Thirty-six miners died on the job last year—19 of them in coal mines. The federal government has been keeping records for more than a century, and 2012 was the second-lowest year for fatalities on record. The only year that was lower was 2009, when 35 miners died.
Manalapan Mining Company--which operates in Harlan County--and two of the company's top officials are pleading guilty to charges they willfully violated mine safety rules.
The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration is reporting increases in the number of miners who have filed discrimination complaints after reporting safety violations.
Federal law protects miners who report unsafe working conditions to employers, or refuse to work until the problem is fixed. But Assistant Secretary of Labor Joe Main says that after the explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia two years ago, it was obvious many miners were afraid to exercise their rights.
Nineteen miners died in the first half of 2012, according to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration’s mid-year summary.
Ten of those deaths were in coal mines (the rest were in metal or nonmetal mines). And five of them were in Kentucky—four of them in coal mines, and one in a limestone mine.
GOP members on the U.S. House Appropriations committee have inserted language into a bill to block a new Mine Safety and Health Department initiative to reduce occurrences of black lung disease--or coal workers' pneumoconiosis.
