Today in Labor History April 5, 2010: Twenty-nine coal miners were killed in an explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia. In 2015, Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship was convicted of a misdemeanor for conspiring to willfully violate safety standards and was sentenced to one year in prison. He was found not guilty of charges of securities fraud and making false statements. Investigators also found that the U.S. Department of Labor and its Mine Safety and Health Administration were guilty of failing to act decisively, even after Massey was issued 515 citations for safety violations at the Upper Big Branch mine in 2009, prior to the deadly explosion.
So, the U.S. Dept of Labor, back when the U.S. staffed and funded its regulatory agencies, allowed a murderous boss to get away with 515 safety violations, resulting in the deaths of 29 miners, without any consequences for its bosses. And the courts gave the murderous CEO of Massey Energy a year in a Country Club prison for those same 29 worker deaths. But they’re gonna try Luigi Mangione for first-degree murder and seek the death penalty because he supposedly killed a murderous white-collar crook?
As they say, there is no Justice for the working-class; but there’s plenty of “Just Us” for the wealthy, as in court rulings just for them; subsidies and tax right-offs just for them; elite clubs and resorts just for them; and the right, just for them, to kill their workers and consumers in the pursuit of profits.
