Black Lung
NPR, along with Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo, provide the day’s most powerful and disturbing story: the return of black lung disease to coal miners.
Despite the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, which was groundbreaking workplace safety legislation, not only have coal miners been exposed to insane amounts of coal dust, but federal regulators and the coal industry have known about this for 20 years.
What has happened?
First, even though the total number of people employed by the coal industry has declined precipitiously, the average hours for coal miners still working has gone up by 11 hours a week over the last 30 years. That’s a terrible thing for many reasons, but, as the NPR story states, it exposes workers to 600 hours of additional coal dust exposure per year.
Second, new technology has vastly increased the amount of coal mined, putting more dust in the air and thus making workers’ lives more dangerous.
Probably the biggest issue is that the mine owners resist every move to test for black lung. Like industries around the country, the coal mining capitalists have attempted to take control of the regulatory process in order to roll back the protections miners have made. They are less successful during Democratic administrations, but quite successful when Republicans are president.
Ward also makes a big deal about labor rejection of black lung testing from Democratic administrations for being too weak, but I don’t see this as a big deal. Given how little Democrats listen to labor on every other issue, I don’t see much evidence that labor anger over lax testing systems would cause Democrats to abandon them. While Ward is usually quite good, his piece has a Both Sides Do It theme that is unwarranted here. The problem with black lung codes is not that the union cares about its members too much.
In any case, if the goal of industry is to return the United States to the Gilded Age, killing coal miners with black lung is a pretty good way to do it.
“Given how little Democrats listen to labor on every other issue, I don’t see much evidence that labor anger over lax testing systems would cause Democrats to abandon them.”
Erik I appreciate/enjoy your work here but damn you depress me sometimes…
Sigh…
It’s all happy times when I’m around.
People writing about labor issues are universally depressing, because its a depressing issue. It always has been. It’s like being an expert on human rights or civil liberties.
Erik is probably lucky he’s avoided either depression or substance abuse issues. I feel like drinking just reading his stuff, I can’t imagine RESEARCHING it. I’d have to get a special researching flask.
My specialties in anthropology are race & ethnicity, gender, and Native North America. A student once observed that I had picked all the really depressing topics. Have to admit that I have learned a lot of things I would rather not know as a consequence.
Lot of black humor my friend.
Is “labor anger over lax testing systems” really what’s going on here? Because it’s funny how labor anger over lax testing systems seems to be a factor in blocking every attempt to upgrade the testing systems.
Ward also makes a big deal about labor rejection of black lung testing from Democratic administrations for being too weak, but I don’t see this as a big deal. Given how little Democrats listen to labor on every other issue, I don’t see much evidence that labor anger over lax testing systems would cause Democrats to abandon them.
Ward seems to be concerned about the health issues of the workers and Professor Loomis seems to be only concerned about the impact on his political party.
One would argue (One being Loomis) that the party is vital in ensuring the health of the workers. Unfortunately, the party doesn’t seem nearly concerned enough about Labor.
Wow. That is so stupid it’s not even wrong.
Such a classic form of the genre.
How can we know that a rebuttal of a charge against the Democrats is wrong?
Because it’s a rebuttal of a charge against the Democrats.
You have provided absolutely nothing, other than noting that Erik did, indeed, reject a charge against the Democrats. “So stupid it’s not even wrong” indeed.
I don’t see the Democratic Party helping the coal miners, but then I don’t see the coal miners helping the Democratic Party. What bonds there were have been broken.
Liberals want to assist people who are in need of help. Democrats are much more concerned with the quid pro quo. An understandable political tactic but a horrible ethos.
Political parties and political movements are two different things, with two different jobs. It’s like noting that soup kitchens give away soup, while grocery stores sell it.
Again, if you’re voting Republican in 2012, you have little cause for complaint.
The miners, victims though they undoubtedly are, have some agency. If they’re making their own problem worse, I’m not sure how to help. At least with thrashing drwoning people , I can punch them until they quit fighting; in an emergency room , I can sedate combative patients. People whose jobs are killing them and who vote for less regulation? I’d love to help, but…
Once again, liberals insist on denigrating our nation’s great traditions. By insisting that Black Lung be eradicated, these do-gooders dismiss one of the many ties which bind modern miners to their past. When consumption, dropsy, and the falling damps were widespread America was a great nation…. and we can be again!
Seriously. At the very least, why can’t we legalize laudanum? It’s part of our heritage and freedom!
Speaking of consumption …
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/state-regional/worst-tb-outbreakin-20-years-kept-secret/nPpLs/
One of my friends is a doctor working just outside Seattle. She has been shaking her head (metaphorically since it was over the phone) over the recent whooping cough epidemic. It just isn’t something they expected to be dealing with in 2012.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2018180929_apuswhoopingcough.html
I think Aaron Sorkin could right a captivating rant about this.
bah! write. This is what I get for getting on the internet before 6am :/
Would more stringent black lung testing be something that mining unions could negotiate directly with their employers?
Once again a libertarian fails to understand collective action. A piecemeal approach is largely ineffective for the masses of those affected. It also ignores, as libertarians normally do, the power differentials between management/ownership and labor.
How’s that?
Then you should be sorely disappointed with goverment protections.
I find this a rather ironic criticism when you wish for government action. There are obvious and huge power differentials hindering that method.
How’s that?
Then you should be sorely disappointed with goverment protections.
Having problems with reading comprehension today? My second sentence explains the first and federal action applies to all workers, not just those at one mine or one company, so it is the opposite of piecemeal.
I find this a rather ironic criticism when you wish for government action. There are obvious and huge power differentials hindering that method.
As I and everyone else here have repeatedly pointed out to you, government is the only potential counterbalance to the power of capital. It does not always work, but given the fact that politicians are dependent on the votes of workers, they tend to be far more responsive to their needs than capital, which is unanswerable to anyone other than the government, ever will be. When you come up with an actual workable alternative (and see Erik just below), then maybe you will have room to talk.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHA
And your solution is? Until you have an alternative to the admittedly imperfect political action and governmental regulation, you have no place to scoff. I would point out that what protections we do have largely came from that, so it does actually work.
I would also point out that your arguments here have consistently supported my position that capitalism is inherently antithetical to democracy. May the Hayek-Pinochet post was more relevant than you like to admit.
First off, federal action rarely applies to a majority of workers, let alone universally.
Secondly, liberal regulation is necessarily piecemeal, cherry picking practices deemed exploitative and outlawing them, only to be negligent towards other forms of exploitation. It is constantly chasing and patching up exploitation.
The only way worker gains would not be piecemeal would be by gaining respect. And that respect is only gained through direct economic action.
Those government regulations would have never come about if unions in the earlier part of this century had not become extremely powerful economic actors on their own right.
And the vast majority of the regulations that “protect” workers were passed with the support of employers who were increasingly unable to control and stabilize labor costs.
First off, federal action rarely applies to a majority of workers, let alone universally.
OSHA, minimum wage, and work hours regulations do not apply to most workers? That will be news to the Department of Labor and pretty much everyone else.
Secondly, liberal regulation is necessarily piecemeal, cherry picking practices deemed exploitative and outlawing them, only to be negligent towards other forms of exploitation. It is constantly chasing and patching up exploitation.
Ooops, there go the goal posts again. We started out talking about which workers were covered (as was clear in my statements on this and your statements I responded to. Now you insist on redefining the terms of the debate to refer to what specifically is regulated. That also ignores the expertise of capital to find new ways to exploit labor (the primary realm of business innovation).
Those government regulations would have never come about if unions in the earlier part of this century had not become extremely powerful economic actors on their own right.
Which of course does not even address my argument (indeed is clearly implied in it). The point is that regulation could not have been effective without the power and authority of the federal government to back it up. Employers break union contracts with impunity all the time. Just ask Scott Walker.
Theoretically, they could negotiate black lung testing. The problem with those kind of things is that it only works with an activist federal government to enforce the rules. There are plenty of examples of unions negotiating OSHA regulations into contracts, but without the feds, there’s no OSHA or enforcement.
If such negotiations were as common as they should be, the transaction costs of enforcement would hardly be prohibitive, at least it doesn’t seem like it would be.
Only in union mines.
This is the American way! All right thinking Americans realize that in a Free Market(tm) labor is a disposable commodity.
In the radio piece this morning they were reporting that when the issue of black lung is raised the mine owners respond by threatening to close the mine.
I think that’s the answer to bradp’s question.
I’d say let them.
And I think it is important to note that such a tactic would fall under what some libertarians (me included) would call forestalling.
Shutting down the mine would basically count as abandonment, and the perpetuation of the legal right to property after abandonment would be immoral land and resource forestalling.
And the union workers can be retrained to say, “would you like first with that?” or “welcome to walmart”
Call me crazy, but if those mine owners aren’t completely full of shit about shutting down their rent machines, they will probably need to sell them pretty damn quick.
If they have enough liquid funds (for values of “enough” > “liquid funds held by unemployed mine workers”), they can sit on the asset in the hopes that the union and/or regulators are bluffing. So yes, you are probably crazy.
Which capital has quite successfully done repeatedly for over a century in efforts to break unions.
There have been plenty of instances of free, voluntary union activity to counteract such behavior on the part of capital owners.
Of course, basically all of those are illegal now.
What are some instances of mine workers keeping mine owners from living on their savings?
The blur you see between the paragraphs? That’s what goalposts look like while moving at high speed.
Actually, no, not really.
Even a small-time mine owner (not operator, owner) is likely well-off enough he can sit on his hands for literally years if he feels like it. There’s documented evidence of people who ruled various hollers in coal country like private fiefdoms doing just that when the workers got uppity; they’d chain the mine shut and sit on their porches, living off the nest egg their daddy and their daddy’s daddy built up by virtue of being the evillest motherfucker in that neck of the woods and wait for people to get desperate enough to come crawling back.
The activities don’t keep mine owners from living off their savings, they cut mine owners profits, support the living standards of the strikers, and they make it very difficult for owners to create a standoff between capital and labor.
Wildcat strikes, random walk-offs, “good-work” strikes, open-mouth sabotage, sympathy strikes, monkey-wrenching, slowdowns are all effective tools for combatting bosses and capital that the government forbids when and where it can find it.
But when I mention all of the draconian limitations on union activity that permits capital owners to behave the way they do, I’m shifting the goalposts. I am bound to argue each of my policy preferences within current legal framework and in isolation from all others.
Wildcat strikes, random walk-offs, “good-work” strikes, open-mouth sabotage, sympathy strikes, monkey-wrenching, slowdowns are all effective tools for combatting bosses and capital that the government forbids when and where it can find it.
And all of them would depend on the mine being open.
But when I mention all of the draconian limitations on union activity that permits capital owners to behave the way they do, I’m shifting the goalposts.
Except that many, if not most, of the examples given are drawn from or reflect practices during the period when the actions you propose were legal. You still do not acknowledge the real power differentials in the work place.
I did overspeak, but the mine owner you describe sounds a bit like an anachronism in the modern economy.
They are bound by the demands of their creditors, investors, and customers.
Yes, they were legal and used, but then made illegal because of their disruptive power. Disruptive power that labor needed to maintain some semblance of level footing with their bosses.
No, you just don’t acknowledge how much power has been taken away from the worker by the state.
No, you just don’t acknowledge how much power has been taken away from the worker by the state.
Bwahahahaha!
You think that in the absence of state intervention labor would have more power than they do now? Please pull the other one, that one is getting sore.
I believe labor generally is capable of maintaining a fair negotiating position without the aid of the state, provided the state ceases to provide privilege and monopoly to capital and certain actors.
I also think there is a valid role for the state in counteracting the “subsidy of history” and past harms.
As a whole, however, government has been a net negative and most progressive policies are counterproductive to the end of self-governance/management.
You need to read some economic and labor history as your beliefs are not supported by the facts.
I’d say let them.
I might too, but then I’m not the one who would be out of a job in an area where non-mining jobs are scarce.
And where the other jobs only pay a small fraction of what the mining jobs do. I swear libertarians live in a different universe from the rest of us.
Have you ever actually visited the real world? I can see no evidence of it in that statement.
what some libertarians (me included) would call forestalling
You haven’t said it directly, but I take it that you and your “some libertarians” think forestalling and abandonment are bad things.
John Gault seemed to have a different view of these matters.
I read about 200 pages of Atlas Shrugged and a few pieces from Virtue of Selfishness or something like that before I ceased wasting my time.
Forestalling is a common law offense that Rothbardian libertarians consider an important concept in just property appropriation.
Can mine operators be forced to keep mines open if such regulation is passed?
History is littered with instances of businesses crying about how they cannot manage the cost of some regulation which are almost always lies, and almost always lead to the public taking on the cost.
Sniveling and $10,000 in a congressman’s pocket gets you a lot further than sniveling alone.
Probably not, no, but at the risk of sounding like a statist, ain’t no reason a mine can’t be seized via eminent domain and then sold to a worker’s cooperative.
Well, I mean, there are plenty of reasons that couldn’t happen, most of them political. But legally speaking, what I describe would be entirely legal. So would a state-run mining concern operated public utility style.
I’m certainly out of the libertarian mainstream, but I doubt there exists a mining operation today that I would defend from such appropriation.
There is certainly a role for the state to attempt to undo the wrongs it has already done. Reparations would be another example of that.
I’d just point out, that the Howard Berkes story that aired on All Things Considered was 12 minutes long and didn’t use the word union once. It gave credit for passing the original law to a group of concerned doctors and politicians, and failed to mention that when workers went on strike, they did so as members of the United Mine Workers.
Wow, that is really bad.
Reason #1 of 437 that I have stopped listening to NPR altogether. Except when I’m in the car and “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” is on. And maybe the odd snippet of Garrison Keillor, Terri Gross, and “It’s Only a Game.”
Hey, if you live in New York, there’s also Soterios Johnson.
And Car Talk.
Seconded. Not even remotely into cars, but I just like those guys.
They are, alas, retiring this year.
No kidding? That’s too bad. I’ve never gotten to listen to them as much as I wanted. Its always hard for me to find time for the radio, especially a scheduled time, so it was usually just a lucky find when I heard them.
There are 25 years of taped shows, so I believe the plan is to syndicate them forever.
One of my brushes with greatness was, back when I was a locksmith in Our Fair City of Cambridge, MA, Doug The Subway Fugitive Berman hired me to change the locks in Dewey, Cheetham, & Howe (which is actually simply a rather run-down office in Harvard Square). Neither Tom nor Ray was there, but there was a near-constant stream of tourists. I said to Doug, “Don’t take this the wrong way. I love the show and all. But if I come across the country to see Boston, your office would not be on my list of destinations.” He said he didn’t get it either, but they usually got like 25 people every day.
I can believe that. They have an infectious good humor that makes the show more entertaining than it should be.
Glad to hear they will be in syndication for the foreseeable future. Being the useful idiot libertarian that I am, I will be blissfully driving cars with model years in the oughts for decades to come.