Positive Mine Safety Record Is a Shared Achievement

As the federal government’s mine safety czar, Joe Main has overseen the safest period in U.S. coal mining history. 

The data tell the tale: except for 2010, the coal mine fatality rate dropped below two deaths per 10,000 miners for the first time ever between 2009, when Main took over the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, and 2015, the last year when official fatality data were available from MSHA.  Through September 30 of last year, preliminary MSHA data indicate the rate will remain below that benchmark again in 2016. Coal’s injury rate has also shown steady decline, but the trend has been underway for a decade and a half. 

Despite the rosy results, nine coal miners and 16 metal/non-metal miners died on the job last year. Every mining death devastates the family involved, a harsh reality that should keep everyone determined to get to zero. 

How much credit does Main deserve for this run of success? Skeptics point out he simply may have inherited a falling coal fatality rate. Main was confirmed as MSHA Assistant Secretary in October 2009, the year the trend began, and thus could not have had much influence on it then. They also note his seven-year tenure has been deeply scarred by an explosion at the Upper Big Branch-South (UBB) Mine that claimed 29 lives and was the worst U.S. coal mine disaster in nearly 40 years. But, at the time of the explosion in April 2010, he had only been on the job for just five full months, so the lack of influence argument cuts both ways. 

Here is the place to point out that, although mine operator Massey Energy was blamed for the tragedy, MSHA could not escape its own negligence. Taxpayers’ $360 million annual investment in the agency should produce a better yield than such sad outcomes.  

Critics also contend Main was just lucky: miners can’t die on the job if there are no jobs, the economic collapse of the coal sector having brought about that unhappy condition. The downturn was especially felt among underground mines, which historically have produced the most fatalities. But as Main himself has pointed out, the fatality rate was low in 2011, a year that preceded coal’s collapse. 

You also cannot ignore the profound impact UBB had on coal producers. The accident left everyone in shock due to the common belief at the time that modern mining techniques rendered fatalities from methane explosions on the scale of UBB a thing of the past. Their complacency shattered, producers launched a massive overhaul of how they addressed safety, an effort that led to safety and health management systems and a goal of cutting fatalities to zero over five years. Of course, MSHA also stepped up enforcement across the entire industry as a result of the accident, launching programs and rules that continue in force to this day. 

Main has consistently kept his eye on the ball; i.e., the agency’s mission to promote miner safety and health, and he deserves a hearty attaboy for it. But credit for the positive fatality results must be shared. Main no doubt agrees with this, but the sentiment often does not come across in agency public pronouncements. For instance, in a January 3 news release, Main credited MSHA enforcement, compliance assistance, training, outreach and “improved compliance” for the favorable statistics. In other words, the achievement was all about MSHA, giving no recognition to the collective efforts of company safety policies and programs, the day-to-day work of thousands of corporate safety officers, safety-conscious individual miners, dedicated training personnel, state enforcement officials and others. 

(The day after MSHA’s release, the National Mining Association issued a statement tooting its own horn about NMA’s CORESafety program. Perhaps this was in response to MSHA’s puffy pronouncement.) 

The agency has always wanted to have it both ways on safety. When a tragedy occurs, MSHA yelps that responsibility for a safe workplace rests solely with mine operators, and that government inspectors are only on mine sites for an average about five percent of the time the facility is open. However, when the script is flipped, it’s all about MSHA, with short shrift paid to operators’ efforts. The self-praise might fool Congress and the public, but it just creates bitterness and resentment within the industry. 

Although he has hardly ignored the issue, Main’s legacy concerning coal miners’ health is darker.  Autopsies of the majority of the UBB miners showed the presence of black lung, and the latest NIOSH data on the alarming prevalence and severity of black lung cases among former Eastern Kentucky miners is sobering. Still, Main, who saw the devastating effects of black lung up close in his former position as safety director of the coal miners’ union, has tried to bring about improvement through awareness, education, heightened enforcement and a new coal dust rule. He deserves considerable credit for those efforts but, again, he must share it with coal producers. 

During the Main years, the fatality rate in the metal/non-metal sector has fluctuated from year to year. Still, the rates are an improvement over the past, and 2016 will be no exception. 

As Main’s term in office comes to a close, he has adopted an interesting metaphor to express concern over what he sees as his positive legacy in mine safety. In a typical flood of words, he was quoted as saying, “There’s a lot of ingredients that went into the recipe to make the cake that we now have in terms of having the outcomes of the safest years in mine history. If you start taking ingredients out of that, the cake’s not going to be as good, I can tell you that.” 

Thus, to adapt a command falsely attributed to French Queen Marie Antoinette, the retiring chief executive’s advice to the incoming mine safety team is to “Let them eat [my] cake.” It is a “treat” whose ingredients include Rules to Live By, impact inspections, the court-challenged POV rule, the hugely unpopular coal dust initiative, the Part 75 exam rule and more. Given those ingredients, the anti-regulatory Trump Administration is going to find Main’s concoction very hard to swallow indeed. 

Copyright 2017, James Sharpe. All Rights Reserved.