Workers' lives still expendable

August 14, 2002
Issue 

BY RUTH RATCLIFFE

"They were all swept along by the one idea: that they might still get through the adjoining disused mine if they could get there before the way was cut off... In their frightened hearts old slumbering beliefs came back to consciousness, and they called upon mother earth since it was she who was taking her revenge by bleeding from her veins because a man had cut her arteries... They anxiously watched every centimetre that the water rose. Unless it stopped, was this to be their death, crushed against the roof with water filling up their lungs?" — the coal mines of 19th century France as depicted by Emile Zola in Germinal? Or the latest mine disaster in Pennsylvania?

Unfortunately, both.On July 24, nine miners working in the Quecreek Mine, Pennsylvania, became trapped after breaking into a flooded mine shaft. A phenomenal 222 million litres of water rushed into the 1.3-metre-high chamber in which the miners were working.

The rescue effort did not start until 20 hours after the accident because drilling equipment had to come from West Virginia. Rescuers were concerned that when they did reach the miners, the release of pressure would cause the water to rise and kill the miners.

After 77 hours, all nine were rescued. Amazingly, they suffered only mild hypothermia.

Thirteen miners in Brookwood, Alabama, were not so lucky. On September 23, 2001, an explosion ripped through a mine which had previously been found to have unsafe levels of combustible coal dust in the atmosphere. All 13 miners were killed.

On June 20, a gas explosion tore through the Chengzihe mine in Jixi, in the Chinese province of Heilongjiang, killing 115 workers. At least 21 miners were killed by a flood at the Fuyuan coal mine in May in Yuncheng, Shanxi province.

When Germinal was published in 1885, it was a testament to the brutality of life in the coal fields and the courage of workers to stand against this system. It also reflected some of the political debates of the fledgling international socialist movement.

But how is it that 225 years after Zola published this tale of tragedy and heroism, miners face the same dangers of being buried alive, drowned or blown apart?

The answer is quite simple. In the coal mines of France two centuries ago, as in coal mines today, workers are regarded not as human beings but as part of an economic equation. Just as in Zola's time, all too often workers lives are expendable in the capitalists' quest for the greatest profit.

The Brookwood mine in Alabama had previously been cited for 31 violations of mine safety, including free floating combustible coal dust. US President George Bush's administration is currently lobbying to cut the Mine Safety and Health Administration's budget by 6%, primarily from the coal enforcement division. The number of coal miners' deaths in the US has risen every year for the past three years.

Only the most outrageous, large-scale tragedies in the world's mines and sweatshops make headlines in the newspapers of the West. The fate of the nine US miners was reported. Yet, instead of examining why such an accident could happen and who was responsible, the Washington Post preferred to report that some of the men had scratched American flags into their helmets.

The international working class holds the lessons of hundreds of thousands of struggles, defeats and victories, yet still lives are lost in a system which puts the profits of a tiny few before the lives of the majority.

It is both possible and necessary for the international working class to replace the profit-based system with one that puts human need first. Every single work tragedy should make our conviction and determination stronger to bring this about.

If you ever need to remind yourself of the scale of human suffering or our collective ability to stand and fight, Germinal is an excellent read.

From Green Left Weekly, August 14, 2002.
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