose your jobs or take pay cuts, and you may be forced to work under more difficult conditions. Now remember, I'm not telling you how to vote, but you should understand that this is what will happen if Republicans win the election."

If that happened at a school then you'd be screaming bloody murder. You know you would.

Wal-Mart has the right to donate to political campaigns (which they do, heavily), lobby elected officials for or against legislation and even create a 527 or other organization to advertise directly to the public on political issues (which is fair enough, given that unions do the same thing.) As a publically traded company they can even contact all their shareholders and disseminate their political propaganda.

However forcing their employees to attend a mandatory meeting run by their supervisor for the specific purpose of telling them that voting for Barack Obama may cost them their jobs is both illegal and unethical.