Give Miners Justice, Not the Shaft

The Sago, W.Va., mining tragedy should spur an investigation into the causes of this crime. Yes, crime. Although the company says it was caused by an act of God (lightning), it cannot be trusted given that it initially concealed the fact that the miners died, misleading their families into a false sense of hope.

According to NPR's Daniel Zwerdling, the company also has a record of very serious violations, including a "high degree of negligence," twice the average number of injuries, etc. The mine was forced to shut down 15 times in the last year alone.

Given the fact that the government rarely shuts down mines, this is off the scale.

If anything good could come out of a disaster like this, it should be to spur a broader debate about the inadequacy of corporate homicide law enforcement in the U.S. More so since Sago is no anomaly, but rather one of numerous major work-related accidents that have occurred in recent years.

Last March, for example, an explosion ripped through a Texas City refinery, killing 15 people and injuring 170. (BP leads the U.S. refinery industry in worker deaths with 22 fatalities in eight accidents since 1995. The oil giant was already on an OSHA "watch list" after a 2004 explosion killed two pipefitters.)

In September the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board announced an unprecedented workplace safety fine of $21 million. Big fines like that are rare for workplace disasters, although there have been a few in recent years. Last March, Motiva, an oil refinery owned by Shell Oil, pled guilty to negligently endangering workers and committing environmental crimes in Delaware. Motiva-Shell was prosecuted by the Delaware attorney general and ordered by a Delaware court to pay a $10 million fine and sentenced to three years' probation.

Before the BP and Motiva fines, the largest fine in the history of environmental and workplace safety enforcement was $11 million imposed on IMC Fertilizer, in Sterlington, La., in 1991 after an explosion killed eight workers and injured 128.

Nevertheless, the dollars paid in fines are usually just a fraction of a large corporation's annual revenues (in BP's case, an amount equal to what the company earns in two hours). As such, they constitute a mere slap-on-the-wrist as sanctions. Too often, the value of a corporation's stock rises upon the announcement of such settlements, because it means the uncertainty and adverse publicity resulting from the incident will diminish with time.

When it comes to workplace deaths, big accidents that get some news coverage like Sago are just the tip of the iceberg. According to government figures gathered by the AFL, nearly 6,000 or so workplace deaths each year (not to mention the 50,000 or so casualties of work-related diseases). But with the occasional exception of excellent investigative series like Mike Casey's series for the Kansas City Star, it rarely strikes us as a big problem. Until we are personally affected.

Although sometimes local prosecutors get riled up by these cases, it's rare that the feds crack down on this type of corporate crime. In December 2003 the Department of Justice indicted senior managers at a New Jersey foundry on charges of conspiring to violate safety and environmental laws and repeatedly obstructing government investigations into workplace dangers. The New Jersey foundry is owned by McWane Corp., the largest manufacturer of cast-iron pipes. The Department of Justice called it a pioneering indictment -- by using federal conspiracy statutes, they avoid the sentencing limitations under the OSHA misdemeanor rule. But indictments such as those issued against McWane executives are very rare. And it came on the heels of a major investigation by the New York Times.

Meanwhile, on the Hill, the West Virginia accident should give renewed impetus to the Wrongful Death Accountability Act, introduced by senators Corzine and Kennedy in 2003 and 2005. The bill calls for increased penalties for deaths resulting from willful failure to comply with safety regulations to a felony with a maximum of 10 years imprisonment for corporate executives.