John Bartlow Martin in his case study exams the Centralia No.5 coal mine disaster on March 25,1947. This explosion occurred near the town of Centralia, Illinois, killing 111 mine workers. The detonation of the mine was caused of heavy deposits coal -dust along the roadway and entrances which over time exploded. Tunnel fires killed most miners, other were trapped and died with accumulating of poison gas. The explosion of Centralia No.5 can be blamed cause of lack of mine safely which this tragedy could have been prevented if the basic standards were followed.
When analyzing John Bartlow Martin case study the main reasons of the tragedy of Centralia No.5 were cause of heavy coal dust, which eventually exploded. This event could have been averted if official of the Illinois Department of Mines and Minerals and also United States Bureau of Mines inspected the mines carefully and followed all recommendations. When Driscoll O. Scanlan the inspector of the state came across penal code violation when inspecting Centralia No.5 he made recommendation to the company and state but his reports were not followed. In some of his reports stated by this quote “ rock dusting, improving ventilation, wetting the coal to reduce dust - at this mine is highly explosive, and would readily propagate an explosion” several reports were send to the state and federal government.
Inspector Scanlan tried his best to send different letters to each agency to report what he was finding at Centralia No.5. When the director of the Department of Mines and Minerals Robert M. Medill and Supervisor Robert Weir received thirteen letters on the violations of Centralia these individual just put off the reports as “routine”. Centralia Company did not comply with the m...
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... tragedy. Governor Green was a great deal of letters from the miners and union asking in this quote “ plea to you, to please save our lives, to please make the department of mines and minerals enforce the laws at the No.5. “ The miners felt if there was no action taken there might be a disaster in the future.
Governor Green and Director Medill ineffectiveness and unresponsiveness in just replying to the plea of the union and works by saying “ save our lives” didn’t do enough to enforce the laws even after receiving letters from the union and miners. Anger started to grow because Green and Medill were found that they were accepting contributions from mining companies. These brides were for they don’t enforce the laws cause its was going to cost the company money to fix the problem. These two individual thought more about their life than the safety of the miners.
Due to political aspirations, government bureaucracy, and greed 111 men lost their lives and devastated the lives of loved ones and a community. While, I believe that it was collection of people who is to blame for the explosion one person who could have really avoided this situation was Robert M. Medill and his assistant Robert Weir. Robert Medill, Director of the Illinois of Bureau of Mines and Minerals, was a man filled with greed and power and did nearly nothing to fix the hazardous condition in Centralia. Medill department were very aware of the dangerous conditions at the mine but ignored requests to correct violations. Instead, Medill and Weir’s handling of the inspection reports and other communications were not conducive to clearing
Read, Richard. “Protester arrested as megaload departs Umatilla a day late for Canada's tar sands”. The Oregonian OnlineI. The Oregonian. 3 December 2013. Web. 10 December 2015.
As part of his campaign for Governor, Dwight Green had promised to enforce mining laws. In 1941 Governor Green appointed Robert Medill as Director of the Department of Mines and Minerals. The Mining Board makes the p...
Labor’s rights, this issue have been bothering many worker since the 19th century and can still be a problem today. As John L. Lewis has said in his speech “I repeat that labor seeks peace and guarantees its own loyalty, but the voice of labor, insistent upon its rights, should not be annoying to the ears of justice or offensive to the conscience of the American people” (John L. Lewis), which under his words meant that labor is something that can be done right and peacefully but it needs rules and benefits that come with those rules which labor asks for and when labor asks for those rules and benefits it shouldn’t be taken like some annoying kid’s demands but more as something that needs to be done and done with a right mind set. Labor today consists of a man or woman going to work, working their hours, and finally getting paid for those hours at the end of the week, at least a minimum of $7.50 an hour (United States Department of Labor), but before it wasn’t like that before many workers would get paid very poorly even thought they would work for a lot of hours and they wouldn’t get benefits from their work or safety when working such as in the mines like the mine workers, but one man stood up for them and his name was John L. Lewis (John Llewellyn Lewis, Encyclopedia).
The Tar Creek mining site was originally owned by a Native American tribe, the Quapaw. The Quapaw wanted to keep these lands, but the Bureau of Indian Affairs deemed members opposing a transaction with mining companies “incompetent” (1). In such a case, the business could continue and the Bureau of Indian Affairs sold the lands to mining companies. In essence, these lands were stolen from the Quapaw because they were ripe for mining. These mines were then used from approximately 1891 to 1970.
The Secretary stated that “under citation No. 1, Garden Ridge contends 1910.212 (a)(1) does not apply to the cited conditions. The company asserts OSHA’s Lockout/Tagout standard, at 1910.147, is the applicable standard. Garden Ridge also argues the Secretary establish its employees were exposed to a hazard while operating the garbage compactor. Under Citation No. 2, Garden Ridge concedes it violated 1904.40(b)(2), but contests the proposed penalty”( Secretary of Labor v. Garden Ridge pg. 2). Garden Ridge argued to the judge that they believed that the Lockout/Tagout standard was being intertwined with the issue that Bryan had on the guarding of the compactor. There was proof of the LOTO standard shown to McCollough that states that if there is any type of servicing or maintenance on equipment then there is a possibility that there could be an injury to the employees. Bryan had then began to testify to the court that he had asked McCollough for a copy of the LOTO for the garbage compactor and McCollough proceeded to tell him that they did not have a LOTO procedure in place for employees because the employees did not do any maintenance work on that specific piece of equipment and so this is why OSHA’s Secretary cited Garden Ridge for the guarding standard rather than the LOTO procedure/standard. McCollough later testified in court that he did not state that there was not LOTO procedure in their store to Bryan and that it was posted on the door near the machinery. “Garden Ridge is correct when it states the Secretary has “intertwined” the issues of LOTO and machine guarding. This intertwining began with the Secretary’s inartfully drafted alleged description violation for item 1 of Citation No. 1. Generally, machine guarding violations create conditions that expose employees to injuries from points of contact during the machine’s normal production
This case study is about a man, Miller, who has worked at a factory for 27 years. He is a pocket setter and is able to run two machines in an efficient manner. He is happy with his job as well as happily married to his wife who works at the same factory. He has children but they are raised and moved out of the Miller’s home. He wants to work another ten years before retiring but is rethinking this decision due to the company hiring a consultant firm who has recommend a job enrichment program and his job will be the first to be effected by this program. Right now he just uses the machines and sews but under the new program he will also have to get his own materials, get his own needles, perform routine maintenance on his equipment, and deliver his work to the next station. He believes this will be having him to do three jobs instead of two and that he could go elsewhere and not to have to deal with something like this.
Until the plants closed, General Motors was a beloved company that got their start in Flint, Michigan, Those who 30,000 factory workers who lost their jobs, needed a people to hate, and that person was Roger Smith. Michael Moore, spent three years trying to get Smith to see the impact of his decisions. He went to the main offices located in Detroit, Michigan, multiple conventions (Christmas shows, and stockholder conventions, to name a few). While Moore was conducting his search, the sheriff's deputy in Flint, was evicting up to thirty families a day. Moore commented that the deputy is the only one with a steady source of income. While the deputy was seeing to evictions, rich citizens of Flint were playing golf, polo and eating at their local country clubs. When interviewed, most of them called the working citizens of Flint lazy and accused them of taking the easy way out. Clearly they did not know about the current housing situation. The rich citizens of Flint think that the city is in great condition. The public school system and extra curriculars for their children are great. They think the welfare that half of the city is on is good, when it clearly is not. The woman who bred and skinned rabbits for extra money said that she is given ten dollars a week by the government. While skinning rabbits, in my opinion, is animal cruelty, it is no wonder that she had to turn to a creative way to make money. During a polo match, the hosts hired unemployed citizens to be live statues. There is clearly a disconnect between the rich and the working class of Flint. The rich have no care for the situation or the people affected by it. When you drive down the streets, you see washing machines, beds, dressers and toys in the front yard, a clear sign of another eviction. The only other people in Flint who have a steady income are the rental companies. An employee at a truck rental company said that
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire is a turning point in history because, unions gained powerful alliances and people who wanted to fight for their safety. Which now in the U.S there is a set of guidelines that need to be follow to ensure the safety of the employees. He writes: “The Triangle fire of March 25, 1911, was for ninety years the deadliest workplace disaster in New York history—and the most important (Von Drehle 3).” Von Drehle emphasizes how important this event is in history and he draw comparisons to the to
Arnold & Porter chose to sue Pittston rather than the Buffalo Mining Company because the value of the corporation allowed for adequate compensation to the victims. Author and head lawyer for the plaintiffs, Gerald M. Stern, writes that the original goal was sue to sue for $21 million for the disaster to have a material effect on the cooperation (51). To avoid responsibility Pittston attempted to prove that the Buffalo Mining Company was an independent corporation with its own board of directors. The lawyers for the plaintiffs disproved this claim by arguing the Buffalo Mining Company never held formal meetings of the board of directors and was not independent of the parent company. During this case Pittston’s Oil division had applied to build an oil refinery in Maine. The ...
There were many miners from the start of 1851 and many that had died from tragic things. 15 Miners had died from stone and coal from working in the mines and forty nine from explosions. Many miners died in the hospitals, mines, explosions, and sundries. Nineteen died from sundries and five from shaft.There were a small number of deaths from shafts though.”There are not many accidents in the shafts considering how deep they are and the speed at which the cages travel up and down”. This means Also all these deaths they were miners, miners that had families that loved them and did a lot of mourning over
Philosophers use thought experiments for testing and clarification with the understanding of concepts and intuitions. These experiments occur in the mind and involve questioning. The scenarios of the questions, most far fetched, range in severity. The response given provides insight on the moral perspectives of the individuals daily life. Dr. Daniel K. Sokol, a medical ethicist at Imperial College in London, posed four famous thought experiments. Philosophers conduct thought experiments on small groups of people, but experiments exist to test larger groups.
The training facility that Giffels firm was contracted to do civil engineering work for had recently switched from using jet fuel to liquid propane to prevent soil contamination. While this was a solution to environmental concerns it created new problems that Giffels found to be unaddressed with the lack of a design analysis for any safety systems.
The accidents involving machinery kill and/or hurt more coal miners in a year than any other mining accident. The machinery in mines are located in cramped spaces with little light, causing miners to have two times the chance of accidents. The accidents involving roof and rib failures can usually be averted if a mining company has a roof support plan. For a roof support plan to be made, information like entry widths, mine geometry, the number of pillars that must be left up right, and the number of bolts that must be used are needed (Cobb 3 of 5) Accumulations of gases in underground coal mines is another very serious hazard. If certain gases like methane and carbon monoxide are at or above 5% in the air they can cause violent explosions. Blasting in coal mines are the main cause for such dangerous levels of carbon monoxide.
In the early 1900s industrial accidents were commonplace in this country; for example, in 1907 over 3,200 people were killed in mining accidents. At this time legislation and public opinion all favored management. There were few protections for the worker's safety. Today's industrial employees are better off than their colleagues in the past. Their chances of being killed in an industrial accident are less than half of that of their predecessors of 60 years ago. According to National safety Council (NSC), the current death rate from work-related injuries is approximately 4 per 100,000, or less than a third of the rate of 50 years ago. Improvements in safety up to now have been the result of pressure for legislation to promote health and safety, the steadily increasing cost associated with accidents and injuries, and the professionalization of safety as an occupation. When the industrial sector began to grow in the United States, hazardous working conditions were commonplace. Following the Civil War, the seeds of the safety movement were sown in this country. Factory inspection was introduced in Massachusetts in 1867. In 1868 the first barrier safeguard was patented. In 1869 the Pennsylvania legislature passed a mine safety law requiring two exits from all mines. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) was established in 1869 to study industrial accidents and report pertinent information about hose accidents. The following decade saw little progress in the safety movement until 1877, when the Massachusetts legislature passed a law requiring safeguards for hazardous machinery. In 1877 the Employers' Liability Law was passed. In 1892, the first safety program was established in a steel plant in Illinois, in response to the explosion of a flywheel in that company.