MSHA Doesn't Get Mad, It Gets Even
- Against Its Own People

What do you get when you diligently and effectively do your job and attempt to expose wrongdoing? Investigated and put on indefinite leave, of course.

In June 2003, Jack Spadaro, a longtime mine inspector and a champion of miners and coalfield residents, was put on administrative leave from his job as superintendent of the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s National Mine Academy, which is in Beckley. Jack figures MSHA will put him on some sort of personnel action any day now.

Under Bush’s rule, MSHA just doesn’t like Jack. Jack is at odds with MSHA’s current push to weaken the rules governing miners’ exposure to coal dust. Coal dust gives miners black lung disease. If there’s an explosion in an underground mine, the dustier the air, the further the explosion travels.

MSHA wasn’t too thrilled, either, when Jack blew the whistle on MSHA’s investigation of the Massey Energy coal sludge impoundment disaster. That catastrophe unleashed 306 million gallons of chemical-laden black goo, which fouled about 70 miles of Kentucky and West Virginia waterways and left sludge up to 7-feet-deep in some people’s yards. According to Jack, top MSHA officials didn’t want to examine "serious deficiencies that were revealed during the investigation regarding the (agency’s) review and approval process for this impoundment." While saying Jack’s complaints weren’t valid, MSHA blocked the release of nearly half of the report its own Inspector General prepared on the disaster and MSHA’s oversight of the Massey operation.

According to Mine Safety and Health News, this is the third time in eight months that MSHA has threatened disciplinary action against Jack. On June 4, Jack was in DC, sent there by MSHA for some meetings. In a move more suited to jack-booted thugs, MSHA officials stormed his Beckley offices, confiscated his work and changed his office door locks. Upon his return, Jack was not even allowed back into the Academy building.

MSHA is apparently charging Jack with fraud and misappropriation of government funds. At his supervisors’ requests, Jack hired Sam Bond to teach at the Academy about three years ago. During the week, Sam stayed at the academy’s living quarters and did not pay for his meals or his rent, which is apparently why MSHA is punishing Jack.

The publisher of Mine Safety and Health News received many anonymous notes from Jack’s co-workers who call Jack’s suspension a "witch hunt" and "vindictive." One co-worker told the News that MSHA’s own regulations dictate that MSHA employees are not to be charged room and board at the Academy.

The Academy employees who contacted the News had very high praise for Jack. One wrote that "a small group of academy employees, encouraged by (MSHA) headquarters, conspired with the Republican administration to get rid of Jack. Shame on them. They seized upon whatever they could, and that was his compassion for a former federal inspector with MS who was so disabled that he moved about the building in a motorized scooter."

Jack has hired attorneys Roger Forman and Jason Huber to defend him against MSHA’s attack. A whistleblower couldn’t ask for better legal aid.

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