25 years ago the Westray mine exploded in Plymouth, Nova Scotia killing all 26 miners who were down below. It will happen again.
The last five years have seen an unprecedented attack on labour rights in the province. The Liberal government has passed at least nine separate pieces of legislation to limit the rights of workers to organize or bargain in less than four years. Before the Liberals, Darrell Dexter’s New Democrats shocked their base by revoking the right of paramedics to strike. Federally, the Tories engaged open class war against working people, and the softer rhetoric of the Trudeau Liberals has been accompanied by little concrete action.
Get into an argument with any pro-business bootlicker about unions on the internet and you’re bound to hear some variation of the same refrain: “Well actually, unions served a purpose back when we had one-armed orphans working in Dickensian widget factories or when people were being blown up in mines, but they don’t make sense in the modern
economy.” These people are too busy savouring the taste of leather to recognize that long-term care workers are more likely to become disabled due to on-the-job injuries than oil patch workers, or that whatever gains workers have historically won through unions have also been under relentless attack since the 1980s. Such healthcare workers have, of course, been the main target of provincial attacks on worker’s rights.
Even if you accept the weird premise that only workers in traditional dirty trades like coal mining deserve union protection, you should probably be alarmed by McNeil’s Liberal government’s’ decision to amend the Construction Projects Labour act to make it illegal for workers on mega-projects related to extractive industries to strike because it’s bad for private profits.
The attempt to strip workers of the legal ability to fight back against employers is nothing less than the state picking a side. For some people worker’s legal rights, including the right to collectively withhold labour to ensure safe and fair working conditions, are less important than protecting private profits or keeping taxes low for corporations and high-income earners.
In Nova Scotia, governments of all stripes have largely chosen to side against workers because as a province we’re desperate. We will have another Westray because we’re desperate. Maybe it will be on a pipeline, maybe it will be on a half-built office tower or maybe it will be in a coal mine. We’re not the only place that has been desperate in recent years.
This year Donkin Mine re-opened in Cape Breton. It is the first operational coal mine in the province since 2001. Despite evidence that unionization dramatically improves safety in coal mines, the mine is operating union-free, just like every mine operated by Chris Cline, the billionaire American coal baron whose company is running Donkin. As reporter Katie Toth documented with nuance, Cape Bretoners still have deeply complicated and ambivalent feelings about the return of coal mining.
The public was only made aware of the sordid details of Donkin’s operators because two journalists who were on strike went digging. Frances Willick and Michael Gorman revealed that Cline had hired a former manager of Massey Energy to oversee Donkin. Massey Energy, owned by Don Blankenship, was responsible for the worst American mining disaster in 40 years when a mine in Whitesville, West Virginia exploded killing 29 coal miners. Amazingly, Cline called Blankenship “one of the most talented leaders” in the coal industry. Cline himself has a safety record which can be shocking to read.
Whitesville is the kind of Appalachian town which has dominated the American political imagination for the last 12 months. The town and its surrounding area also very much resemble many of the former coal mining communities in Nova Scotia: trying to reinvent their economies amid outmigration, reeling from the loss of mining, battling opioid addiction and inadequate access to healthcare.
For many reasons—including the strength of Nova Scotia’s tourism industry and the stabilizing effect of Canada’s federal welfare state—Nova Scotia has not sunken to the level of desperation that has wracked West Virginia, but we’re desperate enough to turn to the same industry and the exact same operator that numerous coal counties across the United States have turned to.
In Nova Scotia, we’re desperate enough to erode workers’ rights to woo big businesses and 25 years later we’re desperate enough to look at a non-union mine and say “well, at least it’ll bring jobs.” Above all else, we’re desperate enough that we’ve accepted a world where we’ll bury people alive to extract a fuel that’s poisoning the planet because it makes a few people rich.
Opinionated is a rotating column by Halifax writers featured regularly in The Coast. The views published are those of the author.
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This article appears in May 11-17, 2017.
Mr. Parsons,
You really do need to start conducting research before writing a story. Unionized or not, every employee in Canada has the legal right to refuse unsafe work without fear of retribution, they have the right to know the hazards in the workplace and they have the right to participate in health and safety in their workplace.
As a safety professional, I have worked with non-unionized companies that are very committed to protecting the health and safety of their staff and I have worked with unions that will fight a safety initiative all the way through the grievance process.
We don’t need more unionized workplaces, we need more employee education on their rights, more commitment from employers to protect their staff, more enforcement of OHS laws by the regulators, and a judiciary that isn’t afraid to issue stiff penalties to companies that don’t meet the minimum requirements set forth in the regulations.
Fortunately the deaths of the 26 miners in 1992 was not in vain; it lead to the amendment of the criminal code of Canada (sec. 217) where people like Chris Cline, if found guilty of negligence in safety causing death to employees can be sent to prison.
In addition to conducting research prior to writing a story, I also feel you need to check your moral compass if you think it’s OK to ride on the back of 26 dead people to wave your pro-union, government bashing flag.
Written by a Canadian Registered Safety Professional
Anonymous poster who we’re supposed to trust is in fact a registered safety professional but is probably BroTim or CityMouse ,
I generally try to avoid responding to comments but two things worth noting since you’re attempting to argue about numbers:
1) There are 17 linked references in this story. I write with the assumption that people will read the links because they’re interesting and provide context. My bad. If you clicked on the one about safety in union mines vs. non-union mines you’d note that my claim that union mines are safer is based on academic research that suggests traumatic injuries and fatalities are dramatically decreased in unionized coal mines when compared to non-union mines (13-30% for traumatic injuries, 28-83% for fatalities) and that the data on minor injury reporting suggests that unionizing mines increases the likelyhood of safety issues being reported.
2) About 900 Canadians die on the job each year. Since 2004 when Bill C-45/the “Westray Law” exactly four people have been convicted and of those four convictions only one resulted in jail time.
The author linked to research in the article, you grovelling, odious toad. Also, just a heads up on your career choice: it’s been my observation over the years that safety professionals on non-union sites are essentially just liability insurance when something goes wrong. When people inevitably get hurt on site, they simply fire the safety guy and say he was doing a sloppy job. Your whole profession is just a firewall to keep companies from getting sued.
As someone who felt the shaking of the explosion caused by the Westray disaster and had friends who lost their fathers and uncles to this mine I am offended you use this horrendous loss of life to promote your own anti-Liberal agenda. Shame on you.
The military service person is the only Canadian employee who cannot refuse unsafe working conditions. If needed, our bosses can knowingly send us to our death.