Today in Labor History April 5, 2010: Twenty-nine coal miners were killed in an explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia. In 2015, Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship was convicted of a misdemeanor for conspiring to willfully violate safety standards and was sentenced to one year in prison. He was found not guilty of charges of securities fraud and making false statements. Investigators also found that the U.S. Department of Labor and its Mine Safety and Health Administration was guilty of failing to act decisively, even after Massey was issued 515 citations for safety violations at the Upper Big Branch mine in 2009, prior to the deadly explosion.

So, the U.S. Dept of Labor, back when the U.S. staffed and funded its regulatory agencies, allowed a murderous boss to get away with 515 safety violations, resulting in the deaths of 29 miners, without any consequences for its bosses. And the courts gave the murderous CEO of Massey Energy a year in a Country Club prison for those same 29 worker deaths. Historically, mining (including coal, copper, gold, etc) has been one of the deadliest industries on the planet for workers, with thousands of deaths, and tens of thousands of injuries, in and around the pits, and tens of thousands of deaths from chronic lung ailments. It has also been one of the most oppressive for workers and one of the most violent in terms of the capitalist response to labor organizing, with hundreds of striking miners murdered in the U.S., alone.

To read more about mine worker organizing read here:

https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/12/24/the-calumet-massacre/
https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/20/the-ludlow-massacre/
https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/14/the-battle-of-blair-mountain/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #mining #explosion #workplacedeaths #coal #westvirginia #workplacesafety #profits #workersafety #strike #union