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31 May, 2010
Corporate leaders of US-based Massey Energy Co., including CEO Don Blankenship, came under harsh fire in Richmond, Virginia, on 18 May at the company’s Annual General Meeting (AGM). The meeting came just six weeks after a methane gas explosion at Massey’s non-union Upper Big Branch mine in the state of West Virginia killed 29 miners, the worst mining tragedy in 40 years in the US.
The closed and highly-secured meeting saw hundreds of protesters from US trade unions, environmental groups, and health and safety advocates march from Monroe Park to the historic and posh Jefferson Hotel, the venue for the AGM. They sang songs, waved placards, and chanted slogans that Blankenship belonged in jail, not running a publicly-traded company for his arrogant abuse of mine safety and environmental stewardship in America’s Appalachia Mountains.
Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA) West Virginia Local 69 officers Charlie Rittenhouse and Bryan Ash joined AGM protests against Massey Energy
A corporate governance proposal put before Massey shareholders by a US labour federation’s investment arm called for three of the Richmond-based company’s directors to be dropped from the board. Despite the fact that there were no alternative candidates, the three – Richard Gabrys, Dan Moore, and Massey President Baxter Phillips Jr. – won with just over 50% of the vote.
That constituted a near majority of institutional shareholders who have no-confidence in these directors, and caused United Mine Workers’ of America (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts to say to a news outlet, “They got clobbered, considering the fact that they didn’t have anybody running against them. They ran unopposed and almost lost.”
The AGM was brief and over with in less than one hour. Reporters were sequestered in another room of the hotel and when the question-and-answer period came, the video and audio feed into that room was cut off. Two protesters were arrested inside the hotel’s ballroom, after unfurling a banner that read, “Massey: Stop Putting Profits Over People.”
UMWA President Cecil Roberts
The Upper Big Branch tragedy of 5 April has caused the US Congress to conduct an unprecedented number of hearings. There have been three since the tragedy. At a US Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on 20 May, Roberts said Massey has seen 52 miners die inside its mines in the past ten years. Blankenship testified at the same hearing that federal mine safety recommendations on ventilation upgrades actually make mines less safe.
“We opposed the changes because our engineers believed they made the ventilation less effective,” he said, adding the company does not know if ventilation played a role in the 5 April blast. Blankenship said he thought Massey’s safety and casualty rate in the US was “about average,” to which Roberts, who had both his grandfathers killed in mine accidents, said, “I can’t come up with another coal company that’s had 23 miners in ten years die.”
At a subsequent US House Education and labor Committee hearing that was held near Upper Big Branch in Beckley, West Virginia, on 24 May, one miner who was fortunate to escape stated, “we never had proper air on that longwall.” Relatives of the deceased called Upper Big Branch “a ticking time bomb.”
Environmentalists from Rising Tide delivered a message from inside the meeting
The father of a 21-year-old victim, Adam Morgan, testified: “ … about every shift he had to do some kind of ventilation repairs and some … he had to do on his own.” Steve Morgan said that when his son complained to supervisors on ventilation problems, he was told to find a different line of work if he was “scared.”
An uncle of Adam Morgan also testified. Eddie Cook, a miner at a UMWA-represented colliery in West Virginia, made the point that with a union, you have the right to refuse unsafe work. At Massey, he said, “if you refuse, they tell you to get your bucket and go home. They know if they were union that these people wouldn’t work like they wanted them to.”
According to Massey’s US federal regulatory filings, just 1.3% of its 6,000 US employees are members of the UMWA. And of that small portion, all work in coal preparation plants, not in underground mines.