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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.
Other publications by this author
- An Independent Panel Assessment of an Internal Review of MSHA Enforcement Actions at the Upper Big Branch Mine South
- Does Unionization Strengthen Regulatory Enforcement? An Empirical Study of the Mine Safety and Health Administration
- Opting Out of Workers' Compensation in Texas
- The Elusive Union Safety Effect:Towards a New Empirical Research Agenda
- Has Devolution Injured American Workers? State and Federal Enforcement of Construction Safety
- Does Post-Accident Drug Testing Reduce Injuries? Evidence from a Large Retail Chain
- There’s No Place Like Home: Homestead Exemption And Judicial Construction of "Family" in Nineteenth-Century America
- There’s No Place Like Home: Homestead Exemption And Judicial Construction Of Family In Nineteenth-Century America
- Construction Site Regulation and OSHA Decentralization
- Teens in the Workforce
Author
- Alison D. Morantz
- Stanford Law School
- amorantz@law.stanford.edu
- 650 725.5256