We have a tragic example in the mining industry that is more widely instructive about what’s wrong with the excesses of corporate America.

Our federal and state governments have shown themselves in recent years to be over-matched, unable to restrain or regulate corporations, and heavily, if not corruptly, influenced by these corporate behemoths that line their pockets with excessive profits no matter the financial or health cost to the workers or the public; and their cost of doing this dirty business, with a recent assist by the Supreme Court, is to make scandalously outrageous campaign contributions, and extend questionable favors, to elect the officials they prefer to govern “us.” 

We have to demand our elected officials do more and that workers not be obstructed in their efforts to organize and bargain for wages, benefits and safe working conditions.

As early as 1864, President Lincoln feared that “corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands …” 

President Teddy Roosevelt sided with the workers against these “malefactors of great wealth.” 

The Robber Barons, the captains of commerce and finance, and their speculations prompted the stock market crash in 1929.

In our time, we reportedly have bankers at Goldman Sachs celebrating the fall of housing prices so they could reap a profit from the financial disaster and the recession they helped to cause.
We have to stop thinking of ourselves as consumers who want the cheap price, no matter who may die or suffer producing the product we choose to “consume,” no matter the health or environmental cost associated with getting what is cheap for our pocketbook.

We really have to think of ourselves as workers instead, as that is what most of us truly are, who receive salaries and wages and, hopefully, other benefits. 

If we appreciate that we are workers, we may realize that when we diminish others because we encourage low pay, long hours, few benefits and unsafe conditions, we endorse standards that we would not want applied to us, that we would find degrading.

Conduct the thought experiment, what it would mean to you, in your present job, in this economy, if your employer could make your product or service less expensive so he could swell profits by changing your status from employee to contractor, from full to part time employee, if he could extend your hours and dictate your shifts at will, if he could reduce or eliminate your health insurance coverage, forego the bonus you depend upon, dilute or delete what job security remains, so you could be fired without severance for an even cheaper labor substitute.

The most recent inglorious example of corporate excess with disastrous results is how CEO Don Blankenship and Massey Energy’s greed for profits, favored mining coal, but not the care or expense necessary to make the mine safe for the workers.

Dangerous levels of methane and coal dust filled the twisting dark passages deep underground, until the explosion, when ceilings collapsed, and escape routes became walls of rock and earth, trapping the men.

There’s a coal miner’s prayer that each day a miner rises to work “knowing too well” they face “a pit filled with hell.”

Homeric rescue efforts failed, followed by days of intense anxiety and prayer.

In the end, 29 coal miners lay dead and buried in the Upper Big Branch mine, southwest of Charleston, West Virginia, the worst such mine disaster in many years.

The miner’s prayer concludes, the worker “harvests the coals” and they pray that the Lord “harvests their souls.”

Too many folk talk about these deaths as if they were an act of God, that they are inevitable in this industry, and that everything was done that could avoid this disaster.

One of the principals circulating such claptrap was Mr. Blankenship himself.

Despite federal safety regulations, purportedly designed to keep the mines safe, Blankenship’s Upper Big Branch mine was evacuated 69 times since just last year.  He had 500 safety violations, and was charged with $897,235 in fines, mostly appealed by Blankenship.  Perhaps the most ominous sign, only a month before this latest disaster, was that Blankenship’s mine was circulating less than half of the air flow necessary to dispel dangerous methane levels. 

According to the Labor Department, there are reportedly at least three other Massey mines that have more total citations than Upper Big Branch. 

So why didn’t the federal regulators regulate and shut this hell hole down?

President Obama weakly explained in the Rose Garden afterwards that the mine safety agency was “stacked with former mine executives and industry players.” 

Yeah, sure. but haven’t we gotten rid of those ne’er do wells yet?

Instead of a harsh reaction from the locally elected public officials, it was more like a genuflection. 

Senator Jay Rockefeller said, “This disaster did not need to happen and we are going to get to the bottom of this immediately.” 

Representative Nick Rahall said, “something needs to be done.” 

Yes, like representing your constituents and defending these workers lest this happen again and soon.

The pattern here of officials and elected representatives is repeated all too frequently in the face of corporate abuse.  The regulations failed.  The regulators give incoherent explanations for their inaction to anticipate the abuse.  The elected officials call for an investigation like they can’t possibly understand how this could have happened.

The one irrefutable conclusion we may draw is that the workers in the mines and workers across this nation are unprotected and at risk from big corporate abuse.

We must demand that the balance be restored between corporate America and the American worker, and that means reform legislation guaranteeing that workers may protect themselves, by organizing and bargaining for themselves.

Consider what happened at this mine where the disaster occurred.

Blankenship mounted a campaign to oust the United Mine Workers in 1995 with promises of bonuses, and assurances that the more they worked, the more they’d get in pay. 

Blankenship “romanced” the miners on lavish road trips to Dollywood and Busch gardens, and, according to a Vanity Fair article, some union fence-sitters got new homes and cars to help them vote against the union in the 1997 election. 

Once the union was ousted from the Upper Big Branch in 1997, Blankenship increased coal production, cut bonuses in half, increased 8 hour shifts to 12 hours (making it only 2 shifts a day), and the sole mantra that he demanded repeated aloud and implemented with strict discipline, on penalty of discharge, was to “run coal” and do little else.

What was fair for the worker in terms of pay, hours, benefits or safety was forgotten once Blankenship had defeated the union. 

Lincoln said, “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital.  Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed.  Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

So don’t sell short the value of these workers who survived the mine disaster who will tomorrow re-visit the “pit filled with hell,” for, if you do, you’re selling all workers short and compromising your own human dignity as a worker.

John Flannery