Special Message to the Congress on Coal Mine Safety.

To the Congress of the United States:

The workers in the coal mining industry and their families have too long endured the constant threat and often sudden reality of disaster, disease and death. This great industry has strengthened our nation with the raw material of power. But it has also frequently saddened our nation with news of crippled men, grieving widows and fatherless children.

Death in the mines can be as sudden as an explosion or a collapse of a roof and ribs, or it comes insidiously from pneumoconiosis or "black lung" disease. When a miner leaves his home for work, he and his family must live with the unspoken but always present fear that before the working day is over, he may be crushed or burned to death or suffocated. This acceptance of the possibility of death in the mines has become almost as much a part of the job as the tools and the tunnels.

The time has come to replace this fatalism with hope by substituting action for words. Catastrophes in the coal mines are not inevitable. They can be prevented, and they must be prevented.

To these ends, I have ordered the following actions to advance the health and safety of the coal mine workers:

--Increase substantially the number of inspectors, and improve coal mine inspections and the effectiveness of staff performance and requirements.

--Revise the instructions to the mine inspectors so as to reflect more stringent operating standards.

--Initiate an in-depth study to reorganize the agency charged with the primary responsibility for mine safety so that it can meet the new challenges and demands.

--Expand research activities with respect to pneumoconiosis and other mine health and safety hazards.

--Extend the recent advances in human engineering and motivational techniques, and enlarge and intensify education and training functions, for the improvement of health and safety in coal mines to the greatest degree possible.

--Establish cooperative programs between management and labor at the mine level which will implement health and safety efforts at the site of the mine hazards.

--Encourage the coordination of Federal and State inspections, in order to secure more effective enforcement of the present safety requirements.

--Initiate grant programs to the States, as authorized but not previously invoked, to assist the States in planning and advancing their respective programs for increased health and safety in the coal mines.

In addition to these immediate efforts under existing law, I am submitting to the Congress legislative proposals for a comprehensive new program to provide a vigorous and multi-faceted attack on the health and safety dangers which prevail in the coal mining industry.

These proposals would:

--Modernize a wide range of mandatory health and safety standards, including new provisions for the control of dust, electrical equipment, roof support, ventilation, illumination, fire protection, and other operating practices in underground and surface coal mines engaged in commerce.

--Authorize the Secretary of the Interior to develop and promulgate any additional or revised standards which he deems necessary for the health and safety of the miners.

--Provide strict deterrents and enforcement measures and, at the same time, establish equitable appeal procedures to remedy any arbitrary and unlawful actions.

--Recruit and carefully train a highly motivated corps of coal mine inspectors to investigate the coal mines, and to enforce impartially and vigorously the broad new mandatory standards.

--Improve Federal-State inspection plans.

--Substantially increase, by direct action, grants and contracts, the necessary research, training, and education for the prevention and control of occupational diseases, the improvement of State workmen's compensation systems, and the reduction of mine accidents.

These legislative proposals, together with other steps already taken or to be taken are essential to meet our obligation to the Nation's coal miners, and to accomplish our mission of eliminating the tragedies which have occurred in the mines.

These proposals are not intended to replace the voluntary and enlightened efforts of management and labor to reduce coal mine hazards, which efforts are the touchstone to any successful health and safety program. Rather, these measures would expand and render uniform by enforceable authority the most advanced of the health and safety precautions undertaken and potentially available in the coal mining industry.

I urge the immediate adoption by Congress of this legislation.

RICHARD NIXON

The White House

March 3, 1969