By Tom Peters
November 19 marked
15 years since an explosion ripped through the underground
Pike River Coal mine on the remote West Coast of New
Zealand’s South Island. Twenty-nine workers were trapped
in the mine.
For five days, the company management,
police and government officials told the families and the
public that a rescue operation was being planned. Then, on
November 24 there was a second underground explosion and
police declared that there was no longer any chance of
finding survivors.
The disaster shocked the world: a
mine in a supposedly developed country had proven to be a
death trap. A royal commission of inquiry found in 2012 that
Pike River Coal, which was deep in debt and desperate to
start producing coal, had flouted basic health and safety
regulations. There was no suitable emergency exit and the
main fan had been installed underground, despite the
well-known risks of doing so in a gassy underground
mine.
Methane gas levels were not properly monitored
and the ventilation was grossly inadequate. Warnings of an
impending disaster were ignored. In the 48 days leading up
to the first explosion, deputies using hand-held detectors
reported on 21 occasions that gas concentrations had gone
above 5 percent, the level at which methane gas becomes
explosive; on 48 occasions, gas concentrations went above 2
percent, the level at which a mine should be
evacuated.
Government regulators from the Department
of Labour (now WorkSafe) knew about the conditions at Pike
River but did not shut it down. The Engineering, Printing
and Manufacturing Union (EPMU, since renamed E tū) also
knew, but it kept quiet and allowed workers to continue to
enter the mine day after day, risking their lives.
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In
response to the royal commission’s findings, then prime
minister John Key, who had previously defended Pike River
Coal, was forced to admit in an interview with TV3 on
November 5, 2012, that “the company essentially put its
profits and its production ahead of the safety and lives of
those 29 workers.”
Yet, despite the overwhelming
evidence against the company, 15 years after the disaster no
one has been held accountable. Pike River’s major
shareholder NZ Oil & Gas (now called Echelon Resources)
received an insurance payout of $38.3 million, while the
mine’s creditor the Bank of New Zealand got $23.2
million.
WorkSafe initially planned to bring charges
against Pike River chief executive Peter Whittall for
breaches of health and safety laws, but the regulator
dropped the prosecution in 2013 in an unlawful backroom deal
with Whittall’s lawyers. An unsolicited payment of $3.41
million was made through an insurance company to the 29
families of the victims, many of whom denounced it as
“blood money” and “chequebook justice.”
These
bitter experiences—the disaster itself and the
decade-and-a-half-long cover-up under successive National
and Labour Party governments—contain vital lessons for
working people, not only in New Zealand, but in every
country. The last 15 years has demonstrated that the
institutions of the state—the judicial system, the
regulators, the police—are not impartial: they exist to
protect the interests of big business and the rich. The same
is true of the union bureaucracy and all the capitalist
parties.
To defend their interests, including their
safety and their very lives, workers need new organisations:
rank-and-file committees must be built, democratically
controlled by workers themselves and completely independent
of, and opposed to the political establishment and the union
apparatus.
Pike River and the worldwide industrial
slaughterhouse
The cost-cutting and deregulation that
led to the Pike River disaster is not an exception, but the
norm. In response to the worsening global economic downturn,
corporations and governments are scrapping workplace safety
protections in order to extract greater profits from
workers. They are doing so with the collaboration of the
corrupt, pro-capitalist union bureaucracies.
The
result is a sharp increase in workplace deaths and horrific
industrial disasters worldwide. Recent tragedies include: 67
deaths in a school building collapse in Indonesia in
September; at least 16 workers, including a number of
teenagers, killed in a garment factory fire in Bangladesh on
October 14; and an explosion at a glue factory in Pakistan
last Friday that killed at least 18 workers.
The
extremely unsafe, unregulated conditions that prevail in
so-called developing countries are increasingly common in
more advanced capitalist countries. In the United States on
November 4, a UPS cargo plane crashed and exploded shortly
after taking off from Louisville airport, killing 14 people.
UPS workers told the World Socialist Web Site that planes
were not being properly maintained due to the company’s
relentless cost-cutting.
On October 10, a huge
explosion destroyed the Accurate Energetic Systems (AES)
explosives factory in rural Tennessee, taking the lives of
16 workers. Like Pike River mine, the plant had been allowed
to self-regulate with virtually no oversight. State health
and safety officers inspected AES only once in 20 years,
resulting in a paltry $7,200 fine for chemical exposure that
caused employees to suffer seizures.
Bernie Monk,
whose son Michael was killed in the Pike River mine, wrote a
letter to the families of the Tennessee explosion victims,
published on the WSWS. He stated: “We know the shock, the
pain, and the disbelief that come with such a loss. We also
know what happens after the cameras leave and the
authorities take over. That is when the truth becomes hard
to find.
“I want to warn you from my experience. Do
not put your trust in the government or company management.
From the first day, demand honesty. Keep your own records.
Ask questions. Do not let them control the story. We were
told to be patient, to let the process work. Fifteen years
later, we are still fighting for truth and
justice.
“You will hear promises of transparency and
accountability. You will be told there will be inquiries and
reviews. But without constant pressure, they will protect
themselves before they protect you. Stay united. Stand
together. The strength of your families will be your
greatest power.”
Monk also wrote to the families of
two workers killed and a third injured in the October 27
explosion at Endeavor underground mine in Cobar, Australia.
“We know that justice is never easy, but we urge you to
stay strong and pursue answers and accountability,” Monk
wrote.
The company Polymetals rushed to reopen the
Cobar mine, before the cause of the explosion had been
identified. While a secretive investigation is being carried
out by the industry regulator, the company has ordered
workers not to speak publicly about the disaster or
conditions in the mine. The Australian mining unions have
not criticised the reckless reopening or the blatantly
anti-democratic gag order.
Monk told the WSWS: “The
same thing is happening [in Cobar] as happened at Pike
River, and they’re getting away with it. All they’re
worried about is how much money they can
get.”
Labour, the unions and the Pike River
cover-up
The 15th anniversary of the Pike River
disaster has once again revealed profound anger in the
working class. Thousands of people have commented on social
media over the past week demanding justice for the victims.
Unsafe working conditions, particularly in understaffed
public hospitals, was a major issue in the October 23 mass
strike by more than 100,000 healthcare workers and
teachers—New Zealand’s biggest strike in more than 40
years.
As part of its brutal austerity drive, the
current National Party-led government has cut hundreds of
jobs from WorkSafe and is seeking to further weaken the
regulator’s enforcement powers. New Zealand recorded 70
workplace deaths last year and the country’s rate of
industrial deaths per capita, which has not changed since
2010, is twice as high as that of Australia and four times
that of the UK.
Many people have watched the recent
film Pike River, which highlights the glaring lack of
accountability for the 29 preventable deaths but whitewashes
the role of the unions and the Labour Party.
Labour
and its allies are seeking to channel outrage over the
tragedy into support for their campaign in next year’s
election. This will be a political trap for the working
class. Labour and the unions are complicit both in the
conditions that led to the disaster and in the 15-year
cover-up.
The EPMU remained silent about the
life-threatening conditions in the mine, even after a group
of workers had walked out of the mine earlier in 2010 to
protest the lack of emergency equipment. Immediately after
the disaster, EPMU national secretary Andrew Little—who
was also the Labour Party president—defended Pike River
Coal, telling the media that it had a “good health and
safety committee that’s been very active” and that there
had been “nothing unusual” about its
operations.
When the Labour Party formed a coalition
government after the 2017 election with NZ First and the
Greens, all three parties pledged to re-enter Pike River
mine to recover the 29 bodies and gather evidence to
determine the precise cause of the 2010 explosions. Police
had refused to lay any charges over the Pike River disaster
without physical evidence from inside the mine to determine
exactly what sparked the explosion.
The families hoped
the re-entry and the opening of a new police investigation
would finally lead to prosecutions. The WSWS warned,
however, that “the government’s pledges cannot be
trusted.” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s appointment of
Andrew Little as minister responsible for Pike River
re-entry was a blatant conflict of interest and a clear
indication that Labour would continue the cover-up on behalf
of corporate interests.
A trial of chief executive
Whittall or other top company officials would raise
questions about the union bureaucracy’s collaboration with
Pike River Coal against the interests of the workers it
purported to represent.
In 2021, while the drift
(entrance tunnel) was still being explored, Little announced
that the government would not allow investigators into the
mine workings, where the human remains and the main
ventilation unit and other equipment was located. The Labour
government pulled investigators out of the drift and
installed a thick concrete seal on the mine portal, burying
the evidence and the bodies.
The majority of the 29
families opposed the shutdown of the mine re-entry and they
were supported by mining experts as well as thousands of
ordinary people, in New Zealand and internationally. But
they were isolated by the union bureaucracy, the media and
the political establishment, which supported the Labour
government’s decision.
As well as providing evidence
against Pike River Coal and other companies involved in the
mine, the exploration of the mine workings and examination
of bodies could have established whether any of the 29
workers survived the initial November 19 explosion, and
whether an opportunity to rescue them was missed. Decisions
made by police and others in the five days before the second
explosion would be subjected to further scrutiny.
The
initial police investigation was marred by the unexplained
disappearance of vital evidence, including part of a control
panel door blown out of the mine’s ventilation shaft. If
tested, it could have provided important information about
the cause of the explosions. Police also admitted in 2019 to
destroying evidence, including items of clothing and
breathing apparatus that may have belonged to some of the
trapped men.
Winston Peters, the foreign minister in
the current coalition government and leader of NZ First,
recently described the mine as a “murder scene,” after
remaining virtually silent about Pike River for the past two
years. Peters told Radio NZ on November 19, “The police
have come up with an opinion [regarding potential
prosecutions] and they’ve been sitting on it for a whole
year now.” Police, however, have made no public statements
and the investigation has been subject to endless,
unexplained delays.
NZ First, a right-wing nationalist
party, is positioning itself for the 2026 election. The
party’s rhetoric is completely hollow: it has been part of
successive governments, led by Labour and National, that
deregulated the mining sector and then shielded those
responsible for Pike River.
Build rank-and-file
committees!
The essential lesson that must be drawn
from Pike River is the urgent need for workers to establish
their political independence from every capitalist party and
to rebel against the union apparatus. The International
Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and the
Socialist Equality Group in NZ call on workers to build
rank-and-file committees in every workplace, controlled
democratically by workers themselves.
Rank-and-file
committees are necessary to empower workers to take control
of safety conditions and end the dictatorship of corporate
management in the factories, mines and other workplaces.
These committees must publicise the dangers that workers
face, breaking the silence imposed by companies and unions,
and organise strikes and other industrial actions to uphold
workers’ rights to health, safety and life.
Such
committees must also carry out independent workers’
inquiries into industrial disasters, including Pike River,
the mine explosion in Cobar, the Tennessee factory
explosion, the UPS plane crash, and the recent deaths in the
US Postal Service and at factories in Sri Lanka.
The
task of investigating these tragedies cannot be entrusted to
state agencies, whose job is not to uncover the truth, but
to protect the corporations and the rich. Only a worker-led
inquiry can lay bare the real causes, identify the
organisations and individuals responsible, and draw the
necessary lessons for preventing future deaths.
The
International Workers’ Alliance of Rank-and-File
Committees (IWA-RFC), an initiative of the ICFI, will enable
workers to share information and coordinate their struggles
across different industries and internationally, overcoming
the national barriers enforced by the unions. This will
greatly strengthen workers in every country, who confront
the same attacks on wages and conditions, often from the
same multinational corporations.
Workers must be
guided by the understanding that the fight for workplace
safety is inseparable from the struggle against capitalism,
which is plunging the world into barbarism and war. The same
governments that preside over life-threatening conditions in
factories and mines have normalised mass deaths in the
genocide in Gaza and the war in Ukraine. US imperialism and
its allies, including New Zealand, are spending
unprecedented sums on the military to prepare for even more
catastrophic wars, particularly against China, in order to
redivide and plunder the world.
This bankrupt system
must be abolished and society reorganised based on socialist
principles. The wealth and resources produced by the working
class must be taken out of the hands of the billionaires and
placed in common ownership, in order to put an end to social
inequality and the sacrifice of lives for profit, and
establish a society based on human need. Those who agree
with this perspective should contact the Socialist Equality
Group and its sister parties of the International Committee
of the Fourth International.
Original url:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/11/24/tndf-n24.html
