Betraying America’s Workers

By David McCall
USW International President

Marshal Cummings monitors the local obituaries and queries retired miners about their health conditions, building his own database of the lives cut short by trona mining in southwestern Wyoming.

It’s the best means the union activist has right now to track the ravages of silica, a deadly dust released during production of trona, a mineral used to make glass, detergent and many other essential products.

Tragically, Donald Trump not only delayed a new rule designed to protect miners from silica exposure but gutted the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), the agency that would be responsible for enforcing the protections.

As the nation pauses for Workers Memorial Day on April 28, a time to remember workers lost to occupational diseases and injuries, Cummings fears Trump’s betrayal will leave even more miners gasping for air and marked for early graves.

“I just feel like we’re living in a movie, and we already know what the ending is: It’s a whole bunch of sick miners,” said Cummings, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 13214, which represents about 700 miners at the WE Soda complex in Green River, Wyo.

“They don’t care about the labor force. They care about the companies,” Cummings said of Trump and billionaire toady Elon Musk, who pushed for the elimination of MSHA offices in Wyoming and other states.

Silica blankets the miners, the clothing and equipment at the WE Soda mine, formerly owned by Genesis Alkali.

Miners bore into the rock, releasing tiny particles of dust that “ride the air” underground and on the surface, explained Cummings, a third-generation miner who started on the job five days before graduating high school 19 years ago.

Silica exposure increases the risk of lung cancer, kidney disease, COPD, black lung and silicosis, an often-fatal scarring and stiffening of the lungs.

“In my area, many miners die shortly after retirement,” said Cummings, noting that the Green River community is home not only to WE Soda but to other trona mines as well as sand and gravel production.

“Everyone knows and talks about it. We have a weird number of people getting sick here,” he added, pointing out that many employers would “rather just have you huff dust” than invest in worker safety.

Cummings spent years advocating for the USW-backed silica rule, which would require companies to reduce exposure levels, monitor the air at their facilities and track workers’ health, among other steps.

It seemed all of the work had finally paid off when he traveled to Uniontown, Pa., in April 2024 to witness Julie Su, who served as acting labor secretary in President Joe Biden’s administration, unveil the new safeguards and ramp up the fight against what she characterized as “entirely preventable diseases.”

In addition to the trona industry, the rule would cover miners in quarries as well as those who produce coal, iron ore, copper, nickel, zinc and other critical materials.

But Trump delayed the rule just days before it was to take effect this month. He also stood idly by as Musk took an ax to MSHA offices, including the one in Green River, and decimated the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the agency that was about to launch a long-awaited study into local miners’ health.

“We would finally know what trona does to people. They were going to send out epidemiologists and industrial hygienists,” explained Cummings, who added another death—his grandfather’s best friend—to his database a few weeks ago.

As if all of that weren’t bad enough, Trump also continues to endanger workers who rely on MSHA’s sister agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which oversees safety in manufacturing, health care and a wide range of other industries.

His administration paused a union-backed, long-overdue heat standard needed to protect workers from soaring temperatures associated with climate change. OSHA also pulled a proposed rule intended to protect health care workers from infectious diseases on the job.

“We don’t need occupational safety and health to go down,” observed Charles Craine, president of USW Local 4-898, which represents workers at the Delaware City Refining Co.

After an incident resulting in serious injuries there several years ago, Craine said, OSHA proved instrumental in holding the company accountable and worked with the USW to afford workers a greater voice on safety.

“It gives them an avenue to speak up without retribution or retaliation,” he said.

Instead of scaling back, OSHA needs additional inspectors and a more robust mandate, contends Eric Grenz, president of USW Local 460L, who worked with the agency following a co-worker’s death five years ago at Berry Global in Chippewa Falls, Wis.

In all, his local represents workers at three sites covered by OSHA and a fourth location that’s under MSHA’s jurisdiction. Along with strong union contracts, he emphasized, those agencies help to ensure proper training, safe work hours, regular inspections and other safeguards.

Already, he said, “They’re spread very thin for the workers they help to protect.”

Grenz built a bench to honor his fallen co-worker and placed it outside the plant.

It’s a way for union members to remember their longtime colleague on Workers Memorial Day and throughout the year. It’s also a reminder of the need to recommit every day to the fight for safety on the job.

“I feel very strongly about this,” Grenz said of OSHA and MSHA. “If they weren’t there, the things these companies would do—and try to force workers to do—would not be good for us.”