In the wake of last week’s disaster at Massey Energy Company’s Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia, it’s become increasingly clear that CEO Don Blankenship has gamed the loophole-laden mine safety enforcement system. Despite a supposedly tougher federal law that passed in 2006 after the Sago, West Virginia, mine explosion killed a dozen miners, Massey and other companies have been able to use the law as a shield to avoid tougher enforcement measures by appealing safety citations – and overwhelming the weak Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) with a backlog of appeals.

Even though Massey has faced proposed fines nearing $2 million since 2005 and been cited over 1,300 times, it’s paid only a fraction – one-sixth – of the proposed fines. All told, according to the United Mine Workers of America, nearly 50 people have been killed at Massey mines in the last ten years. In March alone, it was cited over 50 times for violations, many directly related to ventilation violations that allowed the build-up of explosive methane gas that played a major role in the killing of the 29 miners. As The Washington Post observed in an editorial,

“‘It’s a profession that’s not without risks and danger, and the workers and their families know that,’ Mr. Obama said of the coal industry Friday. ‘But their government and their employers know that they owe it to these families to do everything possible to ensure their safety when they go to work each day.’ A good place to start would be to ensure that the regulations on the books are vigorously enforced.”

And, in a perverse way, political leaders and media outlets that morbidly romanticize the courage of rural mine workers for working in an industry known for its risks are also in some ways promoting the view that mine disasters are as unavoidable as natural disasters. As USA Today proclaimed in a recent headline: “In mine country, risks a ‘way of life.’” The feature article concluded by quoting former miner Randy Cox, who had observed that deep in a coalmine, “bad things can happen fast, without warning.” The article noted, “that it will take a long time for this area to mourn and heal, Cox said. “‘It’s all in God’s hands now.’”

In contrast, “what unions, particularly in dangerous profession like mining, mean is that they give workers protection and the leverage of a working group with management to vocalize and bring forward concerns about safety without fear of retribution,” said Kimberly Freeman Brown, executive director of American Rights at Work, a champion of the now-stalled Employee Free Choice Act. She added, “In the absence of a union, in hard economic times, workers feel more vulnerable about losing their jobs and less confident about expressing their concerns about safety.”

This is what the Employee Free Choice Act is all about. Where there’s not going to be intimidation, where there’s not going to be retribution against employees who just think about organizing in the workplace because they’d like to go down into a workplace where they’re not going to lose their lives. Where it will just increase the safety in their area. Is that asking too much? Is it all for the dollar bill in America? This is morally wrong. There is absolutely no difference between what these guys did in the front office at this Massey Energy Company than what these guys did down the street on Wall Street to folks who were ripped off. This is a matter of life and death. That’s what this is.