Massey's contempt.

• Author: Hightower, Jim
• Position: Vox Populist - Massey Energy

In March of last year, Massey Energy's official record book for noting unsafe conditions in its Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia said flatly: "none observed." It turns out that this was a flat-out lie. Just one month later, Upper Big Branch exploded, killing twenty-nine miners and devastating their families.

Massey's in-house "observers" had indeed found safety problems--as they often did in this shoddily run, notoriously dangerous mine. But the corporation kept a dual set of books in order to mislead state and federal safety regulators.

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Massey's secret reports are, however, now out of the closet, thanks to a comprehensive, year-long probe by a 100-member team of federal mine safety investigators.

"An accident waiting to happen," says the report, showing that the corporation "operated in a profoundly reckless manner." By disregarding safety in the pursuit of the almighty dollar, executives allowed an intolerable level of explosive coal dust to accumulate, carrying the blast through the mine to kill men far from the first detonation.

Massey built "a culture in which wrongdoing became acceptable," say the investigators. Worker safety complaints were met with intimidation, safety inspectors were cast as "enemies," and Massey used campaign contributions to keep public officials from cracking down.

The probe included interviews with 266 people, though eighteen Massey honchos (including longtime CEO Don Blankenship) refused to be interviewed, invoking their right against self-incrimination.

No wonder they took the Fifth. Upper Big Branch was a disaster long before it exploded into an underground hell. Despite the corporate policy of deceit, the deep shaft simply had too many problems to hide. In the year before the catastrophic blast, Upper Big Branch had received more mandatory orders from government regulators to shut down unsafe areas than any other coal mine in America. The president of the United Mine Workers of America, Cecil Roberts, bluntly says that Massey's executive suite, board of directors, and the...