Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 31, 1994 TAG: 9408310042
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The tone of the conference echoed a need for cooperation among labor, management and government regulators in solving health and safety problems.
Employees need to feel free to attack problems without fear of management retribution, conferees were told.
"I believe that to a degree never experienced before, government, labor and management are working together to improve health and safety conditions for coal miners," Robert H. Quenon, retired chairman of Peabody Holding Co. Inc., told a luncheon audience. Peabody is the nation's largest coal producer.
Much progress has been made in reducing mining accidents, deaths and the exposure of miners to disease-causing dust in the 25 years since the passage of the federal Mine Health and Safety Act, said J. Davitt McAteer, the former United Mine Workers lawyer and independent worker safety activist.
McAteer, who now is the Clinton administration's chief of mine safety and health, said the industry has not been given credit and still has a bad reputation.
However, 100 coal and mineral miners still die annually and miners still get sick from breathing dust, McAteer said.
"We as a mining industry need to help these people along who have not been converted to the idea of health and safety as a primary consideration," he said.
McAteer stressed the importance of the industry's learning from its mistakes.
"We need to take any accident and prevent the next one from happening based on what we've learned," he said.
His agency, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, has attacked the problems that lead to explosions like the one that killed eight miners at Southmountain Coal Co.'s No. 3 mine in Wise County in December 1992, McAteer said.
Surprise inspection sweeps have targeted illegal smoking in mines and violations of mine-ventilation plans, he said. He put mining companies on notice, saying similar inspection sweeps will look at mine managements' compliance with requirements for safety inspections of workplaces before miners enter them.
Failure to conduct such inspections was found by investigators to have played a role in the Southmountain tragedy.
McAteer disagreed with Virginia Tech Professor E. Scott Geller, a speaker on the psychology of occupational safety. Geller said the criminal conviction of mine supervisors in the Southmountain case would not improve mine safety.
Rather than reacting to situations, the industry needs to change the behavior of its people and thus their attitudes toward safety, Geller said.
Miners need to be made to feel they can make a difference and it's OK to "rock the boat," Geller said.
"Who knew they were smoking down in the mine? Who knew the ventilation system wasn't working right? Lots of people knew but they didn't speak up," Geller said.
McAteer said he agreed that behavior has to be changed all the way up to presidents of the coal companies.
He said company officials would be held legally responsible for violations of safety law but he would not comment specifically on whether more Southmountain officials will face charges, noting that the investigation into the accident was continuing. "For us to cite people who are not in control of the situation doesn't get to the point," he added.
The luncheon speaker, Peabody's Quenon, expressed hope that the same types of gains that have been made in mining technology and productivity can be brought to the coal industry's labor relations.
He used Emile Zola's novel "Germinal" to illustrate the lack of progress in labor relations in the coal industry. He compared the novel's depiction of a destructive strike in the coalfields of northern France 130 years ago with the United Mine Workers strikes against Pittston and the Bituminous Coal Operators Association over the last five years.
He fervently hoped, Quenon said, "that we finally can learn from the awful experiences of these wasteful strikes and bring our labor relations along to the same sophisticated level to which we have brought most other aspects of this great industry."
by CNB