Yesterday, Robert James McGowan died when the mine he was working at flooded work yesterday. It was a private mine on the West Coast of New Zealand that employed just 6 people.
This sort of thing is always called an accident, but deaths at work don’t have to happen. They happen because it’s cheaper to do things the more dangerous way, and because employers don’t provide proper equipment and training. There is a really interesting analysis of the situation in America (where 21 people have died in mine accidents so far this year) on the world socialist website.
Anti-capitalism is a large part of my politics (I own a t-shirt that says “it’s all capitalism’s fault”), but I don’t understand how anyone can stand the values that make mining companies decide they don’t need a particular safety procedure.
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Maia, are you writing this blog post from an workstation that is professionally ergonomically designed? Since you’re probably blogging at home, have you had an ergonomist come in and check out your work area, to make sure it’s optimum?
I assume that I know the answers to these questions.
You’re at a different point on the safety-per-dollar curve than a mining operation, unless your house is really messy. Obviously, miners are running one hell of a large risk compared to people typing. But it is a curve.
It may very well be that the mining company in question has in fact deliberately chosen to forego having obviously necessary safety equipment in place in order to scrape out a few extra bucks. I just don’t know, so I readily concede the possibility.
It’s just that I have to object to the phrase “the values that make mining companies decide they don’t need a particular safety procedure.” Because those are the same values that you have; you weigh the benefits of something versus its economic cost, and decide whether it’s worth it or not.
In retrospect, it is always easy to see where money obviously should have been spent – on whatever would have prevented the current tragedy, naturally! But the same is true of your hypothetical neighbor, who also blogs, but who happened to get a horrible carpal syndrome because her work area was just so terribly out of whack. She really should have had the ergonomist in – the $1000 would have been a hell of a lot cheaper than the lifetime of pain and suffering she’s in for. But she didn’t know ahead of time; that’s where judgment and math start coming into play.
Again, it’s entirely possible that this mining company is owned and managed by Satan himself, and that they cackled gleefully as they cut the $0.25 washer that would have saved this guy from the budget. Or, possibly they looked at the $10M capital improvement that would have been necessary to cut the expected death rate in the mine from 0.1 person per year to 0.05 persons per year, and the profitability of the mine just didn’t just if it; it was do without, or shut down.
It’s hard to get rid of Satan; he keeps popping up. Problems created by incentives can be fixed, though. The best way to reduce the likelihood of the latter scenario is to make sure that mining is a profitable industry, worth investing new capital in.
Out of curiosity, does New Zealand have laws restricting the mining industry’s ability to operate profitable mines?
We have some health and safety laws, they can be a bitch.
As to the rest of your points, your analogy falls down because in mines the people making the money decisions, and collecting the profit, aren’t the people who will die if there’s an accident.
As to the rest of your points, your analogy falls down because…
Not to mention because the lack of proper ergonomics does not lead to death while the lack of proper safety measures in a mine does lead to death.
And all of this ignores the fact that mines have existed for hundreds of years & we know what measures can be put in place to either prevent deadly accidents or to save lives in the case of currently unpreventable accidents. Many mines still don’t put those procedures in place because profit is more important than a human life that isn’t your own.
your analogy falls down because in mines the people making the money decisions, and collecting the profit, aren’t the people who will die if there’s an accident
That’s a valid point.
Do you have children? Do you own a car?
When’s the last year you bought a car seat?
We bought our baby a car seat three years ago. Car seats get safer every year. We haven’t updated ours; we don’t plan to.
Are we monsters?
In the US, the Bush Administration has stacked the Mine Health and Safety Administration with mine industry people. Bush appointed David Lauriski, a long-time management official in the mining industry, to be Assistant Secretary of Labor for MHSA. As Deputy Assistant Secretaries, he appointed John Caylor, former manager for Cyprus Minerals Co., Amax Mining Co. and Magma Copper Co., and John Correll, former manager at Amax Mining and Peabody Coal. Special Assistant for MSHA Mark Ellis served as legal counsel to the American Mining Congress. And Chief of Health for Coal Melinda Pon was a management official at BHP Minerals-Utah International.
These good folk have eliminated 17 standards designed to promote miners’ health and safety. While handing out tax breaks, the Administration has regularly propose cutting MSHA’s budget. Since 2001 the agency has lost 170 positions, similar to the losses at the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. As a budget-saving move, the Administration proposes to cut an additional $4.9 million (and cut $6.7 million from OSHA). And proposes to make its past tax cuts permanent.
I’m not a military expert, so I have little expertise to offer on Iraq, etc. But I am a bureaucrat; I used to be a federal bureaucrat. As Thomas Friedman notes, the US system of government is the envy of much of the world. Not our ballots – hell, even Haiti has ballots – but rather our bureaucracy. To cross a bridge with reasonable confidence that the bridge inspector was a competent professional who did not take a bribe to look the other way, that is the real privilege that native-born Americans cannot see and that immigrants cannot miss.
So, regarding the Bush Administration’s policies in Iraq, I feel sad and depressed, but it’s hard for me to evaluate all the complexities. Regarding the Administration’s abuse of bureaucracy, I feel boundless fury. See here and here and here and, oh, damn near everywhere.
All that said … Robert’s right. If we regard human life as paramount and want to be absolutely sure that no one dies in a mine, there are fairly straightforward things we can do: We can outlaw mining. Unless and until we are willing to do that, then we must acknowledge that we as a society are willing to trade SOME risk of death for SOME gain. The question then becomes selecting the appropriate trade-off between risk and reward, and appropriate means for compensating the people who bear the risk. I understand Maia and Jake argue that the risks we now run are not worth the gains. But I haven’t heard them say that they ever expect mining to become riskless.
We bought our baby a car seat three years ago. Car seats get safer every year. We haven’t updated ours; we don’t plan to.
Are we monsters?
Sure. But I don’t know what car seats have to do with it.
Since you brought it up, however, you should know that your car-seat decision may have imperiled your child’s life. That is, if you decided to forgo giving the kid swimming lessons in order to buy the seat.
Nobody:
In the US, the Bush Administration has stacked the Mine Health and Safety Administration with mine industry people.
And mining fatalities subsequently reached an all-time low. I haven’t run the numbers on a per-person basis, and the fact that they include office workers makes it hard to do that in a meaningful way, but the fact that total fatalities have continued their downward trend suggests that you’re making too much of this.
Maia:
The point is that it’s simply not feasible to eliminate all risk. There’s a point at which you have to say that it’s just too expensive to make things safer. Portraying this sort of cost-benefit analysis as nothing but a way to preserve corporate profits is a cheap rhetorical trick that dodges the real issue. Raising the cost of doing business may reduce profits (it also may increase them for some companies, if enough competitors are driven out of business), but it also pushes down wages and pushes up costs to consumers.
Do you know what it would cost, on a per-life basis, to cut mining deaths in half? Or by 75%? Or by however much you think they should be cut? I’ll admit that I don’t, but I’m not throwing around the sorts of accusations you are.
I have to second what Brandon Berg says, and add another example. Here in the U.S., cars are not as safe as they could possibly be. Most cars are not Volvos, and Volvos could probably be made safer too (especially if car companies spent more money on safety-related R&D). Some people die because cars that could have been made safer weren’t. Does it follow from that fact alone that the cars should have been made safer? Obviously not – you have to consider whether the safety improvements will be worth the cost.
With all of that said, it is entirely possible that this particular incidence of the mine owner really is a case where a tiny incremental investment would predictably have saved a life, and the mine owner is a very very bad person.
It’s just that this isn’t a safe baseline assumption to make, if you want to actually have an economy. And in the circumstance where the mine owner isn’t a bad bad man, just someone who made a cost-benefit decision (probably with a heavy heart), then it really isn’t productive to run up the “murderers for corporate cash” flag.
Because those are the same values that you have; you weigh the benefits of something versus its economic cost, and decide whether it’s worth it or not.
Which is why we have the big, evil government making those terrible, oppressive regulations, plus all those frivolous lawsuits–to shift the cost/benefit analysis. I assume, Robert, that you don’t really want to drive a car in an environment where auto manufacturers are allowed to say “We’ll make more money letting our cars explode than making them safe.” You probably wouldn’t want to work at a job where your employer assumed that a certain number of you were going to die from the work, but they’d just hire new people.
From your capitalist perspective, the workers are not fully informed of their risks if the mine owner makes a decision to risk their lives, “heavy heart” or no. “We’re not going to follow this regulation/provide this equipment, do you still want the job?” is not the same as quietly choosing to let people die.
You probably wouldn’t want to work at a job where your employer assumed that a certain number of you were going to die from the work, but they’d just hire new people.
Every employer on earth makes this assumption. It is an assumption that is necessary to function in a contingent universe.
Every employer on earth makes this assumption.
Even in the most dangerous job that I have held the assumption was merely that somebody was going to be injured. Certainly, in the job that I have now, my employer has not made the assumption that a certain number of people will be killed in work related accidents.
I’m open to the possibility that there will be some freak occurrence that could not have been foreseen that will result in an employee’s death. But cave-ins, fires & floods are not likely events here, unlike in a mine.
But, yeah, until we see the details on how the mine was flooded & what safeguards/safety measures were in place & what the standards are wrt flooding are we cannot determine whether the mining company was evil & careless with employee lives or not.
[M]ining fatalities [have] reached an all-time low.
A fair point, with caveats: First, I think you mean to say that 2005 had the lowest accident fatality rating for COAL mines, not for mining generally. Second, 2006 accident fatalities are on pace to double 2005’s accident fatalities. Nevertheless, the MSHA data show total accident fatalities have been trending downwards for decades, and this does not appear to have changed during the Bush Administration. That is encouraging.
However, there is cause to question how indicative these stats are. I understand MSHA’s larger problems result from a failure to enforce “maintenance.” Deferred maintenance may not show any ill effects in the short term, but will in the long term. Part of the shock over the Sago mine deaths is the fact that MSHA had charged Sago with more than 250 violations in 2005, including violations for failing to maintain roof support and ventilation, but that MSHA rarely sought to collect any penalties. The first year that mine owners realize that there is no effective enforcement, the consequences may not be bad. I have concerns for cumulative effects.
For example, if no one requires mines to keep their maps updated, no catastrophe results immediately. But the opportunity for catastrophe grows as time goes on. Nine miners were trapped at Quecreek mine in 2002 as a result of bad maps, but were able to be rescued 77 hrs later. How much further out of date are those maps today?
Most significantly, accident fatalities are not total fatalities. Accidents kill around 50 people a year; black lung alone kills around 1500; I couldn’t find stats on mercury exposure. As my linked articles note, stymieing black lung regulation was an early achievement of the Bush Administration. And, like so many administration policies, the consequences may never be fully known but payments will be coming due for years to come.
Certainly, in the job that I have now, my employer has not made the assumption that a certain number of people will be killed in work related accidents.
Yeah they have. They might not have told you about it. Maybe they don’t want you to post stories about them on the Internet. ;P Or possibly they haven’t extensively articulated it. But every employer works on the assumption that good old Joe might get hit by a bus tomorrow, and we’d better have a solution for that problem in place. Part of that solution generally does involve hiring someone else for the job.
I employ a handful of people in the least dangerous job imaginable. I have standing contingency plans for what to do in case one of them dies. (Mainly, I have contact information for their spouses or partners so I can get at their files.)
But every employer works on the assumption that good old Joe might get hit by a bus tomorrow
Well, unless “old Joe” works for a bus yard, that isn’t work related, is it?
Robert, are you confused about the difference between workers dying and work related deaths? Because they are not the same.
What mousehounde sayeth.
But every employer works on the assumption that good old Joe might get hit by a bus tomorrow, and we’d better have a solution for that problem in place.
Fewer employers than you think. I speak from experience here. I’ve even done work for places where three people (in the same position, one replacing the other) have died and there were no contingency plans in place. I’ve done work for a large number of companies where there was no plan in place (often that’s the reason they end up calling me – “so & so died/left/stole stuff & disappeared. We have no idea how to make our system work. Can you help us?” That is not a plan. That is a, “Oh shit! What do we do now? Can anybody help us? Let’s look quick.”).
It’s wishful thinking to believe otherwise of the majority of businesses/people. Why do you think so few people (who could afford it) have life insurance? We don’t like to think about death.