Saving Miners from Mining

Coal mining, like prostitution, is a dangerous profession. The southwest part of the state I live in, Virginia, is dependent on coal mining for jobs. The area is underdeveloped, and a man who is willing the crawl around all day and get dirty can make $18 an hour, which is pretty good wages in that part of the state. The mining jobs vary in safety, depending on whether the employer is a large corporation and is careful to avoid dangerous mining practices, or a small local operator that gets the coal out by any means possible. As an example, when a large corporation mines a seam of coal, they leave pillars of coal in the caverns they create to support the roof. This prevents cave ins. When the seam is mined out, i.e. when the large corporation has gotten out all the coal it can safely extract, it stops mining the seam and a local operator takes over with his own crew of men. The local operator makes his money by extracting all the coal the large corporation couldn't safely extract, including the columns of coal that support the mine roof. Usually the operator is able to get his men out safely, but not always. Sometimes the roof collapses unexpectedly, trapping and killing miners.

Southwest Virginia also has an ongoing problem with narcotic addiction. We don't usually associate rural areas with drug abuse, but southwest Virginia was hard hit by oxycodone addiction when that became a national problem. When the Feds managed to clean it up, other narcotics took the place of oxycodone. There's even a black market for methadone, due to the large number of people who are in methadone maintenance programs.

Drug addiction affects all parts of society in southwest Virginia, not just the coal miners. However, there's a high rate of addiction among miners. Miners often suffer serious injuries on the job that are accompanied by debilitating pain. They are prescribed strong narcotics to control the pain. When you have large numbers of people taking powerful narcotics, even for legitimate medical reasons, it's inevitable that some of them will become addicted. So miners are exposed to narcotics along with everyone else, but they get additional exposure because of their injuries. Miners who are in a methadone maintenance program have to take jobs with the more dangerous local operators, because the large corporations administer drug tests.

I'm going to engage in a little counterfactual fantasy. Lets imagine that our society decides to treat coal mining the same way it treats prostitution.

First of all, criminalization won't end the demand for coal. A large portion of the electricity generated in the US is generated in coal firing plants. It's also used in iron and steal production and a lot of other types of manufacturing. Like the demand for sex, society's demand for coal isn't going to end any time soon. Just as there's a large illegal market for sexual services, there's going to be a large illegal market for coal.

The guys that were mining coal are going to need jobs. They were making $18/hr or better, and they've got kids to feed and truck payments to make. The available legal jobs start at minimum wage and, if they're really lucky, might go up as high as $10/hr.

The coal seams are there, the demand for coal is there, and the guys who know how to mine coal need jobs, so a black market for coal develops pretty quickly. Since the industry is now illegal, and since it generates a lot of money, it attracts other forms of crime. For example, miners are known to carry money, so they are frequently robbed. Miners make good robbery targets because they can't complain to the police.

Miners also become targets for violent crime, including serial murders. They now have to sneak into mines at night, making them vulnerable to attacks by armed criminals. Frequently, when a miner disappears, no one is aware of it except immediate family, who are afraid to go to the police. When miners or their families do complain about violence, they are told it is their own fault, or that damaging a miner's body isn't really a crime because miners allow their bodies to be violated by coal mining. Or that all miners end up injured anyway, so it doesn't matter if someone injures them.

Ten percent of the coal that is mined by illegal miners passes into the hands of individual police officers running small scale protection rackets. The miners are subject to intense police harassment unless they supply the officers with coal.

Periodically, local police departments round up known miners. If the police officers catch miners with safety equipment, for example hard hats, they damage the equipment is such a way as to make it useless. There's no reason for doing this, other than the police officers' entertainment.

While it's illegal to hire miners to work in your mine, mine owners are rarely arrested or prosecuted. Mine owners are generally wealthy, have good lawyers, and are well connected. While operating a mine is considered immoral, mine operators aren't seen as having the moral taint associated with mining. Someone who mines coal, even if they do it only once, is sullied for life.

Religious leaders condemn coal mining as immoral, while prominent figures in the men's movement declare that all mining is violence against men. When miners aren't treated as criminals, they are treated as mentally incompetent children. Their decision to mine coal for a living is attributed to lack of education and drug addiction. Programs are set up to help miners escape mining, without creating alternative jobs that pay as much as mining. Consequently, the recidivism rate is very high, which reinforces the contemptuous attitudes held by police officers and social workers.

While some serious academic research on coal mining occurs, researchers have trouble getting grant money, and their research is ignored. On the other hand, anyone willing to make sensational claims about human trafficking, forced labor, or drug use or childhood trauma as a cause of mining, gets immediate attention from the media and legislators. The assumption shared by all popular theories is that the problems miners face are inherent in mining, rather than being a consequence of the circumstances under which miners work. Since a small proportion of the dangers miners face can be attributed to mining itself, the argument is that all problems faced by miners are inherent in mining. Serious researchers have trouble attracting attention or funding because their research fails to support this assumption.

As the evidence of harm to miners and the increase in crime mounts, various organizations put pressure on legislatures to increase the criminal penalties for coal mining. New laws are passed that equate mining with human trafficking, make it illegal for miners to congregate in places where they can be found and hired by mine operators, and allow police to seize the assets of suspected miners.

Since miners no longer have health care benefits, miners who are addicted to narcotics buy narcotics from drug dealers, leading to a rapid increase in deaths from overdoses. Increased injuries lead to increased self-medication for pain, further raising addiction rates.

Sweden takes an alternate approach, decriminalizing mining but making it illegal to buy coal. This has the same effect as criminalizing mining; it drives mining underground and makes it more dangerous. However, officials in the Swedish government present the laws as a success to rights organizations and other governments by misrepresenting the data gathered to evaluate the new laws, For example, officials claim a reduction in human trafficking when Swedish government data actually show an increase in trafficking. Due to this and other misrepresentations, other governments start proposing similar laws in an effort to emulate Sweden's "success".

Miner's rights organizations argue that the crimes associated with mining are the result of the criminalization of mining, and not inherently associated with mining. They argue that the best way to protect miners is to treat mining as a normal profession, decriminalizing it, giving minors police protection, supplying adequate health care, and enforcing safety standards. They are ignored.