With the unwelcome press that MSHA and mine safety has gotten due to the tragedy in WV at the start of this year there has been lots of talk about the role of MSHA fines in mine safety. A local paper's editorial here in Lancaster County was quick to call for fines to be increased which, in their opinion, might have averted the disaster. News this week is that PA's two US Senators are taking an active role in calling for increases.

MSHA has a piece online as a pdf at http://www.msha.gov/sagomine/mshapenalties.pdf that refutes some of Knight-Ridder's claims that fines are down with this administration.

I listed the link also on the training page of our site. Miners I've been training are interested in talking about the WV situation and the ramifications of it. It seems that they like to discuss the fine issue as well. I think anything that they bring up at a training session is worth noting and building on, so I've been doing some of it. The issues with fines are: 1) Fines as punishment - are they significant? 2) Is money spent on fines by a small company diverted from spending money making the mine safer? 3) Does the fact that a mine recieveslots of citations mean that it's less safe than one that doesn't?

What do you think? Make a comment.

 

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