As the global media watches intently as 33 brave miners in Chile are rescued from the collapsed that they have been trapped in since August let’s hope that anti-trade union Chilean president, Sebastián Piñera, whose political roots go back to the Pinochet days, massively improves the health and safety of these mines.
The mine at San Jose is owned by San Esteban, a medium-sized mining company which is now being sued by families of some of the miners trapped underground, who claim the company failed to make safety improvements despite three deaths at its mines over six years, and dozens of accidents.
They are also suing Sernageomin, the state regulator of mines, for allowing the company to reopen in 2008 following its closure a year earlier over a death.
“There is undoubtedly a link between the price of metal and the number of people operating in the business, particularly in the small and medium-sized mines,” said Miguel Angel Duran, president of Chile’s Mining Council, which represents 16 of the biggest mining companies operating in Chile.
In 2007 and 2008, at the height of the boom in copper prices, there were more deaths in Chilean mines than in any other years during the decade. In 2007, when the copper price averaged a record $3.24 per lb, 40 miners died in accidents. In 2008, when copper was at $2.88 per lb, the death toll hit 43. The average for the decade was 34. In contrast, the safest year in the history of Chilean mining was 1999, when the average copper price fell to just 72 cents, its lowest level in over 10 years, a consequence of the Asian crisis.
Furthermore
In the first eight months of this year, 31 Chilean miners died in accidents by cave-ins, electrocution, explosions, asphyxiation & falls from heights.
Deaths are undercounted because there are few investigators. Deaths from occupational illnesses are ignored. According to ICEM, there are no reliable global statistics on mining fatalities but it is estimated that 12,000 miners are killed on the job every year.
And what brings this human disaster story back from the brink of tragedy is the men stuck in the mine, their sheer courage and solidarity with each other. The focus, for a change, is not concentrated nor obsessed with celeb-ville instead ordinary working class men and their families/friends, they are at the central of this story while the president of Chile stands in the background, waiting and hoping opportunistically that his election strategy for votes improves (and whose popularity has increased since this mining catastrophe). But it is these ordinary people, their lives and solidarity which is integral to the story.
Though I believe ICEM’s slogan is also an important one, one which should be central to this story and countless other stories of anonymous miners who are wounded, suffer long-term illnesses or die and that is “The stronger the union, the safer the mine.”
And all this on Thatcher’s birthday……
