Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969

Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969

In response to the horrific 1968 Farmington mine disaster, which killed seventy-eight men, Congress passed the 1969 Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act (FCMHS). The FCMHS concretely established that underground mines were to be inspected four times a year to ensure health and safety standards, while surface mines were to be inspected twice, the first time these mine were included in federal regulations. Regulatory authority was finally ceded to the Bureau of Mines and the Department of the Interior, relieving the state agencies of the entire burden, and grating federal inspectors the right to enter mines and levy fines.  Mandatory monetary fines were finally instituted as an enforcement tool, although the sizes of the fines were not large enough to deter larger companies ($10,000 was the maximum, with no minimum limit). Criminal penalties were made available for chronic or conscious violators. FCHMS even included an entire segment devoted to monetary recompense for miners crippling disabled by “black lung”. The Social Security Administration had to compensate black-lung victims, giving the average miner and his family about $200 a month in 1969.

Cry Wolf Quotes

Mr. Forbes, a former director of the Bureau of Mines has gone on record as saying that accidents are problems of human failure and that if the Bureau and industry are going to correct these accidents that they have to be attacked through the medium of correction within the human mind, and the human body, and the man has to be made to act safely.

-
W. Foster Mullins, Chief Mine Inspector for Virginia, Testimony, House Committee on Education and Labor.

Mr. Ankeny, a former director of the Bureau of Mines, has made the statement publicly that passage of bills would not be expected to reduce the accident rate. Therefore, how can we, in logic or in good conscience, say that we are going to pass…a bill to improve the safety record, when two previous directors of the Bureau of Mines said that passage of laws would not reduce the accident rate?

-
W. Foster Mullins, Chief Mine Inspector for Virginia, Testimony, House Committee on Education and Labor.

Evidence