"It's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
The danger is doubled and the pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls and the sun never shine
It's dark as a dungeon, way down in the mine."
- Merle Travis
You never hear of a happy coal mining song.
There are only laments about darkness, dampness and death, and owing one's soul to the company store. About loading 16 tons of No. 9 coal "and what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt."
Since Ukraine's independence 12 years ago, more people have died in Ukrainian coalmine accidents, 3,700, than people were killed in the horrendous terrorist attack Sept. 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center in New York.
It is an understatement to say these miners need not have died. Modern mining is not about picks and shovels. It's about technology and safety, though it will always be a dangerous occupation.
My affinity for the job of coal mining is mostly cerebral. One would not catch me in one of those dog-tail mines. The closest I came was a journey several hundred feet down to a virtual cavern, a modern, West Virginia mine and that was years ago.
At the time, I was then as now a PR guy, and my client was A.T. Massey, one of the largest mineral resources companies in America. Before going down, however, I had to take a basic safety course that lasted half a day, just for a chaperoned experience.
After being geared-up with a menagerie of safety equipment, I rode the man-way,
a train with small cars attached, deep into the side of a mountain, and then took a large elevator to the mining site. I had plenty of headroom, and the air was damp but adequate.
Once there, I saw where it took only four men to actually do the work. The remainder of the employees monitored the mining conditions from above ground, and worked on computers analyzing the quality of the coal.
Deep in the mine, one employee would operate the continuous miner, a machine that tears into coal seams, loosens the mineral and extracts it. Another miner loaded it, and two miners worked on roof-bolting to secure the slate in place.
Throughout the coal mining country of the United States, spirited safety contests are held between miners each year. There is
a coal mining safety academy in Raleigh County, West Virginia. The emphasis is clearly on protecting the miner.
It wasn't always that way.
I was covering a Kentucky coal mining strike as a young wire service reporter in 1973 when I first heard the words to the song above, sung by a woman whose angular and creased face seemed carved from the Appalachian Mountains from which she came.
Her haunting voice was thin as a reed. Her hair was as black as the coal taken from the narrow seams of the Brookside mine in Harlan, KY. It was a 13-month strike against an old symbol of corporate America, the powerful Duke Power Co.
The strike began with the deaths of two miners, and the Eastover Mining Company's (a subsidiary of Duke) apparent disregard for certain basic safety standards. This was an era where coal miners still lived in shacks without running water, and truly owed their soul to the company store.
Though not as bloody as previous Harlan County labor disputes (Bloody Harlan they called it), the Brookside strike gained national attention as the United Mine Workers of America sought to unionize a mine under what was, in essence, a company union.
In the end, and after one company guard had been killed with a shotgun blast,
a judge ruled the Duke Power had violated various labor laws, and a truce was called. The UMW was considered a victor in this landmark labor action later chronicled in the Academy Award winning documentary "Harlan County: USA."
Miners in Ukraine and Russia do not have the strength of a national union. Arguably, the rather high sulfur coal they mine would be cheaper to keep in the ground, certainly less dangerous to the environment.
And when 13 miners were trapped at Novoshakhtinsk, Russia, recently (11 were miraculously rescued) , there was a certain irony to the fact that the government said they would pay the victims families $400 dollars each -- this when they had not received a pay check for six months.
Currently, worldwide funding organizations simply don't want to lend or grant money to Eastern Europe's coal mining industry for safety. The reason given is that, because of the corruption,
the money would end up in another black hole.
This is a shame. They need to get over it.
Miners in former Soviet countries work under safety conditions of thirty years ago. Last year, 300 miners were killed in Ukraine. Seventy-five per cent of the country's mines are considered highly prone to methane blasts.
Certainly, convincing Ukrainian authorities to close dangerous, nonproductive mines is a step, but this movement should be equally backed up with funds to move the country into the 21st Century on the safety front.
I don't ever expect to hear a happy coal mining song, but then, the final verse of Dark as a Dungeon is haunting:
"Oh when I am dead and the ages
shall roll
My body will blacken and turn
into coal
Then I'll look from the door
of my heavenly home
And pity the miner a-digging
my bones."
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