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This article originally provided by
Wordpress.com
A group of advocates for miners and their families sent a
rulemaking petition to MSHA on February 1, asking the agency to
improve its regulations governing the training that mine workers
receive about their statutory rights. The Petition for Rulemaking
was submitted by the West Virginia Mine Safety Project, the
Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, United Support & Memorial for
Workplace Fatalities, and the United Mine Workers, and calls for
significant improvements in the content and manner in which all U.S.
mine workers—whether at coal, gold, stone, or other mine or
mill—learn about their rights, such as expressing concerns about
hazards, refusing unsafe work, or any rights provided in the 1969
and 1977 federal mine safety and health laws .
The Petition recounts some of the legislative history of our laws to
protect miners from workplace hazards, in particular, Congress’
recognition that workers protected from retaliation were empowered.
The Senate Report (95-181, May 16, 1977) noted:
“If our national mine safety and health program is to be truly
effective, miners will have to play an active part in the
enforcement of the Act. The Committee is cognizant that if miners
are to be encouraged to be active in matters of safety and health,
they must be protected against any possible discrimination which
they might suffer as a result of their participation.”
The rulemaking petition sent to MSHA notes:
“…many miners, especially those in non-union mines, have only vague
knowledge of their statutory rights, if they have any knowledge at
all. The organizational Petitioners have had contact with numerous
miners who do not know that they can, for instance, voice concerns
about workplace health and safety, refuse to perform unsafe work,
review and give input to many aspects of an operator’s plans for
mining, or speak with MSHA inspectors and investigators, all without
retaliation. Many miners do not realize that they may designate a
representative to perform numerous functions under the Mine Act, and
that such a representative need not necessarily be affiliated with a
labor union.”
The Petitioners ask that MSHA’s training regulations (Part 46 and
Part 48) be revised in the following ways:
Require miners’ rights topics to be covered every year in miners’
8-hour refresher training; currently, miners receive this training
only during ”new miner” training which for many miners was 5, 10, 20
years ago.
Delineate the specific topics to be covered under miners’ rights,
such as how to designate a miners’ representative, request and
participate in inspections, receive pay when idled by an inspector’s
withdrawal order, as well as the critically important provisions
protecting them from discrimination for exercising any of these
rights. (The petition outlines 39 specific rights afforded to miners
under the Mine Act.)
Prohibiting miner operators from providing the training to miners
and prospective miners on these statutory rights, recommending
instead that these topics be covered by MSHA, State regulators or
others who are independent of mine operators or mine management.
(View Petitioners’ news release)
This third recommendation is probably the most pioneering aspect of
the Petition: Officials affiliated with mine management should not
be the primary means by which miners learn about their rights. Think
about it from a pure production standpoint—which would some
employers rather have (1) a fully empowered workforce that knows and
exercises its rights or (2) a compliant workforce that does what
it’s told and keeps its mouths shut for fear of losing jobs?
Although things in the real world and in real workplaces are not so
black and white, there is plenty of grey area in between facing mine
operators.
The Mine Act requires mine operators to develop a training plan in
accordance with regulations developed by MSHA, and the person
conducting the training must be approved by MSHA. At many mines, a
management official is designated the “approved” instructor and this
person conducts the new miner training, refresher training, task
training, and the like.
Under the Petitioners’ proposal, individuals such as an MSHA or
State inspector or an independent trainer could be called on to
conduct the specialized miners’ rights training. In fact, I know a
few injured miners, and daughters and mothers of miners, who would
make excellent trainers on the topic of miners’ rights.
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Celeste Monforton, MPH is the special projects coordinator with
United Support and Memorial for Workplace Fatalities, one of the
organizations which submitted this rulemaking petition to MSHA. She
worked with Davitt McAteer on the Governor of WV’s investigation of
the 2006 Sago Mine disaster and heard testimony from miners which
illustrated serious inadequacies in the conduct of training for
miners.
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