Unions, Mines and Safety

Statistics (0.00 / 0)

As updated in the post:
"As noted by several commenters, the statistics do not include union vs. non-union underground mines: The number of underground union miners, according to the Energy Information Administration, is around 27%."

So the frequency of non-fatal injuries per miner is about the same in union and non-union underground mines.

The proportion of fatal injuries is smaller than the proportion of union miners, but close enough that it could be not statistically significant.

There are enough problems with mine safety, and enough arguments for unions, that we don't need to risk credibility by appearing to slant statistics.

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by: JAWVMM @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 23:18:58 PM UTC

I also had questions about some of these numbers. (0.00 / 0)

The first thing I did was read the Meteor Blades post.  He/she has updated the original post with a figure taken from the DoE's Energy Information Administration.  EIA says that 27% of underground mines are union mines in the US.  So the fatality figures noted in Meteor Blades' post show a significant difference when union and non-union mines are compared.

Over the past two days, I have read information about several studies comparing injury rates in union and non-union mines.  While Blades' figures indicate that injury rates for union mines are almost exactly the rate of unionization in underground mines, injury rate figures are very different from fatality figures.

Injury rates tend to be higher at unionized mines, because unions do a better job of reporting injuries.  UMWA fire bosses and health monitors work independently of company officials.  No such independent advocates or monitors exist in non-union mines.  There is some evidence that different injuries tend to be reported in non-union as opposed to union mines.

The point with injury figures is that there are a lot of different factors at play in determining and counting injuries.  There is no such ambiguity with fatalities.  The fatality numbers show a clear advantage for unionized mines.

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by: Calhouner @ Thu Apr 08, 2010 at 23:10:35 PM UTC