COAL MINE DISASTER IN TURKEY -- Industrial homicide, American (or Patriot) style?

After two men died on May 12 in a West Virginia mine owned by St Louis-based Patriot Coal, more than 200 appear to have lost their lives in a Turkish mine explosion on May 13.  Both accidents were more than likely due to the rush to cut costs by decreasing safety controls.  In the Patriot case, the men were 'retreat mining' - basically what companies that are scraping the bottom of the barrel - or mine, as the case may be - do to eke out the last few dollars from the earth.

http://www.msha.gov/POV/October2013Letters/BrodyMiningLLC.pdf

Retreat mining is dangerous, since it involves removing coal pillars that hold up the mine roof.  As reported by Ken Ward, Patriot Coal had been cited repeatedly for violations of safety regulations on "roof and rib" issues during 2013.  Patriot was declared a "pattern violator" – which is significant given the gutting of MSHA regulation and oversight. You have to be pretty bad to get this designation.   In other words, they had been negligent in ensuring compliance with minimal safety requirements.

File under organized criminality?
(Updated 5/14/14 @4PM: Ken Ward and NPR reveal inordinately high and systematically recurring violation rates at Brody mine, which was controlled by Patriot even before its formal purchase in 2012.  This is the way that scraping the bottom of the mine yields higher profits: cutting corners by jeopardizing a dependent labor force.  Conclusion: if the industry hadn't spent so much money to lobby legislators, seduce regulators, and rewrite rules that allow them to jam up regulators with incessant "contestation" of violations, and with minimal monetary consequences, all of this would be illegal.  They would have been shut down (or jailed) long ago and we would be calling Patriot an organized criminal entity.)

Patriot is a spin-off from Peabody Coal.  It seems Peabody was increasingly looking to international markets as well as Powder River Basin strip mining, recognized the growing costs of mining in the east, tried to slough off pension and health benefits of Patriot workers, and eventually took Patriot private to avoid public scrutiny.  (Despite the spin-off, many of the chief executives are ex-Peabody and there is clearly a cozy relationship among this strata of the corporate coal elite).  As the coal industry has gutted unions, weakened regulatory oversight (and destroyed economies) in the Appalachians, we continue to see the human costs of what is the end of mining in the American east.

How do you say industrial homicide in Turkey? "work assassination"

Relatives of miners grieved during a funeral
on Thursday in Soma, Turkey. CreditUriel Sinai for The New York Times

In Turkey, stay tuned, this may likely bring down a Prime Minister.  Workers' organizations are calling Turkey, after the article below, a graveyard for workers.  Surely Hollywood or the American press will turn this into a story of heroism and emotion rather than one of a war on nature and labor, as they did with Chile's Los 33.  (Update 5/15/14: Cengiz Aktar reports that following privatization, the CEO of Soma mine bragged of great cost reductions.  Workers' organizations decry rise of "work assassinations" despite Turkey's claim to be in a development boom.  Meanwhile, after dismissing the mine explosion as "typical," much like American coal men do, the Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, reportedly punched a protester in the face today.  Apparently he did not want to be upstaged by his assistant Yusef Yerkel, a former PhD candidate at London's SOAS, who kicked a protester (or mourner) yesterday.  The victim was already on the ground, being detained by two uniformed military men.  The things one does for coal?)

The West Virginia miners who died are Gary Hensley, 46, and Eric Legg, 48.  Facebook dedications ask for prayers for their families.

The CEO of Patriot Coal is Bennet Hatfield, formerly of Arch Coal and Massey Energy.  Hatfield took over in 2012, as Patriot exited a fabricated bankruptcy plan.  After massive protest and a lawsuit by the UMWA, Patriot (in fact Peabody, via Patriot) was forced to continue paying some health benefits.  Yet, as Patriot was going through Chapter 11 reorganization in 2013, it distributed almost $7,000,000 in bonuses to its executives.  The United Mine Workers of America, according to Bloomberg, called this "massive bonuses to corporate insiders."  At the time, Patriot was still trying to cut its benefit obligations to workers and reduce other obligations through the bankruptcy proceedings.

At Least 238 Are Killed in Turkish Mining Disaster

By SEBNEM ARSU and ALAN COWELL NEW YORK TIMESMAY 14, 2014