Letter: Reagan policies share blame for mine disaster

Monday, Aug. 27, 2007 | 7:12 a.m.

The Las Vegas Sun's Aug. 22 editorial on the Utah mine disaster concluded that the idea of worker safety being achieved by voluntary owner programs was a "fallacy." Although the editorial was factual, I thought the conclusion was an understatement. Voluntary safety programs are not supposed to work.

To be fair to the Bush administration, it is only carrying out policies developed long ago by Ronald Reagan - deregulate business and weaken or destroy the unions. If there are federal agencies that support worker safety, you appoint administrators who are business-friendly. With these conditions, it was inevitable that a mine owner such as Robert Murray, a big GOP contributor, would be permitted to send miners on a suicide mission to make Murray rich.

Robert Murray bought mines that were abandoned because all the coal that could be safely removed had been. Only the pillars of coal that held up the roof remained. That was "free coal." No drilling through rock was needed to get at it, so it was high profit. The roof will cave in when enough of the coal pillars are harvested, but that's a chance the miners take. The mine was also located too close to a mountain, which produced the pressure that precipitated the cave-in. If the workers protested, they'd be blackballed from ever working in mining again.

The Utah mine disaster is just a bit of poison fruit on a bush planted by Ronald Reagan. Voluntary safety is not just a policy that does not work. It is evil.

Jerry Bitts, Las Vegas