CHAPTER 10 FEDERAL MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH AMENDMENTS OF 1973

• Jurisdiction: United States

Mine Health and Safety
(Oct 1973)
CHAPTER 10
FEDERAL MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH AMENDMENTS OF 1973
Gerald M. Feder
Counsel Subcommittee on Labor and Public Welfare Committee United States Senate
Washington, D.C.

Until the Twentieth Century the Federal government officially had almost no interest in the mining industry. It clearly had absolutely no interest or concern over the safety and health conditions that existed in the nation's mines. Early in the Twentieth Century, however, primarily as a result of the severely dangerous conditions in relation to underground coal mines, the Congress began to pay attention to mine health and safety and created the Bureau of Mines. This began the process which has led to the enactment of three pieces of Federal health and safety legislation in the last seven years and which will, in my judgment, culminate with the enactment of a bill, S. 2117, recently introduced in the United States Senate and sponsored by 32 United States Senators, the Federal Mine Safety and Health Amendments of 1973.

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Historically, the Federal government has been extremely reluctant to intrude into the areas of mine health and safety. It has viewed enforcement of health and safety standards as a state responsibility. A cursory reading into the Federal Metal and Non-Metallic Mine Safety Act of 1966 demonstrates the reluctance with which Congress was willing to supplant state enforcement agencies.

However, by 1969, disasters in the coal mining industry led Congress to conclude that there was an immediate need for Federal enforcement of mine safety and health standards regardless of the extent or quality of state programs. While the 1969 Act was limited to underground and surface coal mining, it was only a precursor of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, perhaps the most significant piece of Labor-Management legislation in this nation's history, certainly since the Wagner Act of 1935.

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The Occupational Safety and Health Act covered almost all industries in the United States except for those already covered by other Federal laws such as the coal mining industry and the ferrous and non-ferrous mining industry.

This brief legislative history, however, does not provide a sufficient background for an understanding of the introduction of a major new piece of mine safety legislation. To fully understand the rationale for S. 2117 one must at least briefly examine the history of two types of disasters which, in the past five years, bear heavily on the collective minds of both Houses of Congress. I refer specifically to the physical disasters on both sides of the mining industry and, what I consider, the bureaucratic disaster of Federal enforcement activity in mine safety both before and since 1969.

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In the coal industry one quickly recalls the Farmington disaster of 1968 which claimed seventy-eight lives and which provided the immediate impetus for the enactment of the 1969 Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act. But one also must recall the Hyden, Kentucky disaster of 1970, the Buffalo Creek disaster of 1972, the Blacksville disaster of 1972, and the daily toll of fatal and non-fatal injuries still occurring in the coal mine industry. On the other side of the coin is the Sunshine Mine disaster which claimed ninety-one lives in the metal mining industry in 1972.

The bureaucratic disaster has taken its own toll. Beginning in 1970, and almost on an annual basis since then, the Comptroller General of the United States in comprehensive reports has been sharply critical of the implementation of the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act by the Department of the Interior.

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Over and above such non-political criticism as that of the Comptroller General has been the nearly universal Congressional criticism of the activities of the health and safety operations within the Department of the Interior. Indeed the Department of the Interior has not been spared even judicial criticism for its enforcement of the law. In fact, it has twice been enjoined on...