Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/462877
59 WINTER 2015 / CINEMONTAGE LABOR MAT TERS years overdue; some go back decades. Federal regulators seem unable or unwilling to make mine owners accountable. The joint investigation examined 20 years of federal mine data up to the first quarter of 2014, including information about fines, payments, violations and injuries. The NPR authors used raw Department of Labor data and delinquency records drawn from the Mine Safety and Health Administration to calculate the number of injuries and injury rates, and violations — including the extent of these violations — at mines with delinquent penalties. Among the findings were several notable breeches of public policy. Some 2,700 mining company owners failed to pay nearly $70 million in delinquent penalties. The top nine delinquents owe more than $1 million each. Mines that don't pay accrued penalties are more dangerous than mines that do, with injury rates 50 percent higher. Delinquent mines reported nearly 4,000 injuries during the years they failed to pay, including accidents that killed 25 workers and left 58 others with permanent disabilities. Delinquent mines continue to violate the law, with more than 130,000 violations, while they failed to pay mine safety fines. Most mine operators do pay their penalties, the NPR/MSHN investigation found. Delinquent companies account for seven percent of the nation's coal, metals and mineral mining companies. Yet that small subset of the industry is more dangerous than the rest, federal data show. After the 2010 disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia killed 29 people, the Mine Safety and Health Administration in the Department of Labor began to apply greater scrutiny and sanctions to mines with persistent patterns of dangerous violations. The agency has also staged hundreds of blitz inspections at targeted mines. That rigorous enforcement prompts some delinquent mines to close because sanctions can make it difficult to operate, Joe Main, the current head of MSHA, said. DURAZO DEPARTS LA COUNTY FED Maria Elena Durazo — the powerful Los Angeles County labor leader who helped elect politicians and increased wages, and spearheaded major development projects — in late November said she is leaving her post to take a national union job promoting civil rights and campaigning for immigration reform, writes James Rainey and David Zahniser in The Los Angeles Times. The LA County Fed, an umbrella entity representing 600,000 workers, "reached a zenith of its influence" under Durazo, its first woman leader. A vote by hundreds of union representatives elevated Rusty Hicks to the top job in the County Federation of Labor, taking over January 1 for Maria Elena Durazo, according to James Rainey in The Los Angeles Times. "There is a change in leadership, but there is no change in mission," Hicks said in an interview. "This organization is dedicated to fighting income inequality for those who are currently organized and for those who are unorganized but one day may be." UNION MEMBERSHIP VERY SEXY Could a union card be a turn-on? Job security, wages and health benefits are important details that boost one's chances in the marriage market, writes Bourree Lam in The Atlantic in early November. A study by the University of California Press, by sociologists Daniel Schneider and Adam Reich, finds that for men, union membership can enhance their chances of getting married. The research shows that for men, income correlates with marriage rates: declines in marriage are more pronounced for men in middle- and lower-income groups. This relationship caused the authors to wonder: Would union membership — which is supposed to lift a member's wages — also lift a person's chance at being married? Using 25 years of data from a cohort of men and women from a National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the sociologists found evidence that union membership is positively associated with marriage for men, though the relationship was not statistically significant for women in unions. Further, they also found that for both men and women, there's a strong correlation between health insurance coverage and first marriage: Men with health care had 30 percent higher odds; women had a 16 percent boost. f Maria Elena Durazo. Courtesy of the AFL/CIO