Those on both sides of the Coal
Jobs Safety Act are hopeful Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin will side with them when he
makes his final decision whether or not to sign the bill.
Tomblin has until Thursday
afternoon to make that decision. The indication is he’s struggling between how
the bill would help the coal industry and the claims by others that the
provisions would decrease safety provisions.
Those waiting include West Virginia
Coal Association President Bill Raney and United Mine Workers Union President
Cecil Roberts.
Raney said members of the
association would never support a rollback in safety.
“There’s nothing more important
than every person in our mines going home at the end of their shift to their
family,” he said. “They (coal operators) wouldn’t allow us to ask for that
(rollback) and they wouldn’t ask us to go ask for that and the governor needs
to recognize that. We’re not trying to take a step back and we need to get
beyond the emotion and get beyond the misrepresentations that are going on
here.”
Roberts said he believes Gov.
Tomblin will side with those concerned about safety.
“This law takes away from health
and safety and protections of coal miners and if the governor believes that he
should veto this and if he doesn’t believe that I guess he should sign it into
law, but I happen to believe that this governor has tried to protect coal
miners all of his career,” the union leader said.
The point of consternation for
Tomblin appears to be a provision of the bill that allows for moving of some
coal mining equipment without removing coal miners from the face of the mine,
which is the current law.
“Equipment is being moved every
day, every hour in a coal mine and there are certain pieces of it where now
everybody has to come out of the mine, which is just ridiculous under today’s
technology,” Raney said, who added the state provision is more strict than the
federal law that allows miners to stay in an operation when the equipment is
moved.
But the UMWA’s Roberts said given
the state’s track record in mine safety, West
Virginia
“We’ve had the worst disaster in
the nation at Upper Big Branch, in addition to that we’ve had Sago and
Aracoma—the chief spokesperson and the face of the industry for the last 30
years is on trial for conspiring to avoid health and safety protections
afforded to miners by the state and federal government—sure, we ought to go
ahead and rollback mine safety,” Roberts said.
If Tomblin vetoes the bill the
legislature could have enough time to override the veto by the regular
session’s Saturday midnight deadline.
