Union-buster Massey Energy cited 2118 times for safety violations peoplesworld
According to documents posted on MSHA's website, 2,118 citations were issued against Performance Coal Company (wholly owned by Massey) for safety violations at the Upper Big Branch mine since the year 2000. It included 495 violations and $911,802 in "proposed" fines last year.
Since 2005, Massey Energy as a whole, has been cited for 38,997 safety violations in its 35 underground and 12 mountaintop removal mines.
MSHA "proposed" fines totaling $43.5 million for those violations but the company contested the vast majority of these fines, 85 percent in 2007, for example. MSHA, then packed with former coal company executives, backed down. Massey, as one critic put it, "got away, literally, with murder," paying a combined total of only $11.8 million over that five year period.
The corporation, one of the most notorious union-busters in the nation, employs 5,400 miners who produce over 40 million tons of coal annually.
Back in 1984-1985, the company, then called AT Massey, used vicious strikebreaking tactics, with all-out support of President Ronald Reagan, to bust a strike by the United Mine Workers seeking union recognition at Massey mines in Logan County, W. Va.
Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship reported $24 million in salary and stock options in 2007 and $11.2 million in 2008. Earlier this year, he cashed in 200,000 stock options pocketing $3.8 million
In America, this kind of crime pays big.