Tony Oppegard
Tony Oppegard
coal coming dog opening operators price quick trying
With the price of coal so high, you have operators coming out of the woodwork, trying to get into any seam of coal they can to make a quick buck, opening up a lot of little dog holes.
good
There are some good recommendations. It's a good start.
discharge foreman miner relying
If you have a foreman who is not doing pre-shift examinations properly, you should discharge that person, because every miner working there is relying on that person.
follow incentive
If you know they're not going to collect, what's your incentive to follow the law?
compliance encourage fine
There has to be enough of a fine to encourage compliance with the law.
coal miners
We're not getting everything that we think coal miners need in this bill.
accidents failure kentucky problem report serious
We have a serious, serious problem in Kentucky with failure to report accidents.
indicative operator safety
I would say that these are indicative of an operator who wasn't going to let safety get in the way of production.
bet extent operator pay
If an operator is undercapitalized to the extent that he can't pay his fines, he shouldn't be in business. You can bet he's skimping on safety.
alert attorney company criminal failure possible referred time
From the time that the company got its first unwarrantable failure, that put them on alert that those examinations weren't being conducted properly. Such unwarrantable failure is just intolerable, and that should be referred to the U.S. attorney for possible criminal prosecution.
cost deterrent factor high minimal operators pay
Most of the fines are not high enough to have a real deterrent effect. If the operators know they're not going to have to pay the fines, or that they will be minimal fines, they just factor that into the cost of doing business.
attached speaker telephone thin wire
What we have now is terrible. Just a thin telephone wire with a speaker phone attached to it.
flag problems red safety unusual
That's very unusual and a red flag that there's some safety problems at that mine.
across conditions employers expect miners table testify unsafe
You can't expect miners to come in and testify about unsafe conditions in the mine when you have their employers across the table from them.