20 hours Ago By gneese
By Garrett Neese [email protected] Cuts to mining safety oversight and research, most recently Tuesday’s cuts at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, drew criticism from mine workers and local officials. The NIOSH layoffs, expected to reduce the size of the agency by two-thirds, were part of a restructuring of the Department of Health and Human Services announced earlier this week.
The cuts included about 200 workers each at the Pittsburgh and Morgantown, W. Va offices, who learned Tuesday they were losing their jobs. In a statement Tuesday, United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) International President Cecil E.
Roberts called the downsizing of those offices “particularly devastating to the coal industry, which relies on the research done there to improve its safety practices.” It’s part of a series of moves that could result in thousands of miners losing their jobs, and more perilous conditions for the ones who remain, Roberts said. He also pointed to last month’s announcement that leases were being terminated for 34 Mine Safety and Health Administration offices, including Waynesburg’s.
“From what we have learned, MSHA personnel still have no idea if or when they will be moving to a new location or even if they will have a job any longer,” he said. Another proposal, from the federal Office of the United States Trade Representative, would levy up to $1.5 million in fees on Chinese-made ships exporting products such as coal from the U.
S. While he supports the idea of restoring American shipbuilding, Roberts said, the additional costs on the Chinese-made ships that dominate the marketplace now will ultimately lead to thousands of layoffs at coal mines in the U.S.
“I do not think that these actions are being done in a coordinated way to hurt the American coal industry and those who work in it,” Roberts said. “But that is the effect. Miners have and can continue to produce the materials to power American homes, produce American steel and so many other products our society uses every day.
They deserve answers from the administration as to why it appears there is now a target on their backs.” While Trump had run in 2016 on a promise of bringing coal back, in practice, he’d been short on specifics, said Blair Zimmerman, a Greene County commissioner who spent 40 years as a coal miner. He recalled a time when he had Swedish representatives in his office who’d asked Trump’s chief of staff for more detail on his plans to bring back the coal industry.
The response: “Let us get back to you.” By crippling agencies like the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which announced plans to close its Waynesburg office, Trump is “choking the coal industry to death,” Zimmerman said. “He just played the game,” he said.
“He said what a lot of people wanted to hear. And he got a lot of coal miners saying, ‘Oh, this guy is going to be great.’ Well, he’s not.
And I hope they’ve learned their lesson.” Without proper attention to safety, coal mining and other dangerous occupations are going to see more fatalities, Zimmerman said. MSHA conducts regular inspections, and can levy fines on mine owners for violations.
At union mines like Greene County’s Cumberland Mine, miners can also request inspections when they spot a potential safety issue, Zimmerman said. “If there’s no inspectors around, or it’s very few, and they’ve got several mines to inspect, you may not get stuff taken care of immediately,” he said. “That might be critical.
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it will affect Greene County, because some of these guys live here.” Without the agency at full strength, the industry will lose a vital check against some mines that would cut corners, Zimmerman said. “Some managers are very good about it, but some, if there’s no one looking over them, it’s a whole new ballgame,” he said.
Zimmerman said he objected to the haphazard and rushed nature of the cuts, as exemplified by Elon Musk’s onstage appearance with a chainsaw to promote the Department of Government Efficiency. “You’re talking about people’s livelihoods, their families, and you just don’t do stuff like that,” he said. “I’m not arguing that there’s probably some fat in the government – more than probably – but you go at it the right way.
You don’t do what he’s doing.”.
