tribute to miners ~ shame to bob murray
The recent tragedy that has likely resulted in the deaths of 6 hard-working miners in Utah is a direct result of the strenuous efforts of the principal owner of Murray Energy Corp, 
Mr. Bob Murray, who spent more energy side-stepping compliance with basic safety regulations and cheating workers out of equitable wages.This is not Murray's first time in the spotlight.
In 1996, Murray asked mine workers at his Powhatan No. 6 mine in Alledonia, Ohio to agree to a wage freeze through 2001." Att he time United Mine Workers of America Secretary-Treasurer Carlo Tarley recalled "[Murray] said it was so he could establish coal orders and show his customers that there would be long-term labor stability." But in 2001 and 2004 Murray refused to honor other contractural agreements with the workers, has engaged in efforts to disband unionized workers and forced them in to earning lower wages than organized coal miners elsewhere in the nation.
In 2001, Murray testified before a House Ways and Means subcommittee, on behalf of the National Mining Association, in support of several proposed tax cuts that would benefit mine owners, not workers.
The Murray Energy Corp. Political Action Committee has given more than $155,000 to Republican candidates, including $30,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, since 2005, according to Federal Election Commission records. Murray's money aided Republican Senate candidates such as George Allen in Virginia, presidential candidate Sam Brownback of Kansas and Katherine Harris of Florida. Murray also personally donated $50,000 to defeated Ohio congressman Mike DeWine who lost after a controversial, deceptive ad campaign against his democratic opponent in 2006.
But about his mining operations, Robert Murray's Cleveland-based Murray Energy Corp. has 19 mines in five states and his companies have incurred millions of dollars in fines over the last 18 months.
And although some say that Utah's Crandall Canyon mine, where the fate of the miners still remains unknown, safety record was remarkably good, Government mine inspectors have issued 325 citations against the Utah mine since January 2004, according to federal Mine Safety and Health Administration online records. Of those, 116 were what the government considered "significant and substantial," meaning they are likely to cause injury. Safety violations in other Murray Energy mines, since 1999, have totaled over $3 million in fines; $1.46 million of that paid in 2007 alone, from a mine operation in southern Illinois.
Even though credible evidence indicates that the tremors from the mine collapse registerd 3.7 in the Richter scale, and geologists have clearly sourced the origins of the tremors to the collapse, Robert Murray disingeneously blames a non-existent earthquake on the mine collapse.
SOURCE INFO: Forbes Magazine, United Mine Workers of America, CBS News, Salt Lake Tribune, CNN, Wikipedia, Salt Lake Desert Morning News, The Militant. BOTTOM IMAGE: Labor Beat published this memorial of the infamous 1898 Virdin Massacre when Chicago-Virden Coal Company’s armed guards fired on striking miners to break the newly formed union. Seven miners and five guards were killed.
Labels: Abramoff, coal operators, labor negotiations, republican contributors, Robert Murray, safety violations, Utah mine deaths
posted by Jake Compton at 9:52 PM
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Follow Up
Mine Owner Has History of Run-Ins on Work Issues
By SUSAN SAULNY and CAROLYN MARSHALL
Published: August 24, 2007
The New York Times
"What they're reporting is that I'm greedy. That is just so inflammatory and false." ROBERT E. MURRAY
HUNTINGTON, Utah, Aug. 23 — If Robert E. Murray accepts a Senate subcommittee' s invitation to testify next month about what went wrong at the Crandall Canyon Mine, he is likely to be questioned about, among other things, adopting a new and riskier mining plan when his company took over the operation last year.
If Mr. Murray hews to the always impassioned — at times, bombastic — style he has shown in news conferences since the mine's collapse on Aug. 6, senators can expect his statements to be plain-spoken and provocative.
As recently as Wednesday night, Mr. Murray, chief executive of the Murray Energy Corporation, continued to insist that the collapse had been caused by a 3.9 magnitude earthquake. He shouted down two reporters who tried to remind him that seismic scientists at the University of Utah and elsewhere were just as certain that the opposite occurred — that coal veins already thinned by a risky form of deep mining had buckled, setting off the collapse that sent seismograph needles spiking.
Six men were trapped inside the mine. Three more died 10 days later in the collapse of a rescue tunnel.
It is not the first time that Mr. Murray, 67, has taken a position far afield of the experts. Although most other industry executives have recognized the threat of climate change and the need for energy conservation, he has been among the few to question the concept of global warming and to openly criticize environmental regulations.
In testimony last March at a hearing on clean energy, Mr. Murray told a House subcommittee that federal lands should be preserved, but also "prudently developed" to provide jobs.
In every reference to climate change, he used the term "so-called global warming." The debate, he said, "has been skewed and totally one-sided," because the news media, Congress and pundits have been "preoccupied with possible, speculative environmental disasters."
In 2001, a jury acquitted Mr. Murray of charges that he had assaulted an environmentalist.
That same year, the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint accusing Mr. Murray of violating federal labor laws at one of his companies, Maple Creek Mining, in Bentleyville, Pa., about 20 miles south of Pittsburgh. The United Mine Workers said Mr. Murray had threatened to replace union workers at the mine after they talked publicly about a labor dispute.
In 2003, a federal court jury in Owensboro, Ky., convicted another of Mr. Murray's companies, Ken American Resources, and four current or former employees on charges of conspiracy, lying and violating safety laws pertaining to dust levels at a mine in western Kentucky from 1996 to 2000. They faced fines of up to $1.4 million, but the company appealed and paid roughly $300,000.
Mr. Murray has said that none of his miners have ever died in an accident, but federal mine records show otherwise. In April 2001, Thomas M. Ciszewski, a 45-year-old foreman, bled to death in the Powhatan No. 6 mine in Alledonia, Ohio, owned and operated by Mr. Murray's Ohio Valley Coal Company.
Federal investigators determined that Mr. Ciszewski, a 22-year mining veteran, was on a routine job when a conveyer belt cut off his arm, and was "bleeding profusely from the loss of the limb." He died, in part, because there was not adequate first aid.
The company was fined a total of $15,000.
A self-made coal baron, Mr. Murray, owns 19 mines in five states, several with safety records far worse that that of Crandall Canyon, which has 33 health and safety violations this year. For instance, his Galatia mine, in Illinois, has accumulated more than 850 federal health and safety violations in 2007, in addition to about $1.46 million in fines.
Murray Energy mines produce more than 30 million tons of coal annually, generating annual sales of at least $800 million and fostering accusations from some miners and their families that Mr. Murray cares more about growing his bottom line than he does about making his mines safer for his workers.
"It's hurting me very much," he said this week during a middle-of-the night phone call to a reporter. "What they're reporting is that I'm greedy. That is just so inflammatory and false and misleading to everyone in America."
Again and again, he calls himself a champion of miners and an advocate for their well-being and that of their families.
But he is not always perceived that way. This week, relatives of the men trapped in the Crandall Canyon mine were outraged when Mr. Murray said that he planned to seal the mine, entombing their bodies inside, and to continue mining in another part of the vast property.
He reversed himself the next day, saying he had simply been doing what he always does — telling the truth. In all likelihood, he said, the miners had died and it was not safe to continue trying to find them. "I'm no P.R . man," Mr. Murray readily acknowledged.
But as he rides over mountain roads on the way to candlelight vigils for the miners or funerals for the rescuers, he passes signs that come close to calling him a liar. Lori Prince, a local insurance agent, put up one such sign, which read, "Bob Murray, keep your promises."
"He did say he was going to get them all out" dead or alive, Ms. Prince said. "Now he's saying you just have to accept this."
Mr. Murray says he refused to hire a public relations firm or disaster management team after the Crandall Canyon collapse because he wanted to make it clear that he was one who should take responsibility.
Critics say it was another example of Mr. Murray's outsized ego and cavalier attitude toward industry standards.
"In terms of him being the face of this, he shouldn't have been," said a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America, Phil Smith, adding that the Miner Act of 2006 requires the Mine Safety and Health Administration, a federal agency, to be at the forefront of dealing with any disaster. "They could have stopped him."
Agency officials say they allowed Mr. Murray his First Amendment rights to speak out about what happened at the mine.
At Wednesday's news conference, Mr. Murray once again denied that he changed the mining plan when his company took over Crandall Canyon in 2006. "I just continued doing what the previous owner was doing," he said in an interview.
But federal mine agency documents contradict his assertion.
Crandall Canyon's previous owner, Andalex Resources, thought it too risky to mine coal barriers, the pillars that hold up the mountain and protect workers thousands of feet below. The technique is called "retreat mining," and while common at shallower mines, it is far more problematic at Crandall Canyon's depth of 1,800 feet and more.
Nevertheless, mine agency documents show, the agency this year approved a plan from a Murray company to perform such mining at Crandall Canyon.
Susan Saulny reported from Huntington, and Carolyn Marshall from San Francisco.
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