Some Laborers To Think About Today

[Hissyspit]

6 Miners, 3 Rescue Workers Killed At Crandall Canyon Mine - 2007

"Known as Ohio’s coal king, Murray is a major donor to the Republican Party, with his company’s political action committee handing over $200,000 to Republicans in the 2006 elections. He has testified before Congress on behalf of the National Mining Association to demand tax cuts and environmental and safety deregulation."

"Ellen Smith, the editor of Mine Safety and Health News, who is by no means a harsh critic of the coal industry, wrote on August 10: 'As someone who has covered the health and safety side of this industry for 18 years... I could not believe what I was seeing on CNN news and reading on MSHA’s web site: a television crew and accompanying reporters, and family members, being allowed inside the mine to view the rescue operations...
'I was stunned. CNN reported they were at the mine rescue ‘face,’ a 30-minute, three-mile ride into the mine, where rescuers were removing the debris trying to get to those trapped men...'"

"Robert Murray was also heavily criticized for his actions during the rescue attempt. The MSHA cited his volatile behavior, especially at daily briefings for family members..."

25 Killed, 54 Injured In The Hamlet NC Chicken Processing Plant Fire - 1991

"Trapped behind locked fire doors. Due to a lack of inspectors, the plant had never received a safety inspection in 11 years of operation."

"The Hamlet plant had had three previous non-fatal fires but no action was taken to prevent recurrence or to unlock the doors... It had no fire alarm system to warn workers further back in the plant, and there were no sprinklers anywhere in the building... Investigators found indentations left on at least one door by people attempting to kick it down."

"It was (Imperial Foods owner) Roe senior who had personally ordered the doors to be locked from the outside. He received a prison sentence of 19 years and 11 months."

"Within two years of the accident insurance companies and the North Carolina business lobby collaboratively introduced legislation to severely limit the compensation available to injured workers and relatives of killed workers."

146 Killed, Many Leaping To Their Deaths, In Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - 1911

"The company's owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, had fled to the building's roof when the fire began and survived. They were later put on trial... The jury acquitted the owners. However, they lost a subsequent civil suit in 1913 and plaintiffs won compensation in the amount of $75 per deceased victim."

"Rose Schneiderman, a prominent socialist and union activist, said in a speech at the memorial meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House on April 2, 1911, to an audience largely made up of the members of the Women's Trade Union League, a group that had provided moral and financial support for the Uprising of 20,000:"

I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting. The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know what these things are today; the iron teeth are our necessities, the thumbscrews are the high-powered and swift machinery close to which we must work, and the rack is here in the firetrap structures that will destroy us the minute they catch on fire.

This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in the city. Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred. There are so many of us for one job it matters little if 146 of us are burned to death.

We have tried you citizens; we are trying you now, and you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers, brothers and sisters by way of a charity gift. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily upon us.

Public officials have only words of warning to us — warning that we must be intensely peaceable, and they have the workhouse just back of all their warnings. The strong hand of the law beats us back, when we rise, into the conditions that make life unbearable.

I can't talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.

[DainBramaged]

1. Roe first became eligible for parole in March 1994,

and was released just under four years into his sentence.

(25 Killed, 54 Injured In The Hamlet NC Chicken Processing Plant Fire - 1991)



That is corporate Justice for the workers killed. :cry:

[Bluzmann57]

2. Murray is a dirty bastard

I work in an MSHA governed facility and each and every inspector I have spoken to agrees. They have all said that Murray should rot in jail forever. First of all CNN should not have been allowed in the mine at all due to safety regulations. Secondly, he did little to ensure that those men were safe. Coal mining is hazardous at best, and a PoS like Murray does nothing at all to make it any better. RIP to all of the workers who have lost their lives due to motherfuckers like Murray and others like him. Solidarity and pass EFCA.

[Hissyspit]

3. He is a murderer. nt