Collapse of Dignity

by Napoleon Gomez

  In those early days, workers were alerted by this primitive warning system and exited alive. It was unjust to the canary, of course, but it allowed many miners to escape from dangerous areas and preserve their health. It wasn’t until the beginning of the twentieth century that gas meters were developed to measure gas concentrations, which, in addition to saving miners’ lives, also prevented the deaths of many more canaries.

  As technology has advanced and as the price of metals and minerals has skyrocketed in the past decade—resulting in unprecedented profits for the owners of the mines—one would think that conditions in coal mines would have become increasingly safer. But mines only become safer when the companies that control them are willing to invest in that safety and when the government carries out its duty to inspect these facilities and compel the companies to make improvements when necessary. In Mexico, workers like those who died in the Pasta de Conchos collapse are treated like little more than those sentinel canaries, sent down into the belly of the earth without any reliable safeguards against death.

  Pasta de Conchos was one of the worst-maintained and most dangerous mining sites in Mexico at the time of the explosion. The situation inside the mine was terrible, and it is worth taking a look at the myriad ways Grupo México and General de Hulla—the contract company hired by Grupo México—repeatedly ignored warnings of the danger inside. These companies share responsibility for the loss of life, of both contractors and union members, when the explosion was touched off in Pasta de Conchos, but the final responsibility rests with Grupo México. Germán Larrea’s company failed to oversee how its contractor was operating the mine, and the Mexican Constitution states that a company’s responsibility for the safety of its facilities “continues even when the owner hires the worker through an intermediary.”

  To enter the Mine 8 at Pasta de Conchos, one must pass through an inclined tunnel, descending by a concrete stairway that ends about four hundred feet underground, opening onto a passage that continues a mile and a half horizontally. The only way in or out of the mine was through its single access tunnel, or tiro, which functioned as entrance and exit. Three tunnels begin at a vestibule at the bottom of the stairway, and each runs the length of the mine, connected at points by diagonal communication tunnels. These tunnels are approximately ten feet high and ten feet wide, no more. The workers would meet at the front vestibule, and a system of transport cars would carry them through the mine and let each worker off at the spot where he would be working that day. One of the three main tunnels contained coal transporter belts that extended to the exit, where there is a tower on the surface with a large hopper, from which the coal is transferred to the washing and coking plant on the outside. At the end of these tunnels there was a bigger vault where new coal deposits had been found, part of the constant search for more and better quality coal.

  Pasta de Conchos is not a very deep mine, but its ventilation system was completely insufficient. A large fan installed in the main tunnel injected fresh air into the bottom of the mine, but the same air must return, now laden with gases and dust, out of the same passage. In a mine such as this, the miners are being poisoned, little by little. The deeper they go, the scarcer the oxygen becomes, and the more thick and toxic the air becomes. This one fan, in just one tunnel, was completely insufficient to freshen and oxygenate the air that the miners breathed as they moved away from the only entrance. To prevent suffocation, the workers use face masks, but the company frequently would not equip the masks with filters, rendering them useless. In these cases, the miners would simply go without them.

  The gas meters that measured the concentration of methane gas were also defective and did not give accurate readings—and without those readings, all other safety precautions were useless. Many speculated that the methanometers used by the company were faulty, but access to them was tightly controlled. When miners asked to see the methane levels, they were shown broken meters or told that they’d already been checked. If the miners didn’t believe the company, said the managers, they could quit. A rescue worker at Pasta de Conchos recorded gas levels between 95 and 103 percent after the explosion; normal conditions are 1.5 to 2 percent.

  In addition to the poisonous gases that permeated the mine, in the farthest reaches of the mine’s main tunnel the workers left behind a layer of coal dust a foot and a half high. As the coal was extracted, this remaining dust was concentrated until it formed a thick—and highly explosive—covering on the ground.

  Lethal gas, excessive heat, and explosive coal dust are realities in any mine, but the operators of Pasta de Conchos took a perilous situation and turned it into a recipe for certain death. General de Hulla ordered miners to weld with a blowtorch in the depths of the mine, despite the abundant coal dust, which mimics gunpowder if ignited. Typically, the walls and partitions would be “powdered”—covered with inert powder to neutralize the coal’s combustible nature, thus preventing explosions—at least once a month, but although this is a procedure fundamental to coal mining and had been recommended by Pasta de Conchos engineers, it had not been done. Had it been, at a monthly cost of around $10,000, the chain of coal detonations throughout the length of the mine would likely have been stopped. For Grupo México and its contractor, it was too high a price for the lives of its employees.

  On top of this, the workers frequently wore shoes with holes in the soles as they walked on the sludge and accumulated dust. There were electrical faults in the transportation systems, in the cars that carried the miners to the bottom of the mine, and with the transporter belts that carried the minerals to the outside, toward the coal-processing plant. There were frequent discoveries of burned electrical cables with metal wires exposed, but instead of being repaired and insulated properly, they were haphazardly repaired with any tape that was available. This is especially risky in mines, since there are frequent water flows; such rudimentary installation of high-voltage electrical wires could allow dangerous electrical short-circuits and sparks that could cause a methane gas or coal dust explosion.

  The support pillars in the facility were also found to be deficient. In any mine, as progress is made in extraction of the minerals, the miners attack the wall with pick and shovel or use a high-powered drill to bore into the deposits. As they do so, the cavity of the mine becomes deeper, wider, and higher, and each time they move forward they must continually reinforce the tunnel with posts—“monkeys,” or “monos” in Spanish, as the miners call them—to support the ceiling and walls. There should also be steel plates at the bottom of the mine, to prevent cave-ins caused by any vibration or settling of the earth as it is being dug out.

  As the miners of Pasta de Conchos advanced deeper into the coal seams, they were indeed setting up these monkeys to support the cave. It’s a delicate and important procedure, and the monkeys should ideally be composed of steel or prefabricated concrete. Some mines use wood, though, and this was the case in Pasta de Conchos. When one of these wooden columns was too short to reach from floor to ceiling, the workers would cut a piece from another beam to achieve the right height. This was an improvised measure that severely compromised the stability of the mine. Columns that are broken and stacked or otherwise not in a single piece cannot maintain stability during any major shifting of the earth.

  Why would the miners use this inadequate means of supporting the mine? First of all, many of them were not aware of the proper procedures, and there were no supervisory personnel present to correct their mistake. General de Hulla’s supervisors were more than happy to have the workers cut up wooden beams and stack them—after all, that was a lot cheaper than buying new supports that would actually fit the mine. In other words, this was just another symptom of the company’s obsessive drive for reduced costs and enhanced production and profit.

  The disaster of February 19, 2006, was caused in no small part by the poor structure and support of the mine. The union members who were familiar with the state of the mine estimated that the explosion caused a total of fifteen sli
des throughout the length of the mine due to lack of proper reinforcement.

  On top of all this, as I have said, there was no alternative exit tunnel in Mine 8; the company simply refused to build it, ignoring our demands. Even one additional tunnel at the bottom or halfway down the mine would have allowed much greater circulation of air and oxygen, providing better working conditions, greater degasification, and an emergency exit. In all likelihood, such a tunnel would have helped us rescue some or all of the men whose bodies to this day remain buried in the mine.

  Grupo México wouldn’t hear of building another exit, which would have cost them $1 million to $2 million, even though it had recently closed the mine briefly and spent between $10 million and $12 million to repair the coking ovens. Why would they do one and not the other? The short answer is that repair of the coking ovens increased the quality and purity of the coal produced at the mine, which in turn increased the price Grupo México could get for it. In other words, repairing the coking ovens had a direct impact on their already absurdly fat profits, but building extra access tunnels didn’t. The only effect that would have had was on the safety of the miners, and thus Grupo México didn’t care. Their insatiable greed for production drove them to refuse this small investment of $1 million to $2 million, in a year when their estimated profits exceeded $6 billion. The cozy friendship between corporation and government prevented this vital, and ultimately fatal, improvement to Mine 8. It’s just one example of how easy it is for Mexico’s ruling class to broker under-the-table deals.

  It was in this hazardous and poorly maintained mine that the workers of Pasta de Conchos were forced to labor. The subcontractor, General de Hulla, which employed the majority of the miners, routinely threatened non-union workers with the loss of their jobs if they complained about their wages or the condition of the mine. Grupo México hired General de Hulla for its most dangerous and complicated jobs, and the contractor willingly offered cheap labor from men who were routinely put in harm’s way. For $8 a day, the contract workers labored in Pasta de Conchos, while General de Hulla charged Grupo México $73 a day for each of the same workers. While its employer collected all the profits, these ununionized workers labored through ten- to twelve-hour days with no vacation. And of course, each time there were proposals to unionize them, the workers in question were threatened, fired, or relocated.

  The miners regularly observed and reported many of the dangerous anomalies that existed at Pasta de Conchos. Had the system of routine inspections been enforced and responded to by Grupo México and the labor department, there is no question that Mine 8 of the Pasta de Conchos unit could have been made into a safe work environment. Yet Grupo México stubbornly fought off any efforts to improve the mine, their refusals invariably backed by officials from President Fox’s labor department. Of all the companies the labor department should be monitoring, high-risk ones like Grupo México should be at the very top of the list. But officials in Mexico City ignore this obligation. They issue mining permits for locations thousands of miles away, with no oversight or understanding of the daily hazard faced by workers or the impact mining has in local communities. The citizens of Mexico have paid the salaries of government inspectors who repeatedly fail to do their jobs.

  In a coal mine like Pasta de Conchos, inspections should take place at least every fifteen days. To represent the workers during these inspections, local branches of the Miners’ Union select a Joint Health and Safety Commission at each work site. The size of the commission increases with the number of workers at a site, but for an average site the commission consists of about three or four union members. These commissions’ basic role, according to Miners’ Union bylaws and the collective bargaining agreements signed with each of the companies, is to make frequent visits to the mines and the work centers and detect defects in safety systems and equipment, making suggestions to immediately correct any problems they see. Reports from the Joint Health and Safety Commission typically fall into two categories: urgent reports, which warn that an accident could be imminent, and reports that recommend preventive maintenance or medium-term service for problems that affect production, operations, and maintenance of a production center.

  As stipulated in the collective bargaining agreement between union members and company, these tours are to be conducted with a representative from the labor department and representatives from the company, and they should result in a jointly prepared report that carefully records every fault or problem observed. The report is then used as the basis for making demands of the company. The company must abide by the collective bargaining agreement, the Mexican Constitution, and the federal labor law to correct each irregularity in order to prevent accidents.

  That’s not how it worked at Pasta de Conchos. Labor department officials showed up for inspections only sporadically, and the resulting reports were often rigged. When inspectors did show up at the mine, instead of taking them down into the work site to perform their duties, company officials invited them to dine and chat with them. Grupo México prepared the reports and got them approved by the Department of Labor without input from the Joint Health and Safety Commission. (Naturally, this false certificate stated that everything was in order and within the appropriate safety standards and therefore there were no risks to fear.) In violation of law, officials then tried to get the workers who belonged to the Joint Health and Safety Commission to sign the falsified minutes. When the union members of the Joint Health and Safety Commission did not accept the minutes prepared by the company and supported by the complicit department of labor, they suffered threats of dismissal, either by losing their work altogether or having to relocate to areas that were more difficult and dangerous and where they would receive lower salaries and benefits. Thus, members of the Joint Health and Safety Commission who were supposed to make observations and propose urgent corrections were threatened with punishment or loss of their jobs. Officials would simply order that work proceed as if nothing were wrong. The contractors from General de Hulla and workers belonging to the Miners’ Union were pressured into signing the minutes. They were routinely told not to worry, that the mine would “be okay.” Javier García, a contract worker who provided his services to General de Hulla, had persisted in reporting the deplorable conditions, and the company responded by firing him one month before the tragedy. Fortunately for him, being fired from his job saved his life.

  Regardless of this deception and coercion on the part of the operators of the Pasta de Conchos facility, the workers would tour the mine on their own, prepare their own reports—some of which nearly reached book length—and save them, without the signature of Grupo México or labor department representatives. But the reports and complaints of the workers produced no results except silence from the mine’s owners.

  When it wasn’t bullying the miners into acknowledging false inspection reports, Grupo México was giving the miners false hope about future improvements to the work site. According to the members of Union Section No. 13, the union branch at Pasta de Conchos, Sergio Rico, operations superintendent at the mine, assured workers that there were plans to improve Mine 8. The main part of the plan, in addition to correcting truly basic elements such as changing cables, replacing a recording box in the electrical control system, and correcting mechanical defects in the coal transport cars, was to build the desperately needed second access tunnel. The new entrance would be located at the end of the mine, with its own ventilation system. Supported by perforations to the surface to reduce interior gas concentrations, the new system would better circulate clean air throughout the mine. That, of course, never happened. Because it felt supported and protected by the Department of Labor, Grupo México did not consider the improvements necessary, although the company knew such negligence was totally illegal.

  The last true inspection of the Pasta de Conchos mine took place in July 2004, a year and a half before the explosion. The report shows that forty-eight problems were detected, including problems with electrical systems, transpo
rtation, and gas concentrations. Severe situations were “fixed” with duct tape—not enough to prevent a spark and the ensuing explosion. The company never met with government inspectors, during or after their visit, and never met with the union members who belonged to the Joint Health and Safety Commission. The processes and rules for inspections and meetings of the commission—set forth in the union’s collective bargaining agreements with Grupo México—were never taken into consideration. The labor department took a full year to even send the July 2004 inspection report to Grupo México.

  In the aftermath of the explosion, Salazar stated that on February 7, 2006, two weeks before the explosion, an inspection had taken place and that of thirty-four observations, twenty-eight were addressed and the other six were not, because they were in areas that were closed to the operation. But the reality was that there was no such inspection, and the report didn’t mention the still-uncorrected forty-eight irregularities from July 2004. The inspectors didn’t even go down into the mine or tour the facilities on February 7. It was only a “verification” visit, as Salazar and Grupo México acknowledged much later, exclusively to check on the previously reported forty-two observations. If a true inspection had taken place, the inspectors would have seen that many of the forty-two anomalies from the visit in 2004 had still not been addressed—and had they any conscience, they would have closed the mine immediately. To inspect a coal mine on a yearly basis rather than biweekly one is nothing more than appalling irresponsibility.

  It is equally appalling to note who was directly responsible for the governmental inspections of Pasta de Conchos. The labor department’s delegate for the state of Coahuila is none other than Labor Secretary Salazar’s son-in-law, Pedro Camarillo. Undoubtedly, Camarillo—even if he’d felt some need to honestly inspect and report on the conditions of Pasta de Conchos—would have felt extreme reluctance at opposing the wishes of his wife’s father and the billionaire businessmen who supported him. (And of course, Salazar’s own ownership of two direct suppliers to Grupo México constituted a major conflict of interest.) Yet Salazar and Grupo México representatives somehow managed to keep a straight face when they reported to the press that all necessary inspections had been done, and that Grupo México’s operations were laudably safe.