Notes from underground; some surprising lessons about productivity and job satisfaction from the coal mines.

• Author: Gray, Peter

Some surprising lessons about productivity and job satisfciction from the coal mines.

The stereotype of underground mining is that it is dirty, monotonous, brutal, exceedingly hazardous, low-paying work done by illiterate gnomes with no alternatives. Dirty and physically strenuous I'll concede, but the rest ranges from exaggerated to wildly inaccurate. I found mining interesting, aesthetically satisfying, fun, and financially rewarding. Who but a miner goes places daily that no one else has ever visited? And, these days, who but a miner gets to participate in a successful American heavy industry?

The first time I reported for work at a coal mine was in the middle of an icy night in the Utah mountains at the end of 1975. 1 had a brand-new belt (for carrying a self-rescuer, tools, and a lamp battery) and a hard hat, yellow to indicate I was a rookie. The mine was small and nonunion; its lamphouse was a battered semitrailer with a coal stove in one end, two benches, a lamp-charging rack, and a row of hooks for clothes.

There were three other young men on the graveyard shift, and when the boss arrived he immediately fired one of them for laziness and missed shifts. We got on an electric "ramcar," a low, flat vehicle used to scoop coal, and drove inside. I shoveled coal along the rib-the mine wall-for half the night; then we drove outside, changed the ramcar's eight tons of bat- teries, and hand loaded it with several tons of rockdust sacks. For the rest of the shift, we sprayed the inside of the mine with powdered limestone, to dilute the coal dust and make it nonexplosive. Because of this dusting, most of the surfaces of any modern coal mine are white, not black.

Here are a few other facts that might surprise you about mines: While membership in the United Mine Workers of America has dropped by 50 percent over the past decade, the average underground miner's productivity has doubled (by comparison, total nonagricultural business productivity has increased by about 10 percent). The mine-mouth price of coal has fallen by 30 percent in real terms, saving consumers $3 to $4 billion each year and eliminating one third of all mine jobs. Most miners still on the job haven't suffered financially for these gains, however. Real wages have increased slightly during this period.

One thing everyone agrees on is that mines are dangerous. And these changes in industry statistics suggest they may be getting more so. After all, there must be some downside to this success story besides the many displaced workers. Maybe miners have been trading their safety for cash.

One night in Utah, we were rock-dusting back in the return," an exhaust airway leading out from the active section of the mine. Clint drove the ramcar; Dale rode in the machine's bucket and loaded the duster; I walked backward and sprayed dust on the roof, ribs, and bottom. The hydraulic-powered duster roared hypnotically. Dale fell asleep on the heaps of 50-pound sacks. From time to time the duster ran empty, and I had to flash my light at Dale's face to wake him up so that he would break a few more bags into the hopper.

It was pleasant, easy-going work. I meandered along the 20-foot wide "entry" (not "tunnel") and painted the mine white with broad strokes.

Just as I backed out of an intersection, there was a tremendous crash and a blast of air. The roof of the entire room fell, leaving behind a dome that arched above the ends of the four-foot roof bolts. The outer edge of the fall was two feet from my toes. Clint stopped the duster, and we waited for ventilation to carry the cloud away. There was a huge mound of gray shale slabs. We made a brave joke or two, and Dale swore for the hundredth time that he was going back to work for the railroad. Then we started the duster and continued backing out. Dale stayed awake for the rest of the shift.

Many miners have horror stories like that. But even so, the fatality rate in mines has fallen by two-thirds since the mid-1970s. Coal mining is among the most hazardous of professions, but popular notions exaggerate the danger. At work, a miner runs three times the annual risk of dying that the average citizen faces while driving a car. But since the average American spends less than an hour each day on the road, coal mining is several times safer per hour. Given the fearlessness with which most people climb into a car, it's amusing to consider their terror of mines. But cigarette smokers win the prize for calling the kettle black; the risk they run in terms of expected loss of years per lifetime is roughly seven times greater than the one miners face.

The industry has made gains in safety despite miners' habitual cheating on state and federal regulations. In 1977 I saw this first-hand when I went to Colorado to work for Mid-Continent Coal & Coke Co. On entering the mine, we traveled the first halfmile up the steep rock tunnel in a diesel mantrip, the personnel carriers that miners use to get to and from the face," where they actually extract the coal. Because of heavy overburden"-the several thousand feet of rock overhead-the pillars of uncut coal that act as supports were gradually crushed, the bottom "bounced" upward, and the entries...