A year and a week ago six miners at Crandall Canyon in Utah were trapped nearly a half mile underground when thousands of coal pillars collapsed on them. Subsequent Congressional investigations placed much of the blame on Ohio-based Murray Energy, which failed to notify miners or federal authorities about myriad ...

Congress has called for the Department of Labor to abandon a proposed rule change that could increase the danger of worker exposure to toxic substances, ...

In a burst of activity atypical for the Department of Labor, top officials are rushing to change rules about permissible exposure to toxins in the workplace, according to a report by Carol Leonnig in the Washington Post.  The Post stresses that "political appointees" at Labor are making the changes, locking ...

Last fall the Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration got into deep trouble for its lack of oversight at the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah. Richard Stickler, the Acting Assistant Labor Secretary in Charge of MSHA, has subsequently promoted increased inspections, citations and fines as signs of ...

More than 100 of America's 731 underground coal mines went uninspected last year according to an article by Steven Greenhouse in the New York Times, and inspections were found inadequate at the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah, where nine people died in August 2007.  The inspector general for the Labor ...

The Bureau of Land Management discovered serious structural problems in the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah in 2004, three years before its collapse killed six miners and three experts sent in to rescue them, the Associated Press reports.  BLM, which is part of the Interior Department, never communicated ...

Kris Maher of the Wall Street Journal writes that safety requirements adopted in the 2006 Mining Act have been adopted more quickly by some mining companies than others, leaving many miners – including those in Utah -- without access to key safety technologies.  More ...

Ken Ward of the West Virginia Gazette reports a sadly familiar tale with a twist of bureaucratese in the investigation of the 2006 Sago, Aracoma, and Darby mine disasters that led to the deaths of 19 miners.  Officials of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) not only ...

The report, covered by Daniel Heyman and Anahad O'Connor in the New York Times, cites lightning and a 1,300-foot piece of loose electric cable as the likely causes of the explosion.  Some relatives of miners killed in the explosion suspect the government's conclusions will help the mine's owner, International Coal Group, escape liability because the ...

“Much of the press has abandoned reporting on health and safety regulation until disaster strikes,” writes Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post.  “How many reporters have dug into the Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration, which under the Bush administration was run by a former Utah mine manager until last year?  About as many as did pieces before Hurricane Katrina on why a former Arabian horse official was running the dysfunctional bureaucracy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”

In the case of FEMA, we know it was only The Independent, a small North Carolina publication, that took a good look at the agency and warned that it was heading downhill.