The Mine Collapse in Utah
08 August 2007 3:26 pm by Taylor Marsh
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| Bob Murray taking heat. photo via AP |
There are few better to blog on this tragedy than Tula
Connell. She’s one of my very favorites when it comes to talking union.
Mine owner Robert Murray didn’t even wait until the six men in the
collapsed Crandall Canyon coal mine had been found before he started deflecting
blame for the disaster and denying any role his mine practices played in the
collapse (in between yelling at circling news helicopters and insisting there
is no emergency).(snip)
In 2004, Murray gave $15,000 of his own money to the National Republican
Senatorial Committee, and he gave $10,000 in 2006. Among other donations in
the last election cycle, he gave $2,000 to Ohio Republican Sen. Mike DeWine’s
unsuccessful re-election campaign. (CampaignMoney lists the donations here.)Murray embodies the failed ideology of Bush & Co., one which operates
as follows: Reject government solutions to problems like workplace safety
and health that private corporations refuse to address. When disaster happens,
throw around baseless attacks. And never, ever, take the blame.Murray is blaming the mine cave-in on an earthquake, a claim scientists at
the National Earthquake Information Center say is not supported by the available
evidence. .. …Workers at union mines generally have much better safety and health protections,
and they want to join the UMWA. But coal companies continue to be among the
most brutal in rejecting workers’ attempts to form unions. Peabody,
the nation’s largest private coal company, systematically closed its
union mines and replaced them with nonunion mines over the past 15 years,
according to the UMWA. Yet Peabody made $426 million on sales of $3.8 billion
between January and September 2006, according to USA Today, compared with
the $260 million in sales it earned in 2005. Peabody is vigorously fighting
a drive by its nonunion miners who have launched a Justice at Peabody campaign
to win a voice at work with UMWA and the strong safety rights a UMWA contract
requires.Coal
Mine Disaster: An Act of God, But NEVER an Act of Greedy Corporations
The
Pump Handle has more.
