[Old School]

There is no way to make coal mining "safe" the way the Average Joe on the street counts safe. However, there is no way that Hoot can even believe that what "the Invisible Hand" often means is this: bottom lines get measured against safety improvements get measured against public perception... and, many times, silver and gold get counted more dear than flesh and blood. By the way, Adam Smith himself believed the "corporation" to be a great minefield for potential corruption and greed. Read The Wealth of Nations for yourself.

We don't know what happened to cause this horrible accident, and regardless of the investigation results, Massey has always been among the leaders in mining safety. They were one of the first to require employees to ware safety glasses, florenscent strips, hearing protections etc. In March of this year Massey introduced a new hard hat that will stay on the miner better whenever the miner falls or is struck in the head.

Massey has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the infrastructure for this operation. The management at Massey has been in the business long enough to know that cutting corners could cause an accident that would be so severe that it could permanently close the operation. It would not make sense from a business standpoint, even if their only concern was about silver and gold as you say.

This seems to be yet another subject that you know nothing about but, as usual you do not let that stop you from expressing a strong anti-capitalist opinion. Mining accidents are expensive to coal companies and impact the bottom line in many ways.

Accidents with fatalities are extremely expensive and can easily put a coal company out of business. There will always some fly by night operators in any industry but Massey did not become the nation's largest coal producer by ignoring safety regulations.

Massey is extremely selective in its hiring practices, pays its employees well, and demands excellent performance in return. I never had any desire to work for Massey because of the extremely long hours it often requires its supervisors to work - and I had no problem working 50 to 60 hour weeks at the time. However, Massey has always been one of the best managed companies in the business. It is a shame that a socialist will ultimately decide the company's fate and the fate of the entire coal industry as well..

You're right Hoot, accidents like this alway hurts companies. I understand that this was a 5 section mine that produced 1.2 m tons per year.
It would not surprise me if this mined was closed after the investigation is completed.

Hoot, Hoot... please.... human beings are not "pure" evil, they are not "pure" good... they are incredible combinations of good and evil. With that said, if your contention is that corporate entitites, given the title of persons by strange power in our courts and society, can be left unregulated, unchecked as guarantors of honest scales, of clean water, clean air, then you haven't the radicalism of a reformer... you have the rabid eye of the zealot, who ends up destroying tolerance and freedom with blind zeal. By the way, have you lately read the statistics for miners killed in union mines as opposed to non-union mines, when compared over the last fifty years? It's interesting, Hoot. Of course, it does sort of collide with your worldview, which, it seems to me, means you'll ignore it or discount it without a fair hearing. Typical.

Do you have those stats. handy? I would be very interested in seeing them. Personally I think it would be unfair to go back fifty years. I think thirty years would give a better indicator.

After you compare union vs non union fatalities, it would be interesting to compare fatalities per man hours work in unions vs non union mines.