Coal mine safety: do unions make a difference

Details

• Personal Author:
  Morantz AD
• Description:
  Although the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) has always advocated strongly for miners' safety, prior empirical literature contains no evidence that unionization reduced mine injuries or fatalities during the 1970s and '80s. This study uses a more comprehensive dataset and updated methodology to examine the relationship between unionization and underground, bituminous coal mine safety from 1993 to 2008. I find that unionization predicts a substantial and significant decline in traumatic mining injuries and fatalities, the two measures that I argue are the least prone to reporting bias. These disparities are especially pronounced among larger mines. My best estimates imply that overall, unionization predicts about a 17-33% drop in traumatic injuries and about a 33-72% drop in fatalities. However, unionization is also associated with higher total and non-traumatic injuries, suggesting that injury reporting practices differ substantially between union and nonunion mines. Unionization's attenuating effect on the predicted frequency of traumatic injuries seems to have grown since the mid 1990s. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Coal Coal Mining Mining Mortality Occupational Health Safety Workplace
• Keywords:
  Coal-miners Coal-mining Injuries Mortality-data Safety-climate Safety-practices Safety-research Traumatic-injuries Underground-miners Underground-mining Work-environment Work-practices Workplace-studies

  More +
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Contract
• Genre:
  Final Contract Report
• Place as Subject:
  California ; OSHA Region 9
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-35
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20038854
• Citation:
  Stanford, CA: Stanford Law School, John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics, Working Paper No. 413, 2011 May; :1-35
• Contact Point Address:
  Alison D. Morantz, Professor of Law & John A. Wilson Distinguished Faculty Scholar, Stanford Law School, Crown Quadrangle, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA 94305-8610
• Email:
  amorantz@law.stanford.edu
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2011
• Performing Organization:
  Stanford Law School, Stanford, California
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics, Working Paper No. 413
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:86332578121a6515f9b820691bdee4fa23e188701ceae96d851031126132003054c3ff5abf57353e34c04edaadaad9658e5f26400910efdab78ffb5766f3ca0f
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/192402/cdc_192402_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 822.94 KB ]