For some politicians, the deaths of workers are either almost invisible or convenient props for getting attention. Recently, during yet another carnage of constructions workers in New York, politicians rushed to the scene to express their concern–the same politicians that do very little day-to-day and actually collect campaign contributions from people who endanger workers’ lives.

    George Miller is different. Long after nine miners died last summer in the disaster at the Crandall Canyon Mine, Miller has kept after the issue. The deaths of the miners doesn’t really carry much political spotlight now but Miller continues to dig deep. Yesterday, he made it clear that there should be a serious look at criminal indictments in the mine disaster:

The general manager and possibly other senior staff members at the Crandall Canyon Mine near Huntington, Utah, where nine miners died last August, withheld information from federal officials that could have prevented the disaster and should face a criminal inquiry, the chairman of a Congressional investigation said Thursday.

The chairman, Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, accused the company of concealing the extent of an earlier collapse in the mine that involved the same high-risk technique, retreat mining, that was being used when the disaster began.

Mr. Miller said that if federal mine officials had known the extent of that earlier collapse, they would not have allowed the company to continue using the method, in which miners remove coal from the pillars that hold up the tunnels.

Mr. Miller disclosed that he had sent a referral letter late last month to the Department of Justice asking it to investigate whether the mine’s manager, Laine W. Adair, on his own or in conspiracy with others in the company, concealed facts or made false statements to federal investigators about the condition of the mine before the disaster.

On Aug. 6, the pillars that supported the roof in a section of the mine gave way in a major collapse that left six miners fatally entombed. Ten days later, three miners who were working as rescuers died after more tunnels fell.

The deaths were avoidable, Mr. Miller said. He cited the investigation’s findings that in March, five months before the disaster in the south section of the mine, a similar collapse had occurred in a northern section, offering clear “red flags” that the mine was unstable.

    Here’s some video on what Miller had to say:

   Good for Miller for keeping after this. You can see more here.