22.05.2014
The real price of coal
Privatisation and intensified competition has driven the attack on mining safety standards everywhere, writes David Douglass of the National Union of Mineworkers
Soma illustrates how the value of miners’ lives is linked to the price of coal, just as it was in Victorian Britain. The recent denationalisation of the Turkish coal industry brought with it a squeeze on safety standards and workers’ rights, just as it did here.
After nationalisation and a continuous rise in safety standards in Britain’s post-war coal industry - both driven by a strong miners’ union - we had a decade of defeats from 1985, culminating in privatisation in 1994. This process was marked by the repeal of several important mine safety acts, and a simultaneous purge of union militants. During this time we lost many key union lay safety inspectors, and this resulted in a catastrophic fall in safety standards and a rise in the number of men killed in the mines.
Something similar has been occurring in Turkey - although no-one would have thought things would be driven back to the days of the early 1800s and the carnage which was then common. The Soma management is pleading ignorance and claiming that the mine was one of the safest in Turkey. If that is true, it is a damning indictment of the industry.
What happened resulted from a number of critical failures. Firstly, dust suppression is a vital feature of the underground environment. Airborne dust, apart from its individual impact on the lungs of miners, is usually the catalyst leading to an explosion. The blast feeds off the tiny particles of coal dust, expanding in an instant to wherever the air carries them. This might be true of any dust, but coal dust is itself combustible - the resulting huge sheet of flame sucks in air from everywhere and feeds itself until all the gas, air and other airborne materials are exhausted.
It is clear to me that, whatever the source of the explosion in Soma, firedamp (basically methane) was present in huge quantities, along with the coal dust. The explosion fed the firedamp in a monumental blast and then spread. The rate of death throughout the mine illustrates that it had such free passage. Then comes the afterdamp (C02), which creeps along the floor and instantly kills anyone who might have survived the blast - one lungful is enough.
It is known that there was a fault on an electric cable just prior to the explosion and it was being repaired. If I can speculate on the basis of accidents in Yorkshire and Lancashire in 1975 and 1979 (killing 15 men in total at Houghton and Goldborne respectively), during the period of the electric fault, fans ceased to operate. This allowed gas to accumulate. Before turning the power back on, no-one checked what the gas levels were; no-one took the time to clear the tunnels and faces of gas. The repaired cable was either patched up instead of being replaced or a new one was not fitted securely. When the power was turned back on, a spark from the cable ignited the gas and caused an explosion.
This was bad enough - and in the case of Goldborne it killed 10 men, at Houghton five - but the explosion, because of extensive preventative measures, was localised. It did not spread beyond that area to the whole mine. This was achieved through simple devices that ‘break’ the path of the blast and deny it the fuel upon which to feed. This could take the form of a stone dust barrier - a platform in the arch of the roadway piled high with powdered stone dust. Or it could be a device supporting plastic tanks containing water. The effect is the same: any blast dislodges the stone or water and forms a fire break, localising the explosion.
At these mines there was a failure to test for methane, despite the fact that ‘deputies’ had been appointed to do that at least twice per shift, and certainly before any electrical device is switched on, to ensure the working areas were gas-free. In the case of Soma it is quite clear gas detection was not carried out anywhere, probably for some considerable time, because the presence of the gas, once detected, would have ensured all coal-cutting and tunnelling machines were stopped until the gas was cleared.
Something else which is crystal-clear to me is that the miners in Soma were not carrying the traditional oil lamp - a fundamental piece of safety equipment, which places the power to detect the gas, and call for the machines to be shut off, in their own hands.
Likewise, for 100 years British miners have had the legal right to carry out independent, unhindered ‘workmen’s inspections’ of any area of the mine and report directly to the authorities, thus highlighting any breach of safety or potential danger areas. Following privatisation it was an uphill battle to find miners brave enough to take on this role, as management found all sorts of ways to victimise and dismiss worker safety inspectors. For a 15-year period at Hatfield Main, the mine where I was NUM secretary, not one independent workmen’s inspection was carried out, because no-one wanted to risk their job.
Clearly Turkey, which once had a strong and militant miners’ union, has seen similar developments since privatisation. At Soma the mad rush for production relegated to the point of total neglect the need for gas detection and control of ventilation speed (essential to clear gas accumulations). Dust suppression on coal and stone cutters and loading points was not being carried out either - otherwise the air would not have been alive with explosive, airborne coal dust.
The world is awash with cheap coal at present. Prices are being driven down below the cost of production, as the USA in particular - now energy-rich on shale gas - dumps its massive stocks of coal and offloads its unwanted domestic production onto world markets. Other states are flooding markets with below-production-cost coal in order to secure foreign currencies. Third world countries see coal as a cheap source of income and power and have sometimes driven down the wages and standards of miners almost below subsistence point - not least in South Africa, which now holds the record for the world’s worst mining causalities, passing even the chronic rate of slaughter, injury and disease of China. It is this coal surplus which has led to the £15 million shortfall at UK Coal and the closure notices at two of our three surviving deep mines.
In Turkey the drive to produce greater and greater quantities of coal in order to meet spot market coal prices and stay in the race has been paid for by the blood and bones of our comrades. And in a response worthy of Victorian coal owners, the state tear-gases and clubs down the mourning, wretched friends and families of the dead miners protesting at the carnage.
Despite this ongoing tragedy, miners worldwide are not demanding an end to mining. It is not coal mining which causes the death and destruction, but the methods by which it is worked and those who own and control it. Nationalisation under direct workers’ and consumers’ control of the mining industry, linked to a European-wide programme of clean coal (CCS) power generation, is a practical demand which could realistically be achieved if the trade union movement of Europe as a whole, from Britain to Turkey, put their weight behind it.