China Coal Mine Deaths...Just Like the Good 'Ol Days in the USA...

[rfranklin]

For those of you who don't remember the history of the coal mining industry in the USA and the life-and-death struggle for unionization, this is what it was like and this is the vision that George Bush and his corporate cronies have for your nation--

166 Trapped In Chinese Coal Mine
Nov. 28, 2004


Rescuers were searching for 166 workers who were trapped in a coal mine in central China Sunday after a massive explosion tore through the shaft in what could be the country's worst mining accident in recent years.

Another 127 miners, many who were working near the entrance of the state-owned Chenjiashan coal mine in Shaanxi province, managed to escape after the early morning blast, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The accident came just weeks after another explosion in central Henan province killed 148 workers — to date the most fatal since 2000. It was sparked after mine operators failed to realize that extending the mine's shaft would greatly increase its gas level.

In Shaanxi, 41 workers were hospitalized Sunday, five with serious injuries, Xinhua said. Many were suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, it said.

-more-

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/28/world/printable657934.shtml

[ohio_liberal]

1. It's still happening in the US

There are too many unsafe non-union mines operating in the US. Many of these smaller mines use primative methods and unsafe practices to turn a higher profit. Many of the miners are former union members that worked in larger safer mines. They take lower wages and work under unsafe conditions simply because these jobs still pay more than Walmart.

I know everyone remembers the 7 miners stuck in the non-union Quecreek mine in Pennsylvania. That mine used room and pillar mining to keep capital investments down and profits up. There were also two methods the owners of that mine could've used to determine there was an old abandoned mine 4 feet away from where the miners were digging and they failed to do it. The state department of mine safety didn't require seismographic study or probing before giving them a permit to dig that close to an old flooded-out mine.

[jdj]

2. Mannington Mine Disaster song, (11/68, 78 dead)

From "Come All You Coal Miners"
Hazel Dickens

"We read in the paper and the radio tells
Us to to raise our children to be miners as well.
Oh tell them how safe the mines are today
And to be like your daddy, bring home a big pay.
Now don't you believe them, my boy,
That story's a lie.

Remember the disaster at the Mannington mine
Where seventy-eight miners were buried alive,
Because of unsafe conditions your daddy died.
They lure us with money, it sure is a sight.
When you may never live to see the daylight
With your name among the big headlines
Like that awful disaster at the Mannington mine.
So don't you believe them, my boy,
That story's a lie.

Remember the disaster at the Mannington mine
Where seventy-eight miners were buried alive,
Because of unsafe conditions your daddy died.
There's a man in a big house way up on the hill
Far, far from the shacks where the poor miners live.
He's got plenty of money, Lord, everything's fine
And he has forgotten the Mannington mine.

Yes, he has forgotten the Mannington mine.
There is a grave way down in the Mannington mine
There is a grave way down in the Mannington mine.
Oh, what were their last thoughts, what were their cries
As the flames overtook them in the Mannington mine.

So don't you believe them, my boy,
That story's a lie.
Remember the disaster at the Mannington mine
Where seventy-eight good men so uselessly died
Oh, don't follow your daddy to the Mannington mine.
How can God forgive you, you do know what you've done.
You've killed my husband, now you want my son."