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Mine bosses finally had to invest in experts to determine miners’ illnesses

Coal mining in the 1970s had some curious traditions, which, today, would be considered by most as absurd. One of the traditions was the Friday afternoon exodus. An extremely emotional issue among miners is their ability to get out of the mine in the event one is hurt or sick. The reason for the intensity of this concern was emphasized for me when I was hurt and when others around me were injured. Several strikes occurred due to the mine management’s inability or unwillingness to remove certain miners to the surface as quickly as the miners desired. Therefore, miners could at anytime claim to be sick and request to be taken out.

As foremen, we were prevented from questioning our crew members’ health by the union and interpretation of the contract. The union officials maintained that since supervisors were not medical doctors, they could not challenge the illness proclaimed by the miners. As quickly as possible, the foreman was required to provide a ride out of the mine for the ill miner.

This traffic was especially heavy around 8 p.m. on Friday afternoons in the summer time. It was not unusual for a foreman to lose over half his crew on these shifts. One afternoon, my whole crew “got sick” and I was drafted into shuttling other “sick” miners to the elevator bottom.

With this practice, the company lost a great deal of valuable production and the coal miners lost several hours of pay. However, the local drinking establishments benefited from the miners’ early quits.

This tradition seems very odd with today’s workplace practices. To be honest, I found it strange also. Eventually, the mine management set a policy of taking people who requested to be taken out of the mine claiming to be sick to a doctor. This action reduced the incidents of fake sickness.

The Friday afternoon exodus lasted most of the years I worked in the mines. I believe behaviors that don’t make business sense are not good for the company or employees. Employees lost pay and the company lost thousands of dollars of production. To solve the problem and eliminate the practice of leaving early, the company had to invest money in doctors. In the long run, it was practical and well worth the investment.

R. Glenn Ray, Ph.D., is the president of RayCom Learning. To learn more about Ray’s completely revised, third printing of The Facilitative Leader: Behaviors that Enable Success, visit his Web site, www.raycomlearning.com or call him at 740-629-4536. Everyday Leadership appears each Wednesday on the Business page.

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