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GUEST:Rick Perlstein, Senior Fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future

Efforts to find six coal miners in Utah were suspended indefinitely as officials cautioned that underground rescue efforts had become too dangerous. Three rescue workers were killed last Thursday when a tunnel they were digging caved in. Bob Murray, co-owner of the Crandall Canyon Mine, told relatives of the missing miners that he was not hopeful that their loved ones would be found alive. The six coal miners have not been heard from since August 6th when a tunnel collapsed underground during retreat mining operations. Murray, who contends that the mine collapse was caused by an earthquake, was confronted by a friend of a trapped miner who accused him of not doing enough to save the miners. Meanwhile, in China, hundreds of miners are feared dead following a flood of two separate mine shafts. Last Friday, one hundred and seventy two workers of the privately owned Huayuan Mining Company were trapped as water rushed in following torrential rains that caused a river dike to burst. Nine other miners went missing as well in a nearby mine owned by a different company. Though weather was certainly a factor, relatives cite the fact that other mines in the area had shut down operations due to heavy rain. Venting their anger, relatives of one trapped miner shattered a reception window and display cases at the office of the Huayuan Mining Company.

Read Rick Perlstein’s blog at www.www.ourfuture.org/thebigcon

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT

Thenmozhi Soundararajan: I think that one of the things that’s so heartbreaking about both of these disasters is it seems that while both governments are blaming natural disasters for what happened, it seems that there’s really a question of regulation at the issue. I wanted to ask you, in your estimation and in your research, who do you think is really to blame here?
Rick Perlstein: Well, there’s no question, it’s a lack of regulation. I mean obviously we’re not as far gone as the Chinese government. When I was doing research into this latest mine disaster in China, I did a Google news search for “China” and “mine” and of course I came across this “accident” – although, this stuff happens so often when does it become an incident instead of an accident – of 203 miners killed in a gas explosion in a Chinese mine in 2005. So I mean the Chinese situation is absolutely nuts, I mean, we are not quite there yet. Although we are as bad as far as mine safety goes and mine fatalities as we were in 1927. I mean the last time there were this many deaths in American mines, you know, people were dancing the Charleston. Although you can’t really separate the mines in China and the mines in the United States, because of course the same conditions we see in these mines in China are the conditions we see in the factories that are producing the food that we’re eating here in America and the toys our children are playing with. It’s been a really weird week for me because I’ve been covering all these stories and they turn into this Mobius strip where it’s all just one story. It’s the same globalized, deregulated economy, and basically we talk about a race to the bottom. And our bottom is now the Chinese situation. And that is the kind of the risk the American consumers face– you know when we eat food imported from China it’s the same risk a miner faces when he goes into a mine in China.
Thenmozhi: I really like the fact that you really brought up the race to the bottom that we’re facing with in terms of safety both and terms of what we consume and also safety in terms of worker conditions. But what I think is really interesting is looking at the United States’ mining regulation and apparently Richard Stickler who’s supposed to be the mining safety czar –
Rick: Some stickler
Thenmozhi: Yeah, he was also a former coal company executive and his safety record was pretty lousy when he was on the executive side. What has been his record like in regulating since he’s come under power under Bush’s administration?
Rick: Yeah, he’s a guy who has three deaths on his hands as a mine manager. Then he became a state regulator in Pennsylvania under a republican government there. And a grand jury basically blamed him for a mine collapse that eventually- it was the Quecreek River collapse. So, you know, what did the Bush administration say but, ‘Here’s a guy that’s qualified to run the mines in the entire country.’
Thenmozhi: And the best way to appoint him was when Congress was in recess, in October 2006…
Rick: Yeah… 2006 and by the way he was appointed in October 2006 and you see that a lot; it’s one of these kind of hidden, kind of subterranean patterns in the Bush administration, you see a lot of people appointed right before elections, because they try and squeeze them in before a new Congress comes in, and they knew the Democrats would win. But, it was so bad, you know they thought they could sneak him in in a Republican Congress, that they couldn’t even sneak him in a Republican Congress, Senator Bird said, “This is nuts,” he put a hold on the nomination, Bush made a recess appointment, and you know, lo and behold this is the guy that’s running our mines safety. And once again, you have to ask, when do these so-called mine accidents start becoming mine incidents that can be chalked up to the ideology, the ideology of conservatism that says lives are expendable, that we can do a cost-benefit analysis on any human being and uh when do we you know, start blaming politics instead of- not just earthquakes, I mean bad enough that we’re blaming earthquakes- but you know kind of blaming poor mining practices let’s blame Washington, you know, let’s blame the politicians.
Thenmozhi: That’s right. And I guess one of the things I thought that was really ironic in kind of combing through news coverage is that repeatedly it said, “Rescue efforts in Utah were too dangerous.” Now, if rescue efforts were too dangerous to try to recover the miners, wouldn’t it be logical to conclude that the retreat mining operation was also too dangerous?
Rick: Oh, of course! I mean, retreat mining is is, is it’s basically death-trap mining. Just to clarify for people that don’t know what it is, basically you use the pillars that hold up the mine, you tear them down in a so-called controlled intentional collapse and kind of hope that no one’s in the way or hope that the mine-collapse doesn’t happen too early. That’s retreat mining and that’s Bob Murray’s specialty. And you can’t go around poking in these mines wherever you want, when you have these you know sort of precarious pillars that might collapse anytime I mean it’s pretty astonishing. But, I mean this guy Murray is obviously a master of public relations. He managed to get himself in front of the camera as some kind of wise, concerned old uncle who was doing anything to save his boys and who knows if he was doing a cost-benefit analysis with the rescuers too. The rescuers, you know, the more kind of heroic rescue attempts that went on, the better he looked, you know, in the eyes of, the all-knowing eye of CNN and MSNBC. And that obviously was a decisions that shouldn’t have been made, so now he has nine lives on his conscience instead of six, or the earthquake that he claimed that no one else managed to notice has nine lives on its conscience you know.
Thenmozhi: And I think that, I mean it was pretty interesting in the news cycle that Murray, you know, came up as this avuncular figure, given the fact that he has millions and millions of dollars in fines for his company. And I‘m just wondering, going back in terms of the regulatory issue, is there any other teeth that the MSHA has in terms of controlling dangerous mines other than fining people because clearly he wasn’t paying the fines, and also he wasn’t doing anything to make his workers more safe.
Rick: Oh yeah! I mean, this is the guy Bob Murray, um there’s two great stories about him. One actually was reported in an excellent article in the Lexington Herald Leader I think it’s called. I wrote about it in my blog “the big con.” By the way you can find it at ourfuture.org/thebigcon, that’s my blog I write about this stuff. The one story is that mine-safety investigators were reading him the riot act, and he basically shrieked at them at the top of his lungs that he was buddies with Mitch McConnell, who uh, he said is sleeping with their boss. And their boss is of course Elaine Chow who is the former labor sec- actually she’s the current labor secretary. So he’s basically you know threatening them with getting fired because of his friendship with a senator who happened to be you know the (unintelligible) the labor secretary. So that’s one absolutely stunning story. The other is that some of his guys basically walked out of a hearing just kind of out of bored impatience as they were going to be questioned by Arlen Specter. I mean again they couldn’t even handle the questioning of a republican senator. So this is the guy we’re talking about. And you know, yet another dereliction of duty, just another example of professional malpractice not merely by our regulators, not merely by our politicians, but by our news media who have let this guy turn himself into a heroic character. It’s night is day, it’s up is down, it’s absolutely stunning.
Thenmozhi: That’s right. I want to go back to this question about the links because I think going back and really understanding it in a global context, what do you see as possible reforms?
Rick: Well, if we’re talking about the global question of how can we ensure sort of safety for all kind of workers and all consumers, basically this is a paradoxical thing in a sense. You know, we let the market work. And that means for example, in the case of food, right, we got more and more food being imported by China every year, orders of magnitude more food actually, and we only see 2% of that food being inspected at the borders. Now something like “country of origin” labeling for food, you know we see “Made in Taiwan” or “Made in Japan” or you know, “Made in Vietnam” on, you know, hard commodity products- country of origin labeling for food would let people actually chose which sources of food they find the most reliable. Well, you know, lo and behold, the United States Department of Agriculture under Bush has fought this tooth and nail. You know, I’ve written about this on my blog too. And they claim the public doesn’t want it, but actually they’ve done polling on it and country of origin labeling is supported by 92% of the public. Right. Well, we can’t have you know, country of origin labeling for coal, but we just have to set up these you know, something short of global governance, which is obviously the ultimate goal for these kinds of questions. But just the kind of, you don’t move anything over a boarder unless it’s inspected. You know when it comes to uh Chinese mining of course, if we sign any trade deals, you know, the democrats, even the kind of the most milk toast, middle-of-the-road democrats are seeing that we need labor and environmental standards in our trade deals, you know. Manufacturers all over China you know basically are sub-contracted out from American corporations like Nike and you know we can always call these companies to account because they have very valuable brands that can be damaged. You know, and as far as protecting Chinese miners, geez, you know I’m I’m at a loss. I mean, do you have any ideas?
Thenmozhi: Well, I mean I guess the question is really I think we were covering some of the issues around the NAFTA Plus talks that have been happening in Ottawa and I think there is really a larger question in this race for the bottom about how we as citizens and as people in our separate states and countries can really start taking back some of our governance that looks at being able to set standards for basic worker conditions and what we, and what really what we as consumers are really willing to pay for the added benefit of knowing that we’re setting a baseline for livable wages for …you know
Rick: Yeah, that’s great and requires you know creative policy thinking, and it’s a long-term struggle, and involves organizations like the International Labor Organization and you know it involves basically a global consciousness when it comes to not merely what we consume, but also the idea that if you know capital is going to be global, then labor has to be global too.
Thenmozhi: It’s really interesting because I know, when I was looking at both news articles for both the Utah mine disasters and the Chinese mine disasters, in both situations families really didn’t want to speak out against the company because they were company towns and people didn’t really have other economic options. So I think really thinking about where we are as consumers in that chain is really important.
Rick: Well then of course the issue that Bob Murray’s mines are non-union mines. And you know if you look at the safety records of union mines compared to non-union mines, often for the issue you speak about, that you’re so scared to speak out if you fear your family is going to be damaged, it’s night and day.
Thenmozhi: That’s right. Well, do you know of any policies that are coming up or do you know of any points of action or agency like following this disaster that there can be pressure both put on terms of the companies but also maybe in terms of the regulatory agency itself?
Rick: Sure, I know of something that’s happening in November of 2008 and it’s called an election, you know
Thenmozhi: Hahaha, fabulous! Haha
Rick: We get the hell- we get these conservatives the hell out of government, they have no business being there. You know, people who don’t believe in government obviously can’t govern. And you know we’re going to get a different slough of regulators. You know, it’s like imagine having a regulator who actually has a background in labor, environmentalism, and worker safety instead of these kind of e-coli conservatives who actually are just you know coming from a revolving door. You know the Consumer Product Safety Commission to go back to this story of the nine million lead-painted toys from China that were recalled, the Consumer Product Safety commissioner is the former lobbyist for the organization of corporate lawyers. You know, she’s the former publicist for the Chamber of Commerce. You know, the guy that wasn’t able to get in there was even worse but not much worse, he was the head of the National Association of Manufacturers which is the organization that basically has dedicated itself to destroying every kind of consumer regulation. You know, getting rid of conservative politicians means getting rid of regulators who aren’t really regulators at all.

Special thanks to Maura for transcribing this interview.