This Day in Labor History: April 5, 2010
By 
On April 5, 2010, the Upper Big Branch Coal Mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia exploded, killing 29 of the 31 workers laboring in the mine. The product of the outright hostility to safety by mine owner Don Blankenship, this terrible moment served as horrifying reminder both of the dangers of working in underground coal mines and of the vile perfidy of anti-worker employers.
Upper Big Branch was one of many mines owned by Massey Energy, the big conglomerate then run by Don Blankenship. This starkly anti-union company ran 47 mines in Appalachia, 37 of them underground. Most of these were in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. Blankenship took over as CEO in 1992 and built it up through aggressive buying of mines and keeping costs low through union busting and avoiding safety requirements.
At 3:27 PM on April 5, 2010, all the methane built up in the Upper Big Branch exploded. Coal mining has inherent dangers. But by 2010 we were well beyond the point where miners should be dying of this. Sure, a century earlier, this happened all the time. In fact, many of the worst workplace disasters in American history were coal mine explosions from this problem. But technological and safety advances meant that this could be pretty effectively measured and workers’ lives could be saved. Well, if they had a boss that cared whether they lived or died. The 31 workers in the Upper Big Branch did not have that boss. They had Don Blankenship. Only the two miners nearest the exit managed to get out from the gas, noise, and wind from the explosion. Of course, the carbon monoxide levels were so high that the rescue workers had to wait to start their operations for their own safety, making the likelihood of rescuing anyone even less likely, and of course they did not find anyone alive.
The Upper Big Branch explosion was the worst coal mine disaster in the United States since the Hyden, Kentucky disaster of 1970. Naturally, Massey did not inform the workers’ families. They found out on the news or the internet. Also, Blankenship and the rest of Massey denied any responsibility, making completely dubious claims that this was natural gas exploding. Give me a break.
To be clear, Blankenship was directly responsible for these deaths. Most of the time, there is some distance between the owner and the deaths, but not here. Blankenship was an extremely hands on owner. He personally ordered mine practices that were unsafe and oversaw duping Mine Safety and Health Administration inspectors. In fact, the levels of carbon monoxide were so out of control in the mine that MSHA inspectors had to wait almost three months to go inside. The MSHA report on the disaster was absolutely searing. It read, in part, “A company that was a towering presence in the Appalachian coal fields operated its mines in a profoundly reckless manner, and 29 coal miners paid with their lives for the corporate risk taking.” It found a systemic policy of violating safety laws by Blankenship and other executives. Workers told of being threatened with termination if they reported the safety violations.
But the MSHA and Department of Labor were hardly without blame too. They had inspected Upper Big Branch several times. And sure, Blankenship was ignoring the law. But MSHA fines simply were not big enough. In the previous five years, MSHA had found 1,300 violations!!!!! But for all these violations, in 2009, Massey was fined $382,000. But that’s a drop in the bucket for a company like this. And I get it, there are larger structural issues going on here. It’s really an issue of regulatory capture. The MSHA is no different than the EPA or DOL or a lot of agencies–for decades going back to the 80s, all of these agencies were captured by mining executives and hacks. So they kept the fines low, with the support of West Virginia politicians and of course the Republican Party. But…it’s worth noting that this happened under Obama’s watch. The point here is not to blame Obama. The point here is to note that Democratic presidents put far too little emphasis on taking back the regulatory agencies from corporate control. Biden was better around these issues and outraged corporate America for just slight levels of regulation, but that outrage also demonstrates how empowered corporate America really felt after decades of total control. And no, 29 dead workers did not matter.
Because Blankenship was so directly responsible, he actually faced some penalties. Of course, Massey itself was fined a lot. It paid $10.8 million in direct fines. Shortly after, it was purchased by Alpha Natural Resources and Alpha paid $209 million in corporate criminal liabilities. Blankenship fought the personal charges against him but in 2015, was convicted of willfully violating safety standards and sentenced to a year in prison. He claimed he was a political prisoner of a government that hated coal. I’d say that a year in prison for 29 murders was a pretty light sentence.
While in prison, Blankenship decided to write a political manifesto. From the news about it:
“You can be sure I am fully innocent,” he writes. “In fact, more than 100 percent innocent. I spent my life improving coal miner safety and exercising my right to free speech… The real conspiracies were the government’s cover-up of the UBB truth and my prosecution.”
Blankenship also commissioned a documentary in 2014, Upper Big Branch — Never Again, in which he and various consultants attribute the explosion to a freak surge of natural gas.
However, multiple investigations into the disaster found severely inadequate ventilation, plus a buildup of explosive coal dust, combined with a spark from equipment resulted in a series of mile-long blasts that trapped or incinerated dozens of workers. Blankenship had told Massey executives to put safety improvements on hold, writing to one executive in 2008, “We’ll worry about ventilation or other issues at an appropriate time. Now is not the time.”
It never is the time for scumbags like Blankenship.
This is the 559th post in this series. Previous posts are archived here.