Labor report finds failures in mine inspections

Source: Houston Chronicle/New York Times

Nov. 18, 2007, 12:20AM
Labor report finds failures in mine inspections

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
New York Times

Government investigators have found that the Mine Safety and Health Administration failed to conduct required inspections last year at 107 of the nation's 731 underground coal mines.

In a report released Friday, the Labor Department inspector general also found "significant inspection and supervisory deficiencies" in the inspections of the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah, where six miners and three rescuers died in August.

The inspector general also concluded that the agency had misstated the number of inspections it conducted.

In his response to the report, Richard E. Stickler, the assistant secretary of labor in charge of the mine safety agency, said 70 percent of the incomplete inspections were at mines that were nonproducing, inactive, intermittent or abandoned.



Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5311169.html

The Utah mine incident brought out the fact that nepotism is alive and well. I am referring to Mr. Murray and his contacts with Senator Mitch O'Connell and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao.

Thanks for the article, Judi Lynn.

This is a world far outside most Americans' frame of reference. Also, the fact that a government watchdog agency has been shown to be completely useless is pretty much par for the course.

One of the first things I said after I read about the Sago disaster was that I expected the number of workplace deaths to continue to increase. They have eviscerted the Bill Of Rights, they have lied to start wars, and they have sold their souls to corporate masters. You have to expect that workplace safety was gonna "suffer" in a climate like this...

Labor Unions have been screaming for a LONG time about the issue of workplace safety (irrespective of the administration, I might add) and you had to expect that in the current regime it was going to be even worse.



Laura