In most of the agency’s districts, an operator or representative may request a conference regarding a contested citation or order under the procedures after MSHA proposes a penalty assessment. Any resulting settlements are then subject to the approval of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission.
Federal officials first introduced the program as a pilot initiative in August 2010 and subsequently evaluated the effect the conferences had on contested citiations; the evaluation phase also incorporated input from industry stakeholders such as mine operators and miners’ representatives.
“This new conferencing process will help reduce the backlog of cases that go before the commission by resolving disputes before litigation ever occurs,” assistant secretary Joseph Main said.
“We are implementing a process that will provide early resolution of disputes, reduce the number of contested citations and orders, increase accuracy and consistency, and improve communication among mine operators, miners and MSHA.”
Each of the agency’s districts must now determine a timeline for procedure implementation based on available resources, and Main said that implementation may occur slowly or not at all in some districts until other backlog reduction strategies are in place and make caseloads easier for MSHA staff to manage in those locations.
He also said that, during the pilot program, mine operators would frequently decide not to request pre-assessment conferences, but officials report a high resolution rate for those that did.
“Although no single strategy will reduce the backlog of contested cases before the commission, this is one aspect of a larger plan, taking advantage of reduction opportunities where they can be found and implemented,” Main said.
In its review of the pilot program, MSHA officials said that ten mining companies made up more than half of the contested violations and, of those overall violations that did go to conference, most were able to be settled without the filing of a contest motion.
Also, of those surveyed for the evaluation, most operators reported to MSHA that they felt comfortable communicating concerns with the agency and expressed satisfaction with the overall conferencing procedures.
Looking ahead, Main noted that additional resources will be needed to implement the program on an agency-wide basis. While pilot districts estimated that the actual conference took a short period of time, preparation could take as much as one to two hours per violation.
Federal regulators have seen a significant increase in contested proposed civil penalties between 2007 and 2010, which subsequently created a backlog of more than 89,000 citations awaiting adjudication by the FMSHRC. MSHA cited the increase in penalty amounts and overall number of cited violations for the trend, as well as the potential pattern of violations program and the replacement of pre-assessment conferences with post-assessment enhanced conferences.
Congress approved in the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2010 an earmark of $US18.2 million to allow the Department of Labor, which oversees MSHA, to begin reducing the commission’s backlog.
As of September 30, affording to federal data, the total number of backlogged citations was down to approximately 69,000.
