Michelbacher, Carl.. STATEMENTS-Continued Randolph, Hon. Jennings, a U.S. Senator from the State of West Virginia. Schweiker, Hon. Richard S., a U.S. Senator from the State of Pennsylvania. Williams, Hon. Harrison A., Jr., a U.S. Senator from the State of New Page 498 1, 509 479 5 517 449 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Articles, publications, etc., entitled: "Death in the Coal Mines," from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 13, 1969__ 3 "Recent Trends in the Coal Mining Industry," by B. C. Thompson, economist, National Coal Policy Conference, from the Mining Congress Journal, February 1969- 510 Communications from: Randolph, Hon. Jennings, a U.S. Senator from the State of West Hickel, Hon. Walter J., Secretary, U.S. Department of Interior, The Editor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, Mo., February 24, Communications to: President of the Senate and Speaker of the House, from President 461 3 516 488 COAL MINE HEALTH AND SAFETY THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1969 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON LABOR OF THE COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 4232, New Senate Office Building, Senator Harrison A. Williams, Jr. (chairman of the subcommittee), presiding. Present: Senators Williams, Randolph, Nelson, Eagleton, Hughes, Javits, Prouty, Saxbe, Bellmon, and Schweiker. Committee staff members present: Robert O. Harris, staff director; Frederick R. Blackwell, counsel to the subcommittee; Eugene Mittelman, minority counsel; and Peter C. Benedict, minority labor counsel. Senator WILLIAMS. I think it most appropriate that we commence hearings on this very important legislation with a senior Member of the U.S. Senate who has been our leader on measures to bring greater safety to coal mines, Senator Jennings Randolph, of West Virginia. As I read the record, and I have part of it here, Senator Randolph, way back in the beginning, in 1941, was one of the prominent leaders in the House of Representatives when coal mine safety was the subject and the first coal mine safety bill was passed. The record doesn't show it, but I know that Senator Randolph led the petition drive to bring that measure to the floor of the House of Representatives for successful debate. More recently, in 1965 here in the Senate, Senator Randolph led the battle to extend the Safety Act without the same success in the Congress. We were successful in the Senate but the measure did not pass the House. So, here we are today beginning what we hope will be a return to victory for you, for the miners, for the people of this country, Senator Jennings Randolph. STATEMENT OF HON. JENNINGS RANDOLPH, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF WEST VIRGINIA Senator RANDOLPH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and my colleague, Senator Javits. To complete the record concerning the legislation you mentioned, to extend the Coal Mine Safety Act to the smaller mines with 15 workers and under, we did pass that legislation in the Senate in 1965. It was not acted on in the House in that year, but in 1966 the House passed it and it was signed into law by the President of the United States. (1) Mr. Chairman, my presence here and my active participation in this opening hearing on coal mine health and safety legislative proposals grow out of three major interests and responsibilities, to wit: I am a Senator from West Virginia, the leading producer of bituminous coal of all the coal-producing States. Last year, 556 million tons of coal were produced in the United States. Approximately 48,000 coal miners-more than 95 percent of them West Virginianswere employees of the mines in our State while producing 146 million tons of the 1968 national total. Our combined nonagricultural labor force in West Virginia at the end of 1968 approximated 511,000 persons. Thus, coal mining last year represented a source of employment for approximately 9.4 percent of the total of our nonagricultural labor force. Hence, these measures on our agenda have a direct relationship to a substantial part of our West Virginia economy and to a significant number of our citizens. I have a duty and a responsibility, as well as a desire, to be concerned and to act constructively. Then, too, I am a member of the Labor and Public Welfare Committee and of this Subcommittee on Labor as a consequence of both preference and assignment. I have been active on legislation in connection with the subject matter we have before us today and on other matters of importance to management, to labor and to the general welfare. Consequently, I do have a commitment which I recognize on these important personal, official, and certainly national matters. Additionally, I am a prime sponsor of two of the measures on coal mine health and safety before us. On January 10, 1969, I introduced the then administration's proposed Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, S. 355, a bill carefully developed over months of study and effort and refined further as a consequence of the tragic November 1968, fire and explosion at Mountaineer Mine No. 9 between Farmington and Mannington, W. Va. S. 355 is combined coal mine health and safety legislation. On January 21, 1969, I introduced, at the request of President Boyle of the United Mine Workers of America, another measure— S. 467, proposed with the title, "Coal Mine Health Act," and considerably broader in scope than the provisions of S. 355 relating to the purpose of elimination of health dangers to coal miners resulting from the inhalation of coal dust. So, Mr. Chairman, I shall participate actively with you in seeing that competently developed proposals for legislative improvement of coal mine health and safety conditions are brought to fruition for my State and wherever else coal is mined in the United States. By reason of my introduction of the two measures, and thanks to your introduction of the two additional measures to which you referred, Mr. Chairman, there are before our subcommittee a wide range of proposed provisions for modernization-perhaps recodification— of Federal coal mine health and safety statutes. We should study them side by side. My action in introducing S. 355 and S. 467 does not mean that I enter these hearings with a closed mind or preconceived and fixed opinions of what should be the ultimate measure reported by this subcommittee. I will wish to hear the witnesses and to study the record of these hearings before forming judgments on specific provisions. My only dedication to position is to the principle that there must be modernization of the Federal coal mine health and safety laws because these laws have not been kept current with the pace of the mechanization which has developed in the extraction of coal. Coal miners must have the safest attainable working conditions short of the destruction of their jobs. There must be improvement of existing conditions in the interest of arresting and, hopefully, of preventing black lung and other diseases incident to coal mining. I underscore the word "preventing" if for no other reason than to emphasize that legislation relating to compensation for claims growing out of the occupation is generally a State matter, the responsibility of the legislatures of the States. In West Virginia delegates and State senators are giving active consideration in our legislature at the present time to these compensation matters. And, matters having to do with compensation as a Federal proposition properly are within the purview of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. Mr. Chairman, I had intended to read certain portions of a letter I addressed to the editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in response to an editorial which appeared in that newpaper on February 13, 1969. But that material is available. It is in the hands of the working press and the news media, so I shall not take time other than to ask unanimous consent that the editorial to which I made reference, as well as my letter of February 24 in clarification of the legislative situation, be made a part of the record. Senator WILLIAMS. Without objection they will be included in the record. (The material referred to above follows:) [From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Thursday, Feb. 13, 1969] DEATH IN THE COAL MINES Is the United Mine Workers Union playing footsy with the coal mining industry again? In a New York Times dispatch from Washington Ben A. Franklin writes that the UMW has informally agreed to divide the health and safety aspects of pending legislation into two bills. Senator Jennings Randolph of West Virginia, who announced this odd approach, is ranking member of the committee that will pass on mine safety legislation. Health and safety are dealt with together in a bill drafted by the Department of Interior and another, even stronger, introduced by Representative Ken Hechler of West Virginia. And that, we think it plain, is exactly as it should be. A cave-in is as unhealthful as "black lung" disease, and black lung is as unsafe as a cave-in. Together the hazards to health and safety make coal mining, as Mr. Franklin reports, "the most dangerous and disabling of industrial occupations." So it continues to be despite the Coal Mine Safety Act of 1952 and the amendments to it in 1966. In the wake of the coal mine disaster last November at Farmington (W.Va.) that killed 78 miners, the public conscience has been stricken anew and the climate of opinion is favorable for genuine reform. The coal mining industry should not be allowed again to divide and conquer. Only by laying the whole damning picture of life in the coal mines on its doorstep may Congress be at last induced to put human lives first and corporate profits second. U.S. SENATE, February 24, 1969. EDITOR, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, Mo. DEAR SIR: Your Thursday, February 13, 1969 editorial, "Death in the Coal Mines," implies someting "odd" in my introduction of separate bills in the Senate on coal mine safety and coal mine health. Separate safety and health measures have been introduced at the request of the United Mine Workers of America-one relating to reduction of dust inhalation in mines (known as the UMWA health bill) which I introduced, and one relating to general coal mine safety which Senator Harrison A. Williams, Jr. (D-N.J.) introduced. Also there are at least two bills combining both health and safety-one recommended by the Director of the Bureau of Mines and the Secretary of the Interior of the Johnson Administration which I introduced; and one introduced by Senator Williams (D-N.J.) which is the same as the bill in the House of Rep. Ken Hechler (D-W. Va.). We are expecting an additional bill or bills from the Department of the Interior of the Nixon Administration. At the time I introduced the Johnson Administration bill (January 10, 1969), I said I believed coal mine safety and coal mine health should be handled separately, but I introduced the Johnson Administration measure as a single bill, with the subject matter divided into separate titles. There seemed, on January 10, to be much closer but not complete agreement on the part of producers and miners to the safety provisions of the Administration proposal than to the health (dust control) provisions. The United Mine Workers differed sharply with the Administration's proposed legislative approach to the dust control (anti-black lung) problem. That is why the UMWA proposed and why I introduced a dust control bill. Subsequently, the UMWA has found much to disagree with in the coal mine safety provisions of the Johnson Administration bill. So the UMWA has had Senator Williams sponsor a separate mine safety bill. There is nothing unusual about these procedures. They occur on many subjects in the Congress. I have had many such experiences. So has the United Mine Workers. There are probably opponents of health provisions of these bills (on medical and/or other technical grounds) who are not against the safety provisions. All persons will not agree with this evaluation, but it seems to me that the prime target of all this legislation is first to recodify and modernize the mine safety laws to mitigate against or, if possible, totally obviate, the catastrophic coal mine explosions and fires which kill and seriously injure miners and cause intensive property damage. If we can do this without encumbering the objective and delaying its fulfillment with a long and tedious controversy over dust control procedures and technology, it seems to me that we should do it. But we are going to open the hearings on February 27 in the Senate Subcommittee on Labor by placing all of the coal mine safety and coal mine health bills on the agenda. However, if we can make more progress on safety provisions than on health, I believe it would then be wise and prudent to fully develop the one aspect ahead of the other into a public law-and then return to the other aspect and seek to finalize it, too. If the reverse proves to be the case and health provisions can be moved faster than safety, then we should proceed accordingly. Ideally, of course, we hope both the health and safety aspects can be moved in concept and that they can be combined in a single public law in the interest of the betterment of working conditions of the miners which would also improve their occupational health status and their occupational safety. Of course the "safest" mine and the "healthiest" mine is the closed one-but it does not produce the coal that is so vital to much of our country's economy— and it does not provide payrolls and livelihood for miners. The search must be for feasible ways to achieve safety and improved occupational health in active mining operations where jobs are provided. To be too reckless or too little, too late in any direction in coal mine safety and coal mine health would be catastrophic. To achieve the feasible and the "proper balance" and, at the same time, the effective will not be done easily. We are committed to begin the effort in the Senate on February 27—in the House on March 4. With the hope that I have clarified the legislative situation, I am Senator RANDOLPH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. JENNINGS RANDOLPH. Senator WILLIAMS. Thank you very much, Senator Randolph, for a strong beginning of what we certainly hope will be successful hearing and successful passage of this legislation after the whole legislative process has been gone through. Senator Javits, do you wish to make a statement? |