Labor & Employment Law

March on Massey Calls for Blankenship To Go

By Mike Hall

UMWA President Cecil Roberts and AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker lead the march to Massey shareholders meeting.

More than 1,000 Mine Workers (UMWA) and other union members and allies marched to the doors of Massey Energy Co.’s shareholders meeting this morning in Richmond, Va., demanding that CEO Donald Blankenship step down and three board members be ousted.

Speaking at a rally before the march to the ornate Jefferson Hotel site of the Massey shareholder meeting, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker said Blankenship and the three board members up for re-election have:

presided over a company whose safety and environmental record is the worst in the industry. They’ve demonstrated their dedication to the pursuit of short-term profits at any cost.

Don Blankenship is the wrong man in the job. His priorities are wrong. He’s bad for the miners and their families. He’s bad for Massey Energy.

Since 2000, 52 people have been killed on Massey Energy property, according to the Mine Workers (UMWA). On April 5, 29 coal miners were killed in an explosion at Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia. The nonunion mine had a long record of safety violations.

UMWA President Cecil Roberts told NBC12 that Massey’s mines are “the most dangerous mines in the United States of America.”

Something need to be done here. It’s a drastic situation and we’re hoping to save other miners’ lives.

UMWA member Charles Dixon told Richmond’s WTVR this morning:

We think it’s just time for the people in this country to tell CEOs like Don Blankenship and big profitable corporations like Massey Energy it’s no longer acceptable to kill coal miners and put profits above their health and safety.

Holt Baker said the serious safety problems at Upper Big Branch “did not come by mistake.”

The evidence is overwhelming. In 2009 the Upper Big Branch violated federal safety rules 515 times, according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration. The citations were serious. They pointed to the lack of escape routes….To unsafe ventilation.

But in a memo to mine superintendents, Don Blankenship told them to ignore everything except to “run coal.”

She said the message this morning was “simple”:

America has had enough of profits-at-any-cost….It’s not right to run coal over the lives of miners….This must stop.

Last night, hundreds of miners from Virginia and other Appalachian coal states held a prayer vigil outside Massey’s headquarters for the 29 Upper Big Branch miners and the 23 others killed on the job at Massey’s mines. While hundreds held candles, 52 miners stood somberly and turned their miners’ cap lamps on to honor the dead. UMWA member Tanya James said, “We’re tired of miners dying in unsafe mines.”

Meanwhile, more than 12,000 people signed the American Rights at Work petition calling for Blankenship’s firing. This morning, the workers’ rights group is asking people to call Massey Energy (1-804-788-1800) and tell them it’s time for Massey Energy’s board to fire Don Blankenship and replace him with a CEO who cares about workers’ rights.

Both Roberts and Blankenship are scheduled to testify before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday. The committee is looking into the huge backlog of mine-safety violation appeals that enable companies to escape stricter enforcement, delay fines and allow violations to go uncorrected.

According to the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), it takes an average of 500 days to adjudicate a contested violation. In a preliminary report on the Upper Big Branch blast, MSHA says that Massey “contested the majority of its serious violation citations” that would have led to putting the mines under a tougher safety watch.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on May 18, 2010 (boomark / email).