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         PUBLIC MEETING              )
         
         REGULATIONS FOR MINER       )
         
         SAFETY AND HEALTH TRAINING  )
         
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         Pages:  1 through 152
         
         Place:  Dallas, Texas
         
         Date:   January 5, 1999                        BEFORE THE 
                             
                    DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
                             
       FEDERAL MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION
          
          
                                      )
          PUBLIC MEETING              )
          REGULATIONS FOR MINER       )
          SAFETY AND HEALTH TRAINING  )
                                      )
          
                              Adolphus Hotel
                              1321 Commerce Street 
                              Dallas, Texas
          
                              Tuesday, 
                              January 5, 1999
          
              The above-entitled matter came on for hearing,
          
          pursuant to notice, at 8:00 a.m.
          
              BEFORE:  KATHY ALEJANDRO, Chairperson
                       ROBERT ALDRICH
                       RODRIC M. BRELAND
                       KEVIN BURNS
                       ROSLYN FONTAINE
                       ROBERT STONE                                   I N D E X
          
          
          SPEAKER                                                 PAGE
          
          Chairperson Alejandro                                      3
          
          David Pfile                                                9
          Gifford Hill & Company
          
          Joe K. Kinnikin                          45
          Associated Contractors of New Mexico
          
          Ralph Richards                           63
          Jobe Concrete Products, Inc., El Paso
          
          Hector Paquian                           70
          Jobe Concrete Products of El Paso
          
          Ed Elliott                                                79
          Rogers Group, Incorporated
          
          William Scarbrough                       90
          Arkhola Sand & Gravel Co.
          
          Peter Ward                                      116
          Hanson Aggregates
          
          Elsa Roman                                               119
          James Murray 
          The University of Texas at Austin
          
          Don Summers                             143
          Safety Consultant                                P R O C E E D I N G S
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Good morning.  My name is
          Kathy Alejandro, and I'm with Metal and Nonmetal Mine Safety
          and Health, with the Mine Safety and Health Administration. 
          On behalf of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, I
          would like to welcome you to the sixth of seven public
          meetings regulations for miner safety and health training.
              These meetings are intended to give individuals
          and organizations, including miners and their
          representatives and mine operators, both large and small, an
          opportunity to present their views on the types of
          requirements that will result in the most effective miner
          safety and health training.  These regulations would apply
          at those nonmetal surface mines where MSHA currently cannot
          enforce existing training requirements.
              I would like to take this opportunity to
          introduce the members of the MSHA panel who are with me this
          morning.
              To my far right is Rod Breland, who is with the
          newly formed Educational Field Services with MSHA; he is
          Western Operations Manager for that agency.
              To my near right, who was sitting here, but I
          guess he's just coming up the aisle now, is Kevin  Burns who
          is also with Metal and Nonmetal Mine Safety and Health in
          Arlington.
              To my left, immediate left, is Robert Stone, who
          is with the Office of Standards, Regulations and Variances
          for MSHA; Roslyn Fontaine who is also with the Office of
          Standards, Regulations, and Variances; and to my far left is
          Robert Aldrich, who is with the Office of the Solicitor.
              Since 1979, MSHA has been guided by a rider to
          its appropriations.  The restriction currently states that
          "none of the funds appropriated shall be obligated or
          expended to carry out Section 115 of the Federal Mine Safety
          and Health Act of 1977 or to carry out that portion of
          Section 104(g)(1) of such Act relating to the enforcement of
          any training requirements, with respect to shell dredging,
          or with respect to any sand, gravel, surface stone, surface
          clay, colloidal phosphate, or surface limestone mine."
              In the Omnibus Budget passed by Congress on
          October 21, 1998, MSHA was directed to "work with the
          affected industries, mine operators, workers, labor
          organizations, and other affected and interested parties to
          promulgate final training regulations for the affected
          industries by September 30, 1999.  It is understood that
          these regulations are to be based on a draft submitted to
          MSHA by the Coalition for Effective Miner Training no later
          than February 1, 1999."
              MSHA expects to publish a proposed regulation in
          the Federal Register sometime in early spring of this year.
              The regulations that MSHA will be developing must
          include minimum requirements in Section 115 of the Federal
          Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977.  And I'll give you a
          brief summary of these requirements.
              Section 115 provides that every mine operator
          shall have a health and safety training program that is
          approved by the Secretary of Labor and that complies with
          certain requirements.  Section 115 specifies that surface
          miners are to receive no less than 24 hours of new miner
          training, no less than 8 hours of refresher training
          annually, and task training for new work assignments.
              Section 115 also requires that the training cover
          specific subject areas.  It provides that training is to be
          conducted during normal work hours at normal rates of pay. 
          It requires that miners be reimbursed for additional costs
          they incur incidental to this training and provides that
          mine operators must maintain miners' training certificates
          and furnish such records to the miners.
              In addition to these minimum requirements, MSHA
          is looking for suggestions and comments as to how best to
          achieve effective miner safety and health training,
          consistent with the Mine Act, including any additional
          requirements that should be included in the proposed rule,
          and most importantly why.
              Public meetings have already been held at five
          other locations:  Northbrook, Illinois; Denver, Colorado;
          Albany, New York; Portland, Oregon; and Ontario, California. 
          One additional meeting will be held later this week in
          Atlanta, Georgia.  These meetings are intended to give as
          many individuals and organizations as possible an
          opportunity to present their views.
              This meeting will be conducted in an informal
          manner, and a court reporter is making a transcript of the
          proceedings.  Anyone who wishes to speak at this meeting and
          has not signed up in advance should sign up on the speakers
          list, which is currently located up here, but I will ask if
          there is anyone who wishes to speak before we finish the
          meeting.
              We also ask, as I indicated earlier, that
          everyone who is here today, whether or not you wish to
          speak, that you sign the attendance sheet which is currently
          located on the table at the back of the room as you enter.
              Anyone who wishes may also submit written
          statements and information to us, during the course of this
          meeting, which will be included as part of the record when a
          proposed rule is developed.  You may also send us written
          comments after the meeting, if you wish.
              Although there is no formal deadline established
          for this, I would encourage you to submit written comments
          on or before February 1 of 1999, to ensure that any comments
          that you wish to submit are fully considered by us as we
          develop the proposed rule.
              Although we are most interested in what you all
          have to say to us, we will also attempt to answer any
          questions you may have to clarify the process and the
          purpose of this meeting.
              We're specifically interested in comments
          addressing certain areas, although you are encouraged to
          comment on any issue related to miner safety and health
          training at currently exempt mines.  These issues were
          outlined in the November 3, 1998, Federal Register notice
          that announced the schedule of these public meetings, and I
          will summarize those issues now.
              Should certain terms, including "new miner" and
          "experienced miner" be defined?
              Which subjects should be taught before a new
          miner is assigned work, even if the work is done under close
          supervision?
              Should training for inexperienced miners be given
          all at once, or over a period of time, such as several weeks
          or months?
              Should supervisors be subject to the same
          training requirements as miners?
              Should task training be required whenever a miner
          receives a work assignment that involves new and unfamiliar
          tasks?
              Should specific subject areas be covered during
          annual refresher training?  If so, what subject areas should
          be included?
              Can the eight hours of annual refresher training
          required by the Mine Act be completed in segments of
          training lasting less than 30 minutes?
              Should the records of training be kept by the
          mine operator at the mine site, or can they be kept at other
          locations?
              Should there be minimum qualifications for
          persons who conduct miner training?  If so, what type of
          qualifications are appropriate?
              I would now like to introduce the first speaker
          this morning.  We ask that all speakers state and spell
          their names for the court reporter before beginning their
          presentation.  Also we have a podium set up and a table; 
          whichever is most comfortable for the speaker is fine.
              Thank you very much.  The first speaker on our
          list is David Pfile from Gifford Hill & Company.
              MR. PFILE:  Yes.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Mr. Pfile?
              MR. PFILE:  I won't be using 25 minutes.  My
          comments will be briefer than that.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  Great.
              MR. PFILE:  Good morning.  I'm David Pfile.  I'm
          the safety director for Gifford Hill here in Dallas.  We
          operate in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico,
          and California.  We have about 700 employees right now, and
          I want to thank you for the opportunity to comment on this.
              I am going to respond first to the questions that
          were published, that you outlined there briefly.  The first
          one is:  Should terms be defined, such as "new miner" and
          "experienced miner"?
              Obviously a new employee with no training, has
          never been on a mine site, is a new miner.  Somebody that
          has been trained and received the training would be an
          experienced miner.  I'm curious as to why this question is
          even asked, because we have been regulated for more than 20
          years, and we have not been able to agree on a definition of
          "new miner" and "experienced miner"?
              It seems to me that that should be obvious, and
          once a person is an experienced miner, as the original Mine
          Act showed with -- if you were a miner, I believe it was,
          October 13 or 18 of 1978, you were forevermore an
          experienced miner.
              I believe that the people in the industry now
          that have the experience should be classified in the same
          way.  They should be experienced miners, and we really ought
          to put this issue to rest, as an industry and as the Agency. 
          Enough on that.
              Subject matters questions and the tying of
          things:  Again, I have seen -- and I'm sure we all have --
          training sessions that would go on all day long, an eight-
          hour session, that the miners would be brought in once a
          year for their annual refresher, or with new miners, they
          would be brought in all day long.
              I don't know if that's the most effective way.  I
          don't think it is.  I think that training should include a
          brief discussion of all the subject matters that are
          required under the regulations, followed by walk-around
          training or a tour, something of that nature.
              Oftentimes, we're asking new employees, new
          miners, to identify with the training, and yet they don't
          even know -- they have no hands-on experience or real-life
          experience with what we're dealing with.
              It has happened time and time again, where after
          the training was completed, a person was taken into the
          operation, and the light bulb went on over their head as
          they realized, oh, that's what they were talking about for
          the last four hours.
              And I don't think that the Agency should force
          the industry to structure themselves to give all this
          classroom training prior to going into the operation.  It
          should be a mix.  The operator, of course, has to have the
          flexibility to do that.
              Adult learners:  I wanted mention about the fact
          that we're dealing with adult learners.  Adult learners
          typically are task-oriented.  They are there to learn a task
          or to learn information that affects their livelihood or
          their job.  They are not sitting in a classroom, like a
          student in school, accepting the information verbatim.  They
          will challenge things.
              They also typically do not have the attention
          span, not because of lack of intelligence, but they have
          other things on their mind.  And to present training in long
          blocks defeats the purpose of the training.  And, again,
          anybody that has done any training has seen it.  Two hours
          into the presentation, the eyes glaze over; people start to
          yawn; and that's when we generally call for a break.  And --
          good morning.
              We ought to be able to spread this training out
          over a period of time.  Again, questions will come up over
          the course of employment, where -- the performance of people
          can be analyzed over the course of their employment, and
          retraining can be given when we see that the initial
          training may not have been completely effective.
              There are other examples of this in your sister
          agency at OSHA.  Under the fall protection standard, one of
          the issues is when people are not performing according to
          the way they were trained, they are to be retrained.  And
          using this approach would be more effective than just
          putting people into a block and 8 hours of training or 24
          hours of training, and turning them loose.
              The other issue on this:  The training should
          take place close in time to the actual task at hand. 
          Oftentimes, as you put an employee in a probationary
          position, they start up with simpler tasks and move on to
          more complex tasks, the availability of promotion in job
          functions, say, from clean-up man around the plant to an
          operator.
              That training for that operator should come close
          to the time he is to perform the task, while it's fresh in
          mind.  Again, we've had examples of annual refresher
          training, where people forget the issues at hand and the
          issues taught in a short period of time.
              The other part about letting employers stretch
          out the time for training is that it places a less severe
          economic burden on the employer or the operator, should the
          employee not work out for one reason or another.  Should he
          leave the employ, the operator has not made a large
          financial investment in an employee that is shortly gone,
          maybe to another operator.
              There is a good bit of turnover in our industry,
          in the metal/nonmetal industries, 10 to 12 percent a year. 
          Many of them go from operator to operator, but there are
          those that do leave the industry completely.
              You asked about supervisors' training.  I don't
          think there's any question that supervisors should at least
          receive the same training as the other employees. 
          Oftentimes, supervisors are called on to do task training. 
          Many supervisors are, indeed, instructors themselves, and to
          hold them to a lesser standard than the employees in the
          workforce, they are just as important, and they need to have
          the same training.
              Task training:  There was a question about task
          training.  And obviously anytime you're going to start a new
          or unfamiliar task, you should have task training.  But to
          limit the task training by time through regulation isn't
          appropriate.
              If I was going to train an operator to be a crane
          operator, I may take weeks to train that person.  It would
          not be a five-minute lesson, whereas somebody in a clean-up
          or utility position may only need 15 minutes of task
          training.  There should not be a constraint within the
          regulation on the amount of time for task training.  The
          task training should be appropriate to the task at hand,
          whatever that might be.
              Annual refresher training:  The -- I think the
          subjects in annual refresher training should be appropriate
          to the mine.  We have sand and gravel operations.  We never
          discuss explosives at the sand and gravel operations,
          because there are no explosives on the site.  We never use
          them.
              Likewise, we do discuss explosives in a hardrock
          situation, in a limestone mine.  We may have more emphasis
          in our sand and gravel operations around training about
          operations near water, life jackets, boats, those types of
          provisions.  The annual refresher training should be
          appropriate to the individual mine site.  It shouldn't be a
          canned presentation that is given universally throughout the
          industry.
              The other issue on annual training is, again,
          anybody in the business has seen the eight-hour annual
          refresher where everybody gets together for a day, and about
          four o'clock in the afternoon, whatever the last subject is,
          people's eyes are glazed over, and they're not paying
          attention.
              And how effective it is, I don't know.  I don't
          have a way of evaluating the effectiveness of it, but I
          certainly, from my own experience and my own receiving of
          annual training in this manner, find that I don't think it's
          very effective.
              I think it should be allowed to be spread out
          throughout the year, an hour here, a half-hour there, an
          hour a month.  In many of our locations, we do one hour a
          month, so our miners in the locations that do that are
          receiving 12 hours a year.
              That way, if someone's on vacation or on a
          holiday and they miss, they still meet their minimum
          requirements.  That should be allowed.  And as far as the
          amount of time, there's a question about 30-minute segments. 
          Absolutely, they can be less than that.  There are certain
          training issues that take longer and certain training issues
          that can be done in a short period of time.  They are not
          that lengthy.
              Confined-space entry:  If someone was going to do
          training on that, I probably wouldn't do it any less than
          four hours' training.  Lock-out/tag-out may take longer, to
          teach people to do those types of tasks appropriately, that
          type of safety training.
              But there are other issues, such as even the
          rights of miners that are repeated annually and repeated
          every year, that could be reviewed in a briefer session than
          an hour segment.
              Training certificates:  Again, we have the Form
          5023s that we're all familiar with, and we have stacks and
          stacks and stacks of paper in files for years and years of
          training.  I believe that operators should be allowed to
          computerize these records.  They should be able to keep them
          in an electronic database, and if the Agency would like to
          review them, they should be able to be made available in a
          reasonable amount of time.
              Fax machines are commonplace, and internet access
          is becoming more and more commonplace for operators in many
          locations.  There's -- I don't think there should be an
          issue that an operator can keep these records in a central
          location and distribute them as needed.
              Again, comparing yourselves to your sister agency
          at OSHA, OSHA allows MSDSs, material safety data sheets, to
          be stored electronically and given out as requested.  You
          don't have to have these large, three-ringer binder,
          voluminous volumes of MSDSs out of your workplace.  It
          should be allowed in a centralized storage system.
              Qualifications of instructors:  Several years ago
          at the Mine Academy, at the National Mine Instructors
          Conference, when they joined with TRAM, Training Resources
          Applied to Mining -- I believe that was four years ago --
          Mr. McAteer spoke, and he even discussed the issue of
          instructors, that the database that the Agency has, there
          are people that have been deceased for years still in the
          database.  And we all know it.
              There are people that are retired from the
          industry, and I believe -- I don't know what the number is,
          but you can probably imagine that everybody in the industry
          in numbers is a certified instructor under the Agency's blue
          card rules.
              The courses range from a day to two weeks.  Penn
          State runs one for, I believe, a week, four or five days. 
          There are a variety of different criteria involved.  Some
          people discuss adult learning; some people discuss training
          techniques, preparation of lesson plans.  All sorts of
          things are discussed in these training courses, but they are
          not consistent at all.
              I believe that the Agency should set -- if we're
          going to have this certified instructors, which I'm not sure
          we need, there should be criteria; there should be a core
          curriculum that is consistent for everybody in the industry
          and for MSHA's own forces as well.
              Modern -- from the time that the Mine Act was
          passed to now, there have been great advances in technology,
          and there are a variety of new and different ways to conduct
          training.  There is CD-ROM-based training; there is
          interactive training; there is web-based training; there is
          teleconferencing.  All of these types of training techniques
          are valid in certain circumstances.
              To have an instructor sitting next to someone
          that is working on a computer, on a self-paced training
          program, is not a good use of resources.  The flexibility
          should be allowed.  An instructor can review these things,
          again, if indeed we are going to have certified instructors.
              Another issue is who are the certified
          instructors.  I've never seen a list.  Does the Agency
          publish a list of who the instructors are and -- who the
          certified instructors are?  Do they?
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  I don't think so.
              MR. PFILE:  I've never seen one.  Oh, they do?
              MR. BRELAND: You can get it.
              MR. PFILE:  You can get it, but is it readily
          available?
              MR. BRELAND:  It's not readily available because
          of the size.
              MR. PFILE:  Okay.  Well, my comment there is that
          the Agency should at least make these names available, who
          the certified instructors are, again if we're going to stay
          with that.  And they also should purge the database of the
          individuals that are no longer either active in the
          industry, active in training, active in education, or in
          other ways associated with us.
              And as far as whether we need certification, I
          don't know.  The certification process is inconsistent at
          best, and I don't know that I've ever been followed up, in
          my years of training.  I don't know that anybody has ever
          sat in -- from the Agency, has never sat in on one of my
          courses, to see how I'm doing.  I've never been recertified,
          that I know of.  I've been to several courses, because I'm
          formally recertified.  If we have that, then we need to
          follow up with it.
              I don't know that we do.  There are other
          trainers.  There are organizations that are pushing for
          certification of trainers in any subject, as a certified
          trainer, to train adults in pass training and other things. 
          I really believe that that needs to be looked at carefully,
          and I don't think that the certification process should
          continue as it currently exists.
              And now I think I answered the questions that you
          posed.  Now I have a concern about enforcement.  There are
          individuals in the Agency, compliance officers, who are
          citation-driven, in that they pride themselves in the number
          of citations they write, and, in fact, they even brag to
          operators about the number of citations that they write.
              Training records and the documentation involved
          in it would be fertile ground for an individual that had
          that inclination to write citations.  I'm sure that errors
          on a 5023 could immediately generate a $55 citation, and he
          may even try to make it S&S.  I've seen that type of
          behavior before.
              I think that the citation issue and the
          enforcement issue needs to be addressed by the Agency, maybe
          administratively, but this should not be a fertile ground to
          increase citations.
              I'm reminded of the sign I saw in a location that
          said, The beatings will continue until morale improves.  If
          anybody has seen that, I don't think that we should allow
          the change in the regulations in Part 46, if you will, be
          used as a tool to just issue citations and beat up
          operators.  We should work together, try to have this work
          out a little bit better.
              My thought is:  The sole arbiter of what is
          effective training is going to be a compliance officer in
          the field at the time an inspection is being conducted,
          because he can write the citation.  And, yes, the operator
          can conference it, and, yes, the operator can contest it. 
          But, again, that takes time and money and resources that
          would be better spent on actually doing the training.
              So, again, if it's going to be an enforcement
          issue, the compliance officers need training on the same
          issues:  What is effective training; adult education;
          examination of training plans; what to look for.  We need to
          be consistent with the operators and the Agency internally.
              Thank you.  That's all I have.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Mr. Pfile, I've got a
          couple of questions --
              MR. PFILE:  Sure.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  -- and other people on
          the panel may also have questions.
              MR. PFILE:  Sure.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  You indicated you
          questioned why we were revisiting the issue of definitions
          for terms such as "new miner" and "experienced miner."
              MR. PFILE:  Yes.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  And, essentially, our
          position is that, you know, the minimum requirements in
          Section 115 obviously have to got to be incorporated into
          any regulation that we develop.
              That really is sort of open, as far as anything
          else that we include, so we were interested in knowing
          whether the -- you know, the definitions in Part 48 were
          appropriate or whether some other definition would work
          better for the industry that we're attempting to develop
          training regulations for.
              I take it from your comments that you believe
          that the Part 48 definitions would be appropriate for a Part
          46 regulation.
              MR. PFILE:  It would be.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.
              MR. PFILE:  And I believe that once you are an
          experienced miner, that forevermore you should be.  I read
          some literature about an acronym called ANEEM, a newly
          employed, experienced miner, and it seemed to me that we
          were getting into minor details that I didn't know needed to
          be addressed, that we ought to keep it as simple and
          straightforward and clear as it can be, so that we don't
          follow up with 25 pages added to the program policy manual
          on how to interpret the regulations.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  I'd like to go
          back to the issue of qualifications for instructors.
              MR. PFILE:  Yes.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Are you taking the
          position that you're not sure whether qualifications for
          instructors are appropriate in this regulation?  Has it
          been -- I mean, what has your experience been?
              MR. PFILE:  I am not sure that the Agency
          certifying instructors is even an appropriate role for the
          Agency, that there are other standards that could be used. 
          I'm not exactly sure what they are.
              For example, I'm an OSHA instructor for the OSHA
          500 courses, and teach the OSHA construction outreach, 10-
          hour and 30-hour courses.  That was a one-week course, and
          even at that, it wasn't long enough.  And they have
          recertification from that, from time to time.  And they keep
          a closer track on who their instructors are and what they're
          doing.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  I see.
              MR. PFILE:  I'm not saying that you're not doing
          a good job and OSHA knows everything, because I don't
          believe that either.  But I don't know if the Agency's role
          is certifying instructors.  In the past, I don't think it
          was --
              I think the history of it is that it was done the
          way it was done, in order to get enough certified
          instructors into the field and into the operations, in order
          to comply with the law, I think is what really happened
          years ago.  And that has been continued, and I don't know
          that it has been followed up effectively.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  We've just gotten
          a lot of comments on that particular issue, I mean, some who
          advocate maintaining the Part 48 status quo as far as how
          instructors are, you know, deemed to be approved or
          qualified, and others who say there should not be any type
          of requirements at all, and that, you know, people who've
          got the hands-on experience at the mine sites are frequently
          in the best position to give --
              MR. PFILE:  And frequently they can be
          appropriate instructors as well for certain tasks.  I don't
          think it's clear that, you know, you can have -- I don't
          think some operators are even clear that you can have a,
          quote, noncertified people conduct the training, while the
          certified instructor, quote --
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Overseeing?
              MR. PFILE:  -- present or overseeing it.  I'm not
          sure that everybody's even clear that they can do that.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.
              MR. PFILE:  And it needs to be clear.  Again, I
          don't know that if some colleagues of mine and friends that
          are doctorate in mining engineering do some training of
          their own, I think that they would certainly meet any
          criteria or qualification that the Agency would have.
              There should be a mechanism for saying, if a
          person has this, that they meet the requirements as well,
          whether it's a professional recognition, professional
          certification, certified safety professional.  I don't know. 
          Whatever they are, there should be a mechanism to allow
          others to conduct training as well, but particularly if it's
          in their field or it's an appropriate training.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.
              MR. PFILE:  I don't know that the Agency needs to
          be the sole certification unit.  There should be some
          flexibility there.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  One issue that you
          did not address that I'd like to ask you, and if you don't
          feel like you want to comment on it, that's fine.  I don't
          want to put you on the spot.
              But the Section 115 requires that the operator
          develop a training program that's approved by the Secretary. 
          Do you have --
              MR. PFILE:  Yes.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  -- opinion on what that
          approval should look like?
              MR. PFILE:  Again, it has -- and I'm not exactly
          sure in history how it happened.  It seems to have
          degenerated to a certification program.  We haven't had one,
          because you're not allowed to expend any money on approving
          our plans.  We have the plans, but they have not been
          revised or updated in a good while, because the only
          approved ones we have are the ones that were approved prior
          to the rider being put on the Agency.
              Again, I don't know that the Agency needs to --
          even though it's in the Act, there has to be a way to
          approve an operator's plan without creating a barrage of
          paper.  And I'm not exactly sure how that mechanism would
          work.
              I know you've seen enough -- I'm sure you've seen
          enough training plans to know that -- and how will the
          instructor know that the student got the message?  Oral
          response and -- you know, they're rather poorly written in
          many cases, and I don't know that, again, the Agency should
          be the one to approve or disapprove these.
              The Act says we have to do it; there has to be
          some sort of approval mechanism.  I'm not sure that shoving
          paper back and forth to district managers and district
          offices, and then when an operator makes a change, such as
          the approved instructor listed leaves and goes to work
          someplace else, then back to recertifying or reapproving the
          training plan.  I don't know if that's an effective use of
          anybody's resources.
              And I think it would tie Rod down and his staff
          with approving plans and not actually being able to get out
          and do any effective training.  I don't think -- there has
          to be a mechanism.
              I don't know what it is, whether it's a blanket
          approval of a generic plan and the operator is allowed to
          customize it, to fit his operation, or if the Agency would
          even write up the plans using a cafeteria-type thing, that
          could be selected for the appropriate subjects for the
          individual mine site, that this is the approved training
          plan for sand and gravel operations or for limestone mining
          or for shell dredging or whatever the case may be.
              And one of the exempted industries is the Agency
          might prepare a plan and then the operators could choose the
          appropriate subjects, just like a cafeteria-type system. 
          And that may be the answer, because then it would be an
          approved plan, follow the Act, and reduce the paperwork
          burden tremendously.
              And, again, that could be an issue of
          enforcement.  Your approved instructor left last week, and
          you haven't had your plan reapproved.
              And you may think I'm being reactionary in my
          concern about enforcement.  In some cases, zealous
          compliance officers -- I know of one case that I have
          personal knowledge of, that the compliance officer attempted
          to write a citation because the operator had built a new
          office building 200 yards from the old office building, and
          he had not submitted a new legal ID, giving new directions.
              And I think that's stretching it, and I don't
          think those types of citations help health and safety or
          protect the miners in any way, so I'm speaking from
          experience.  I'm not speaking from something imaginary in
          this case.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  I just have one final
          question, and, again, I don't want to put you on the spot.
              MR. PFILE:  Oh, go ahead.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  We're under an
          obligation to develop a final rule on or before September
          30, 1999, and that will be published in the Federal
          Register, and at some point after the date of publication,
          the rule will go into effect.  And one of the things that we
          have to do is figure out when the effective date on this
          rule should be.
              And I just was wondering whether you had any
          sense for what kind of a deadline, compliance deadline,
          would be appropriate, whether the rule -- I mean, obviously
          it's going to depend to a large extent on what's in the
          rule, but nonetheless, I mean, do you have any sense for how
          long the affected industries are going to need to come up to
          speed with a training regulation?
              I know that there's a lot of operators,
          obviously, who are already giving good, comprehensive
          training and complying with Part 48, but there are others
          who may not be.
              MR. PFILE:  Again, I believe the major operators,
          the larger operators, are probably very close to compliance
          right now, if not completely in compliance.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Right.
              MR. PFILE:  And I believe that it would probably
          be more difficult to get to the smaller operators.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Right.
              MR. PFILE:  As we all know, there are still
          operators, as discovered from time to time, that don't even
          know that they're regulated by the Agency.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  That's right.
              MR. PFILE:  And I don't have a feel for what is
          going on with them, other than occasional outrage when they
          do get visited.  I would not think that any less than a year
          would be -- with the Agency working with the industry to try
          to address some of the questions that come up during
          hearings like this.
              What are we going to do about approved training
          plans?  What are we going to do about the certification of
          instructors?
              We're only talking 21 months from now.  If we set
          a year from September, that would be 21 months from now, and
          that is not a long time to build a consensus, particularly
          between the Agency and, say, the coalition, to address these
          issues.  Most things in industry and government don't
          operate that quickly, so --
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Do you see any value
          in -- rather than having all the requirements of the
          regulation go into effect at once, to some kind of phase-in? 
          I mean, for example --
              MR. PFILE:  Phased in, stepped enforcement as
          well.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  You know, a plan has to
          be developed by date X and miners trained by date Y or --
              MR. PFILE:  And that would probably assist the
          smaller operators, to give them a chance to get up to speed,
          so to speak.  Again, the larger operators typically have
          larger staffs and more resources available to them and
          can -- although it may be burdensome, they can get
          completely in compliance rather quickly.
              And there also ought to be some sort of provision
          for stepped enforcement, to give people that for some reason
          did not get the message, did not hear of these things going
          on, did not know about the regulation, and the first time
          they're visited, then they ought to have the opportunity to
          come in to compliance, rather than immediately facing
          citations.  There ought to be --
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  You're talking about at
          the initial stages of --
              MR. PFILE:  Yes.  The initial stages.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  -- when this rule goes
          into effect?
              MR. PFILE:  To allow those individual operators
          that are not in compliance, to give them, so to speak, a
          warning.  Okay.  This is what you need to do; here are the
          resources that you can avail yourself of from the Agency. 
          Give Rod a call, and he'll send you a bunch of stuff, so you
          can get in compliance.
              I might -- is that okay with you, Rod?
              MR. BRELAND:  Sure.
              MR. PFILE:  That's how I would see a rational
          approach to the compliance issues and the enforcement
          issues.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.
              MR. PFILE:  Rather than immediately -- again, it
          creates for a contentious environment, and particularly if
          it's a smaller operator that for some reason has not stayed
          up with what is going on.  His resources are limited.  They
          might not have access to all these things I talk about, like
          fax machines and computers and CD-ROMs.  They're out there;
          they exist.
              And it is not fair to them -- they are business
          men, as well -- to immediately whack them with high fines
          and citations, due to their inability to stay current.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  Do you have --
              MR. BURNS:  Thank you.  Kathy covered most of the
          questions I have, but one of the things  you mentioned,
          David, was the -- you mentioned the OSHA fall protection
          standard --
              MR. PFILE:  Yes.
              MR. BURNS:  -- and the retraining after
          observation of unsafe acts.
              MR. PFILE:  Yes.
              MR. BURNS:  I take it that, in your operations,
          new employees, you generally observe or have someone observe
          their work.
              MR. PFILE:  Yes.
              MR. BURNS:  And then based on those observations,
          either retrain them or continue the 24-hour training in
          certain areas, if that wasn't completed at that point.
              MR. PFILE:  Exactly.  They would be watched; they
          would be observed under close supervision, and their work
          activities would be observed.  And there are people that, in
          the past anyhow, that have not taken well to training.  And
          generally they are helped to find alternative employment
          through a step discipline system that we have in place.
              MR. BURNS:  Now, this would be more like one-on-
          one training, I take it.
              MR. PFILE:  Yes.
              MR. BURNS:  Okay.
              MR. PFILE:  A lot of it is one on one.  Some of
          it would be in groups.  An example of groups might be a
          group of utility men, car cleaners, somebody like that, a
          group of individuals doing things like that.  There might be
          three or four of them working together, one supervisor.
              MR. BURNS:  Would you see counting that towards
          the eight hours' annual refresher training or --
              MR. PFILE:  I don't see that so much --
              MR. BURNS:  -- do you see that as being an option
          or --
              MR. PFILE:  I don't see that.  It's more like
          task training --
              MR. BURNS:  Okay.
              MR. PFILE:  -- that could apply towards the 24
          hours.  I don't see that type of hands-on, one-on-one
          training on task activities necessarily applying to 24-hour
          new miner training.  It could; it would depend on the
          subject material and the tasks at hand.
              If we were dealing with hazardous chemicals and
          the personal protective equipment involved in that, yes. 
          That might apply towards it.  I think it would depend on the
          task and the subject matter at hand.  Again, there should be
          flexibility for the operator to apply that training in the
          manner that he feels is appropriate.
              MR. BURNS:  The other issue was task training. 
          Now, the current Part 48 is silent on this, concerning the
          time frames.
              MR. PFILE:  Right.
              MR. BURNS:  So --
              MR. PFILE:  I wouldn't want to see a time frame
          put in there.
              MR. BURNS:  Right.  Of course, you'd mentioned
          it's appropriate to the task, but I guess you'd also agree
          that it's appropriate to the experience of the individual.
              MR. PFILE:  Absolutely.
              MR. BURNS:  So, I mean, there's a lot of factors
          that play into how much time it takes.
              MR. PFILE:  Absolutely.
              MR. BURNS:  Okay.
              MR. PFILE:  I don't think the regulations should
          put any time constraints on that, and, in fact, I have not
          read the Part 46.  I don't remember what it says, the Part
          46 issue, on task training.  It escapes me right now.
              MR. BURNS:  Okay.  I think it's very similar to
          what's in 48, except less wording.  I guess the only other
          thing:  One of the things we've been hearing at other
          meetings is the issue of experienced workers versus
          experienced miners, particularly in the aggregates industry.
              MR. PFILE:  Yes.
              MR. BURNS:  It's an issue where -- it's not so
          common in some of the other mining industries, like coal or
          something like that, but you do have -- people have raised
          the issue where they have experienced equipment operators
          from construction industry coming in to their industry, and
          maybe they'll be a truck driver and that's what they've been
          doing for 20 years, and that person somehow seems a little
          bit different than, you know, the young person that right
          out of high school has no experience.
              MR. PFILE:  Right.
              MR. BURNS:  We're not sure how to address this,
          but their suggestion is that they should not be treated
          equally, as new miners.
              MR. PFILE:  I agree.  I agree with that.  There
          are many operators in the United States that are, if you so
          want to call it, double-breasted.  They have construction
          operations and mining operations both, and the equipment is
          interchangeable.  And in many cases, the tasks are
          interchangeable, and in many cases, the individuals, the
          people, are interchangeable.
              When the construction activity would be slowed
          down, some of them might go into the mining operation to
          work, and vice versa.  There should be a way of addressing
          people that have life experience, and maybe we ought to
          treat them somewhat differently than any new miner right out
          of high school, somebody trying to get into the industry in
          general.
              MR. BURNS:  Okay.  I have no other questions. 
          May Rod does.
              MR. BRELAND:  Yes.  I have a couple.  You had
          talked about the initial -- the training, being allowed to
          stretch it out, some initial indoctrination, and then --
              MR. PFILE:  Right.
              MR. BRELAND:  -- maybe some walk-around, and then
          more specific.  But you didn't mention -- what did you have
          in mind for some time frame to complete initial training?
              MR. PFILE:  The initial 24-hour training?
              MR. BRELAND:  Yes.
              MR. PFILE:  I would not think that you should --
          you probably could stretch that out over six months max.  I
          wouldn't think you'd want to exceed six months for the first
          go-round.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.  And then you --
              MR. PFILE:  And you may even have it at four
          hours of initial training, before you start working, maybe
          two.  I don't know exactly what the right amount of time is
          before you start work, but I do believe that you need to
          stretch it out.  You could do -- and six months is kind of
          arbitrary, but I'm thinking something like 24 weeks.
              If you did an hour a week on a different subject,
          again, the -- my experience with training people is doing it
          in small bites like that and giving them the opportunity to
          go back to whatever they happen to have on their mind,
          whether it's last night's ball game or back to work, keeps
          their attention span up and keeps things fresh.
              And the other thing it does is allows them to
          take the training that they have had into the workplace and
          come back for the following session, say, another week
          later, and they have questions that are legitimate questions
          about what they have been trained in.  Gee, you told us
          this, and this is what we saw here.  Let's see what's going
          on here.
              MR. BRELAND:  In some of the earlier meetings,
          you know, we presently have 8-16 split that, by policy, has
          been allowed anyway, and some have suggested 5 to 6 hours,
          and a number have been at 8.  But the time frame for that is
          60 days for completion.  You feel that's too restrictive?
              MR. PFILE:  I think we ought to be able to have
          more time to do that.  And there's nothing to say that an
          operator can't exceed the numbers of hours as well.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.  Also you mentioned the 10 to
          12 percent turnover.  Actually, I thought that might be
          higher.  Are you talking as an industry-wide, or some mine
          sites are pretty seasonal.  And a lot of theirs are probably
          higher.
              MR. PFILE:  I'm not sure what the industry is. 
          I'm just kind of thinking about what happens to us.
              MR. BRELAND:  That's mostly yours.  Okay.
              MR. PFILE:  Some plants are lower and some plants
          are higher.
              MR. BRELAND:  Recordkeeping is a big concern that
          we have as well.  You've suggested the short bites of time,
          both for initial training and annual refresher.  How do you
          see tracking that for an individual's purposes?  You say you
          get 12 hours; they might miss a month, but if you have the
          mandatory subjects that must be covered --
              MR. PFILE:  Yes.
              MR. BRELAND:  -- that are appropriate to the
          site, do you see that as a burden for the operator for
          tracking?
              MR. PFILE:  In its current form, yes.  The 5023
          doesn't lend itself to doing what we do.  The instructor has
          to carry basically a book of 5023s, partially filled out,
          checking off subject matter, until the eight hours are
          completed, and then signs off on it and distributes it to
          the operators or to the individuals, the employees, and they
          may not get their 5023 until September.
              And then the following year, they get it in June
          or whenever the eight hours is achieved, so it's an ongoing
          process.  Yes.  The way it exists right now, it is a bit of
          a burden.  We deal with it.
              MR. BRELAND:  So your main suggestion, though, is
          allow flexibility for the operator's system, whatever it
          might be --
              MR. PFILE:  Right.
              MR. BRELAND:  -- for tracking purposes.
              MR. PFILE:  Absolutely.  Put it into a computer,
          on a spreadsheet or a database.  With the things that you
          have now, if someone's missed a certain subject, an alert
          could come up and you'd know it.
              MR. BRELAND:  As long as the operator's able to
          track it and make it available.
              MR. PFILE:  Right.  But I don't think that,
          again -- in my case, I don't have a problem because of fax
          machines and computers.  It's not an issue with me.  Again,
          with a smaller operator, it may be an issue, to keep it in a
          central location.
              There are other operators that may not have that
          technology available to them at this time, but there needs
          to be the flexibility to allow electronic recordkeeping and
          computer-based databases, to again be efficient, keep
          better -- actually, it would be a better recordkeeping
          system than it is now.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.  As far as making the record
          available, you talked about the fax machines and what have
          you.  Did you have some time frame in mind that you might
          think reasonable, because you've got to remember, there will
          be a lot of operators may, if you allow flexibility where
          they keep it or the type of records they have, if an
          inspector was on site and asked for it or a training
          person --
              MR. PFILE:  You know, I --
              MR. BRELAND:  -- what's a reasonable time to make
          it available?
              MR. PFILE:  I don't know what a reasonable time
          is.  I really don't, because I recently had something show
          up in the mail that was 13 months old, and that wasn't
          reasonable to me, but somebody else thinks that it is, so I
          don't know what --
              From the date of a citation to date of assessment
          was 13 months, two weeks, so I don't think that's
          reasonable, but I've been told different, that that's a
          reasonable amount of time.  So I don't know.  I don't know
          what -- I'm being flippant, but I don't know what reasonable
          is.
              MR. BRELAND:  Well, it's a consideration we'd
          have to have --
              MR. PFILE:  Yes.
              MR. BRELAND:  -- you know, because if you have --
              MR. PFILE:  Generally inspectors are at a site at
          least a day and oftentimes two.  I don't think that having
          the records available the following day would be
          unreasonable.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.  That's --
              MR. PFILE:  Again, it depends on the technology
          available to the operator, whether they do, indeed, have fax
          machines and central recordkeeping.  If they don't, they
          probably ought to keep the records on site.  But, again,
          they ought to have the flexibility to make that choice.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.  And then you suggested the
          Agency should establish criteria for the instructor-
          approval process.
              MR. PFILE:  Yes.  A core curriculum.
              MR. BRELAND:  For canned curriculum?  And Kathy
          Alejandro will address that again, but any of these kinds of
          suggestions, if you have some ideas, it would be helpful if
          you'd submit those, if you have some criteria in mind, you
          know, yourself.
              MR. PFILE:  Yes.
              MR. BRELAND:  Does your company use criteria when
          they select trainers?
              MR. PFILE:  We follow the Agency's -- if you've
          got a blue card, you're a trainer.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.
              MR. PFILE:  That's what we have done.  We do try
          and do some innovative things and develop some training
          programs that -- we haven't submitted them for approval, but
          they're certainly fun and different, and they get the point
          across.  And we will do training on other subjects that
          aren't even addressed in any of the standards, as more of a
          philosophical type of training.
              So -- and I shared those with Beckley [phonetic]
          as well.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.  Thanks, David.  That's all I
          have.
              MR. PFILE:  Okay.  Thank you.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  I think we may still have
          some more questions.
              MR. STONE:  I'd like to ask you just a couple of
          questions, and I don't want to put you on the spot either,
          and you may not want to answer --
              MR. PFILE:  Go ahead.
              MR. STONE:  You may not want to answer them at
          all, or you may want to submit them perhaps at a later time
          in writing.  They really have to do with costs.
              MR. PFILE:  Yes.
              MR. STONE:  I don't know if you have any sense of
          what it currently costs you to provide training and for
          recordkeeping associated with the training under Part 48.
              MR. PFILE:  Okay.  Well, we have approximately,
          at all of our locations right now, 700 employees.  It
          doesn't take much to figure out 700 employees at eight hours
          annually, at whatever average wage you want to plug in
          there, to see what investment that we're already making,
          just in annual refresher training.
              MR. STONE:  Right.
              MR. PFILE:  And with recordkeeping and clerks and
          other administrative staff, we have a substantial
          investment.
              MR. STONE:  Right.
              MR. PFILE:  And we do it, because
          philosophically, we believe it's the right thing to do.  We
          do training for all our plant managers and supervisors
          that -- basically they get a week annually of nothing but
          the program policy manual, the Mine Act, and the regulations
          for their initial.  They get a week for the initial training
          on that, and we continue with updates on that.
              So we've made substantial financial investments
          in training, not only safety training, but just in training. 
          I don't know what -- I can't address what other people do,
          but I do know that the investment is substantial.  The truth
          of the matter is the payback is substantial as well.
              MR. STONE:  No question.
              MR. PFILE:  But I won't tell you what those
          figures are.
              MR. STONE:  Are there elements that you could
          envision in the new Part 46 that could be designed in a way
          that would save you costs over what you're currently paying? 
          It could be in terms of flexibility that you described,
          could be in terms of ease of recordkeeping over what you
          have to do now, or --
              MR. PFILE:  Certainly all of those things would
          assist.  Oftentimes, particularly for the smaller operators,
          I can use hypothetical examples.
              They'll have to go out, and they'll rent the
          local VFW or fire hall or American Legion Hall or something
          on that order, and they'll provide a meal, and they'll
          provide all this for their eight-hour training, and they'll
          have their employees there, and they'll pay them for that
          day; 
              Whereas technologies like I had mentioned, such
          as computer-based training, interactive video, things like
          that, can be done one on one or with small groups in the
          mine office or in the back room of the mine office, and
          those expenses wouldn't be incurred there.
              It doesn't seem like much, but if you take the
          number of small operators that there are in the United
          States, there's a substantial investment in doing these
          types of things.  There should be the flexibility to conduct
          training in small groups, do it with some of these other
          technologies.  I think all of that could help allay some of
          the investment, the cost involved in this, and still have
          effective training.
              MR. STONE:  What about for recordkeeping?
              MR. PFILE:  Again, I think the -- I know that we
          have file drawers and boxes packed away and stored at plants
          that have training records going back to day one.  And we
          keep them because we never know when we're going to be asked
          to produce them.
              MR. STONE:  Okay.  That's it.
              MR. PFILE:  So there should be -- the other thing
          is with the new reorganization of the Agency, with the
          education arm, perhaps some of the Agency's budget in the
          education arm could be directed more towards these affected
          folks, to assist them in that way.
              MR. STONE:  Okay.  Thank you very much.
              MR. PFILE:  Anything else?
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Thank you very much, Mr.
          Pfile.
              MR. PFILE:  Thank you.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  The next speaker on our
          list is Joe K. -- and I apologize for the pronunciation --
          Kinnikin.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  You did just fine.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  And I'm afraid you're
          going to have to indicate what your organization is.  I
          can't tell from the --
              MR. KINNIKIN:  I'm director of training and
          safety for the Associated Contractors of New Mexico, which
          is the highway-heavy branch of the Associated General
          Contractors of America in New Mexico.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Could you also spell your
          name for the record, please.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  K-I-N-N-I-K-I-N.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Thank you.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  Thank you for the opportunity to
          be here to address the group.  We do have some concerns, and
          I'll start off, first of all, with the written program.
              As was stated by the previous speaker, many of us
          have written programs that were approved back when Part 48
          was coming on board.  And the Association or the AGC in
          Texas and New Mexico both have a program that was written
          and approved by the Department back with Texas A&M.
              These programs or the canned programs, then, are
          site-specific or contractor-specific, but nevertheless it is
          a quite voluminous thing.  It's about like an inch and a
          half or two inches thick, but it gives the contractor or the
          operator the opportunity to take that program and tailor it
          to fit or customize it to fit his operation.
              One of my main concerns is that I represent
          highway-heavy contractors who may have a permanent plant, or
          they more in likely, in the West, will have portable plants. 
          And our concern is with our portable plants which move from
          site to site, and they may be there for three months, and
          then they go somewhere else for three months.
              Our turnover is quite high.  That's one of our
          main concerns, is the turnover rate of the employees that
          would be working at the mine site.
              We don't necessarily have a problem with the
          initial eight hours up front.  We think that we're capable
          of producing that.  What we'll have to do and what we are
          currently doing is taking these individuals into the nearest
          location or town, renting the town hall or going to a motel
          and providing the training there, and then taking them back
          to the site.
              Keep in mind that in New Mexico, these sites
          could be as far as 90 to 100 miles from the nearest town, so
          this becomes quite burdensome, as you might well imagine. 
          And being mobile, we probably would not have anything at the
          site, other than a bolt-house in most cases, very limited in
          the way of facilities.
              We do have and can convert our own generator
          electricity.  One of the things that I'm quite excited about
          in being able to provide is CD-ROM and interactive training. 
          We think that that's one way to go, to alleviate the problem
          and the pressure of getting individuals into town.
              We would like to see the remaining 16 hours
          spread over 90 days, as opposed to 60.  Somewhere between 60
          and 90 days, we think we can do that; 90 days might fit us a
          little better, in that an individual's not going to be with
          us more than three or four months.  They're gone anyway, so
          we won't have that expense.
              We would like to see the eight-hour refresher
          spread over the year, and as the previous speaker indicated,
          we feel that 30 minutes or, in some cases, particular
          subject matter, it could be less than 30 minutes, and that
          ought to be accountable.
              We have a problem with records at site.  As I
          said, a lot of times, the only place to keep a record and
          keep it presentable is probably in the supervisor's pickup
          or in the back of his tool box.  That's a problem with us. 
          We'd like to be able to keep those records at a central site
          and then provide those to MSHA as needed.
              And talking about instructors, back when Part 48
          came out, we did certify instructors, again through Texas
          A&M.  That was a 40-hour program, and then we proceeded then
          to do a train-the-trainer.  Through my organization, we
          trained trainers for contractors, and then as was stated, a
          lot of people don't understand that then that trainer can
          have a sub-trainer underneath him, as long as he's
          overseeing that training.
              Again, I'm here more to listen, to see what MSHA
          is going to be providing.  I don't know what deals have
          already been cut.  I think some deals have already been cut. 
          We'd like to know what those deals are, because we haven't
          heard them.  We'd like to hear that from you.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Well, I mean, as far
          as -- I would say that no deals have been cut.  However, I
          mean, the way that this whole training initiative came about
          was Congress was involved and directed MSHA to develop a
          regulation, and our proposal is to be based on a draft
          that's going to be provided to us before February 1 of this
          year by the Coalition for Effective Miner Training.
              So, I mean, if you want to call that a deal -- I
          mean, I don't know whether it's a deal or not, but --
              MR. KINNIKIN:  I'm talking about the relationship
          that now exists or some interactions taking place between
          MSHA and other organizations, as to what this training might
          look like or what might be the requirements for it.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Well, I mean, that's why
          we're here today and that's why we have been, you know --
          we're going to be at six other locations, is to find out --
          obviously, I mean, we're going to be getting input from the
          coalition, which is a group of industry companies that have
          come together to give the Agency recommendations for what
          ought to be in a proposed rule.
              But in an effort to get as broad a spectrum of
          opinion as possible, I mean, we're holding meetings here and
          other locations, to find out what people like you and other
          individuals and organizations feel ought to be included in
          any rule that we promulgate.  So, I mean, that's all I can
          say.  I mean, that's really all that's involved at this
          stage.
              So, I mean, any suggestions that you have today
          or if you want to submit something in writing in the next
          month or so, we would really appreciate it, and we're giving
          serious consideration to all comments and suggestions given
          by everyone.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  I will be making some written
          comments.  You said by February 1, 1999.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Yes.  I mean, I would
          heavily encourage you to submit it by then.  I mean, if it
          comes in later, I mean, we're not going to throw it away,
          but we are under a pretty tight time deadline to develop
          this proposed rule in.  If you get it in before February 1,
          that would make it easier for us to incorporate it in our
          thinking.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  As far as the instructor and
          train-the-training, I would like to see that involve the
          actual aspects of how do you put together your lesson plans;
          how do you actually train; how do you actually teach; what
          are some of the teaching fundamentals, as opposed to some of
          the courses that I have been to.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  And that's really
          more along the lines of implementation.  I mean, I think
          that that's one thing that we've been hearing as we move
          across the country is developing the rule is one part of it,
          but probably as important, if not more important, is what
          the Agency and state grantees and other people who are
          involved do to facilitate implementation of requirements
          that are going to be in any final rule.  So --
              MR. KINNIKIN:  Probably the contractors or the
          employers that I represent would have fewer than ten
          employees at the site.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  And they would probably have
          equipment operators, probably front-end loader operators,
          bulldozer operators, and then laborers, you know, people
          working at the crusher.
              One of the big problems that has been brought up
          is truck drivers.  How do we handle our truck drivers who
          are coming in?  All they're doing is loading up with crushed
          material, and then hauling it off the site.  How do we treat
          those people?  You know, they're there, and as long as they
          stay in the truck, what's their exposure?
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Do you have any
          recommendations for how those individuals should be treated,
          I mean, because that's an issue that does come up, is
          there's different categories of people on the mine site. 
          Not necessarily all of them are to be considered to be
          miners and therefore required to have 24 hours of initial
          training or 8 hours of annual refresher.
              Who gets, you know, site-specific hazard
          training, but maybe not comprehensive training?  And are
          there categories of employees who may not need -- who come
          on -- any kind of training at all?  I mean, those are the
          kind of suggestions that we're looking for, and if you've
          got specific recommendations, we would certainly like to
          hear them.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  I would think that the truck
          drivers coming onto the site should be, as far as site-
          specific hazards that they might encounter, and that should
          be probably the extent of the training that they would be
          required.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Now, are these truck
          drivers employed by your --
              MR. KINNIKIN:  By the contractor.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  By the contractors.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  Or they may be an independent
          contractor, somebody that's been hired or leased to the
          contractor to haul materials.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  I mean, what's their
          presence on the mine site, I mean, as far as duration?  
          You're saying they typically wouldn't even get out of their
          truck.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  They wouldn't get out of their
          truck.  They'd probably come in; they'd be loaded, say, five
          minutes, and they'd drive off the site.  They have a way in
          and a way out but they might make 15, 20 trips a day to the
          site, hauling materials to the roadway.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  And you think for those
          categories of employees, site-specific hazard training would
          be sufficient.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  Yes, ma'am.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  They don't need the eight
          hours of annual refresher or --
              MR. KINNIKIN:  No.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  -- the 24 hours of
          initial new miner training.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  Not at all.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  I'll stand for questions.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  One of the
          questions that I had, one of the issues that has come up,
          is, you know, the responsibility for training, comprehensive
          training or site-specific hazard training between the
          production operator and contractors who come on to the mine
          site.
              A number of people have -- a number of operators
          have indicated that they think it is appropriate for
          contractors to ensure that their employees, the contractor
          employees, receive the 24 hours of initial new miner
          training and the 8 hours of annual refresher training, and
          that the production operator should be responsible for site-
          specific hazard training for those employees when they come
          onto the mine site.
              Do you have any opinions as far as whether that
          division of responsibility is appropriate?  Or do you have
          other suggestions for how that ought to be handled?
              MR. KINNIKIN:  The way it's being handled now, if
          a contractor goes onto a mine site -- and you have to keep
          in mind, I'm talking about a contractor who might be a mine-
          site operator, as opposed to a contractor going to a big
          mine.
              And what the big mines are requiring the
          contractor to do now is to have his 24 hours of training
          before his people ever goes on site.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  But where my contractor has his
          own portable plant --
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Right.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  -- he is the operator; he is the
          production operator.  He's responsible for the employees
          going there.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  So there really
          isn't a production operator per se.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  Not unless that would be an
          independent contractor at a big mine site.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  I have one other
          question.  Do you experience a situation where your
          operations are regulated by OSHA, depending on the kind of
          activity that you're engaged in?  I mean, do you flip in and
          out of regulation by MSHA and by OSHA?
              MR. KINNIKIN:  The highway-heavy contractor would
          be regulated by both, and a lot of times, what might
          separate OSHA from MSHA would be nothing more than a barbed-
          wire fence or an imaginary line drawn through the pit, and
          he'd have a hot plant sitting here and a crusher sitting
          over here.
              On one side would be OSHA; on the other side of
          this imaginary line would be MSHA.  But the highway-heavy
          contractor would be regulated by both.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Do you have situations
          where employees kind of cross over that imaginary line?
              MR. KINNIKIN:  They do it all the time.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Uh-huh.  Do you have any
          suggestions for -- I mean, as far as, you know, OSHA
          training versus MSHA training?
              MR. KINNIKIN:  That training -- as far as I'm
          concerned, if an employee has had OSHA training, say, task
          training or training, safety training related to the task
          he's doing, it should be allowed, both by OSHA or MSHA. 
          There's no difference in the operation of the piece of
          equipment.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Uh-huh.  Do you have any
          opinion as far as how long the Agency should allow after the
          publication of a final rule for compliance?
              MR. KINNIKIN:  I would think a year would be
          plenty.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  Do you have any
          opinion as to whether we ought to phase in the requirements,
          or should everything go into effect at the same time?
              MR. KINNIKIN:  Well, you will allow a year for
          the person to get into compliance, full compliance --
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  -- I think you could go ahead and
          set the initial requirements, and then let the people start
          working into it.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  Do you have any
          questions?
              MR. BRELAND:  The portable plants you talked
          about, I would assume that generally they have a core group
          of people that travel with that portable plant.  What
          percentage of that group would be regular, year-round
          employees, if you will?
              MR. KINNIKIN:  Probably would be your equipment
          operators, probably the plant operator.  Everybody else
          would probably be hired at the new location, laborers.
              MR. BRELAND:  Mostly laborers, so you typically
          would have four or five laborers maybe.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  Probably three, four at the most.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.  And then you talked about
          some phased-in training for them, do an initial eight hours,
          but, you know, flexibility, whether it be at the site or CD-
          ROM interactive type training, or in town.  And you were
          proposing up to 90 days --
              MR. KINNIKIN:  Yes, sir.
              MR. BRELAND:  -- to complete that.  Do you try to
          hire -- I mean, are a lot of these portable plants coming
          back in the same area, and if you had a good employee, try
          to rehire that person, or is it basically going to be a
          brand new person?
              MR. KINNIKIN:  That depends.  You can have a
          mine -- call it a mine site that has been opened and closed
          down, no longer active.  It might be three, four years
          before the contractor will get back to the same pit.
              MR. BRELAND:  Uh-huh.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  As far as trying to -- what you're
          trying to say is that as we build these individuals and we
          leave, but the individual doesn't leave with us, then that
          individual, when we come back, would come back to work for
          the contractor.  I'm not sure that's the case.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  One of the things that we find
          that with the highway-heavy and the portable plants is that
          the laborer's job is not a very glamorous job.  Most of the
          times, these individuals, once they start working there and
          they find out how hard the work is, how dirty it is, you
          know, they tend to leave on their own, fairly quickly.
              MR. BRELAND:  Well, if you had 90 days and most
          of those plants are only there for two to three months, most
          of these would not get any additional training.  Are you --
              MR. KINNIKIN:  They would get the initial eight.
              MR. BRELAND:  They'd get the eight.  Would you
          propose some like weekly training to be working on it,
          because it looks like you could have nothing but eight hours
          of training.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  We get the eight hours, and then
          what we're doing now is an OJT, the walk-around, the hazard
          recognition.  And we do a weekly, every Monday, have a
          weekly meeting where they get together and do the safety
          meetings.
              MR. BRELAND:  And then you mentioned about the
          records and the problems with making them available at the
          mine site.  Do you have some reasonable time in mind to make
          them available upon request or --
              MR. KINNIKIN:  I would think that you ought to be
          able -- like the previous speaker, you ought to be able to
          get those the next day or within two days, I would think you
          ought to be able to get those records.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.  That -- on the OSHA
          training, do you keep records of that now?
              MR. KINNIKIN:  Yes, we do.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.  That's all I have.
              MR. STONE:  Do you have a sense -- I think we
          probably need to take a step back.  About how many
          operations do you cover in your association?  Do you have a
          rough idea about the size of the operations, how large?
              MR. KINNIKIN:  I have -- currently in New Mexico,
          I have 59 contractors.  Each one of those contractors
          probably have anywhere from two to four portable plants, and
          some of them may have some permanent sand and gravel
          operations, say, 150 or so.
              MR. STONE:  Okay.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  Bald figure guess.
              MR. STONE:  Do you have any rough idea about how
          many of these operations would currently be in compliance
          with Part 48?
              MR. KINNIKIN:  I'm going to -- my larger
          contractors are now currently in compliance with Part 48.  I
          have -- I'm not going to try to tell you falsely here,
          because it's like anything else.  I've always said that,
          with an employer, when push comes to shove, it'll get done. 
          So we have some individuals out there that are not doing it. 
          I know that.
              MR. STONE:  And do you have a sense of what the
          costs might be for miner, per worker, that's being spent
          today for training?  And just give me an idea if the cost is
          basically just the eight hours of initial training or what
          it averages to.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  Well, like the previous speaker,
          you just plug in the costs, and then if you go into town,
          you know, you have to rent a room.  And if you have one
          person, maybe, as safety director, his salary, plus
          individuals working under him who might be trainers.  So,
          you know, these are costs that you plug into it.
              But I don't have an overall cost figure for you.
              MR. STONE:  Okay.  Do you envision changes
          through Part 46 that would make it less expensive?  I think
          you may have alluded to a couple just now.  One might be to
          allow some training, using CDs or other technologies that
          wouldn't require travel to specific sites, things like that.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  That would help.  The other thing
          that would help was with the flexibility.  Any flexibility
          that you can give us.  Say, on the remaining 16 hours, if we
          can go 90 days, the individuals that we're going to be
          training, if they're there 90 days, they're going to stay
          with us.
              MR. STONE:  Okay.  And for recordkeeping, do you
          think that currently, that records are being maintained at
          some expense to the operators, or --
              MR. KINNIKIN:  Yes.  And I'm sure that most of
          the MSHA inspectors would tell you whatever records they
          find on site, they can hardly read because of the grease and
          the dirt and the grime.
              MR. STONE:  Okay.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  But records are being kept.
              MR. STONE:  Okay.  Thank you.
              MR. BURNS:  I just had a question on the
          crossover of employees from OSHA to MSHA sites.  As far as
          the OSHA training, I don't think there's any real specific
          requirement that you keep records of the training.  Is that
          a -- would that be a problem for some of the operators?
              MR. KINNIKIN:  You're saying --
              MR. BURNS:  Under OSHA, are they required to keep
          records of training?
              MR. KINNIKIN:  Yes, we are.  We have to -- just
          like with MSHA, we have to prove that they've been trained. 
          So, you know, if you train them, then you have to have
          documentation of the fact that they have been in training.
              MR. BURNS:  Okay.  So most people are already
          doing that on the OSHA side.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  Yes.  Or at least we are.
              MR. BURNS:  Okay.  That's really all I had.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Thank you very much, Mr.
          Kinnikin.
              MR. BURNS:  I guess David wanted to clarify
          something.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  I think you need to come
          up to the mike, if you could, just so the court reporter can
          get everything on the record.
              MR. PFILE:  Briefly, when the construction
          outreach that the heavy and highway contractors do, when an
          instructor does that class, the OSHA class, those records
          are sent to the OSHA Institute in Des Plains, and they keep
          the records.  They have the records.  Cards are issued;
          individual wallet cards are issued for the attendees, so
          those records are maintained someplace.  OSHA has them.
              MR. BURNS:  That's when they complete the eight
          hours or ten hours.
              MR. PFILE:  It's ten hour, ten hour and thirty
          hour.  When you complete, the instructor sends the course
          agenda, the attendees, all the information that's required
          to the OSHA Institute, and they, in turn, issue the cards
          back to the instructor for distribution to the attendees. 
          So they have a record of it, of anybody that's been through
          that course.
              MR. KINNIKIN:  There are also some specific
          regulations within OSHA that requires task training and
          hazard association with the task being performed, and those
          have to be documented as well.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  We've reached the
          end of our speakers who have signed up, but what we're going
          to do is have about a 15-minute break and come back.  I
          encourage any of you who have not spoken to consider
          speaking after the break.
              But in any case, what I will do when we come back
          is if there are no further speakers, is give you a summary
          of some of the comments that we've gotten at some of the
          other meetings up until now, just to give you some idea of
          what's been going on.
              And the speakers list is up here, if you'd like
          to come and sign up, and I encourage you to do so.  And also
          there's an attendance list in the back that I would ask
          everyone who is here to sign up on.
              (Whereupon, a short recess was taken.)
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  The next speaker that we
          have signed up is Ralph Richards.
              MR. RICHARDS:   Good morning.  My name is Ralph
          Richards.  I'm with Jobe Concrete out of El Paso, Texas.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Could you spell -- get
          your last name, the spelling.
              MR. RICHARDS:  R-I-C-H-A-R-D-S.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  And you company is --
              MR. RICHARDS:  Jobe, J-O-B-E,  Concrete Products,
          Inc. of El Paso, Texas.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Thank you.
              MR. RICHARDS:  I'd like to support what the first
          two speakers stated.  I think they did a good job.  I have
          just a couple of things that we see in our business that we
          would like for you to consider in addition.
              One of the things is in developing the training
          materials and your criteria and requirements, to take into
          account employers who have workforces whose primary language
          is not English.  We have a substantial amount of our mine
          workforce that does not speak English.  Some of them are
          bilingual; some of them speak only Spanish.
              And what we're interested in is what is going to
          be the requirements in that regard, with regard to our
          materials, our plants, this type of thing.  If we're going
          to be using them in Spanish, do we need to submit also the
          Spanish version as well as the English version, and take
          into account how we deal with those issues.
              We've had instances before in which there were
          questions as to whether or not we should receive citations,
          because warning signs, for example, were not in Spanish;
          they were only in English; and this type of thing, such as
          seatbelt signs.
              And so in developing a training program, the
          plan, the materials that must be submitted for approval, we
          would like you to take into account and give us some
          direction as to what a reasonable method of dealing with a
          labor force who does not have their primary language being
          English and may not speak English at all.
              A couple of other points -- that's the main new
          point that we have that we have not heard addressed here
          this morning, that issue.  A couple other points:
              Where to keep the records?  We strongly agree
          with the prior speakers.  There should be some central site
          and a time for presenting them.  Within a 30-mile radius of
          our headquarters, we operate nine or ten sites, I believe. 
          Some of those, as one of the prior speakers indicated, are
          not going to have offices; they're not going to have
          facilities.  You're going to have a tool box on a foreman's
          truck.
              Also our employee force is mobile.  We may have
          employees go to one specific site because we're operating
          there, producing materials, and this is, I think, fairly
          common in the sand and gravel business, for a specific job
          from that site, and once those materials to meet those
          qualifications are produced, we may go to another site.  So
          the employees are not at the same site every day.
              Some of ours are, but many of ours go to
          different sites on different days, depending upon which
          facilities are operating, what materials we're trying to
          produce that day.  So having a central source for the
          records, we think, makes sense.  We don't think there'd be
          any problem producing them within 24 hours.
              Another issue:  We have -- and we think there are
          other people in the industry who have a lot of side-by-side
          operations, as you've discussed this morning, regulated some
          by OSHA, some by MSHA.  We would like to see clear
          provisions where there is OSHA training required.
              For example, a loader operator is the easiest
          example.  A loader operator at a concrete batch plant is
          going to be under OSHA rather than MSHA.  That same loader
          operator may be moved elsewhere on the facility, and in the
          afternoon be working under MSHA, working piles, coming out
          of a crusher.
              We would like to see some consideration of that
          in the rules.  We would also, to the extent that there is
          training required for OSHA, like to see reciprocal credit
          for MSHA for that training and vice versa.
              I can give you an example.  We have a site that
          is -- has a hardrock quarry, has several crushers, two
          asphalt plants, two concrete batch plants, all operating
          within one large site or facility.  You can imagine from
          that the crossover that we have back and forth.
              Another item that came up this morning, the
          gentleman from the New Mexico Associated Contractors was
          talking about your truck drivers.  In a quarry such as ours,
          for example, base material -- we're making base material at
          a quarry.  We may have numerous independent truckers.
              These are individuals or companies that may own
          two or three dump trucks, who are coming into the site,
          regularly hauling out base.  They are going into a quarry,
          an MSHA-regulated facility.  What is going to be imposed
          upon us as far as training obligations or assurance from
          those people?
              We're not talking about an independent contractor
          who goes into a large facility and sets up a crusher and
          takes in a crew of 50, 60 people.  We're talking like the
          gentleman who spoke before, truckers who may never get out
          of their truck.  They're given a ticket when they go through
          the scale, as to what they're going to load.  They go -- the
          loader operator loads them.  They go back and weigh out on
          the scale.  They never got out of their truck until they get
          ready to leave the quarry and have to cover their load.
              So we're not even sure whether those people
          should be defined as miners, and we'd like some
          consideration of that.
              And those -- to keep those brief, those are the
          principal issues that I have.  I would try to answer any
          questions, but those were points that we hear addressed this
          morning that affect our industry that we would like you to
          consider.  Thank you.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Thank you, Mr. Richards. 
          I do have a couple of questions, and others on the panel may
          as well.  You indicated that in developing a rule, we need
          to address the issue of the bilingual workforce and
          requirements associated with that.  Do you have any specific
          suggestions for what we might include in a rule or specific
          issues that you believe that we need to consider?
              MR. RICHARDS:  Well, first, we have to find
          instructors who are bilingual and can speak Spanish.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.
              MR. RICHARDS:  It is not -- when you're looking
          at the certification program, that imposes another level
          that we have to meet, and we would like you to take that
          into account.  We think that we have people that we're
          developing within our company.  Our own safety director's
          bilingual, and we're working at it from that standpoint
          ourselves.
              If you require us to have specifically trained,
          certified instructors who've been to some school, et cetera,
          we may not -- we may have great difficulty finding the
          people who can actually deliver the issue.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Who are bilingual.
              MR. RICHARDS:  Bilingual.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.
              MR. RICHARDS:  So we lean more toward being able
          to train our own, to, as you discussed this morning, have
          credit for the supervised training in which you have a
          certified trainer who supervises someone who provides the
          training, this type of thing.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.
              MR. RICHARDS:  And I don't have an answer for it,
          other than I can envision regulations that could be written
          that would not take that into account, that would create
          real hurdles for us to get over.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  I have one other
          question.  You raised the issue of individuals coming on
          site such as truck drivers and whether or not they should
          even be considered miners.  Do you have a recommendation for
          how truck drivers like that should be handled in the
          training regulation?
              MR. RICHARDS:  I can tell you what some of our
          experience is.  We require the truck drivers to have hard
          hats; we require, you know, the basic obvious hazards, that
          if they're going to get out of their truck, they have to
          have hard hats, this type of thing.
              I don't have a true answer for it, other than
          those personnel need to be aware of the obvious hazards
          around them, but don't create a recordkeeping nightmare for
          us, trying to certify that each driver for the independent
          truckers has had certain amounts of safety training with
          regard to mining operations that may not be applicable to
          their task.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  But you're saying site-
          specific hazard training would --
              MR. RICHARDS:  Site-specific hazard training, I
          don't think would be a problem.  Our safety director's here. 
          I could ask him how he addresses it.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Yes.  If he could come up
          to the microphone and -- if you could, state your name.
              MR. PAQUIAN:  My name's Hector.  First name is
          H-E-C-T-O-R; last name is Paquian, P-A-Q-U-I-A-N.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Thank you.
              MR. PAQUIAN:  You asked a question?
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Yes.  I think the
          question was as far as truck drivers, whether site-specific
          hazard training would be appropriate for truck drivers who
          come onto the property but don't actually get out of the
          truck and are exposed to limited hazards on the mine site.
              MR. RICHARDS:  That's our general approach at
          this time.
              MR. PAQUIAN:  Our approach, as Mr. Richards
          indicated, is it is site-specific, and we would actually
          have the hazard recognition for that site in itself, and
          have the general contractors know about the premises itself,
          but solely to that extent only.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  Do you give that
          kind of training to the individual truck drivers or just to
          the contractor who employs them?
              MR. PAQUIAN:  No.  This is to both.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  And how much time
          does that generally involve, to give them that?
              MR. RICHARDS:  On independent truckers -- let's
          say we order 15 trucks.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.
              MR. RICHARDS:  We may get those from six
          different sources.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.
              MR. RICHARDS:  We have no way at this time -- and
          I don't think should have the burden imposed upon us -- that
          each one of those 15 drivers that's going to show up that
          morning is going to have site-specific training.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.
              MR. RICHARDS:  If we're going to do that, that's
          going to have to be a qualification that we would have to
          know and have defined, so that we can impose it when we
          qualify the truckers, because we qualify truckers before
          they're allowed to enter our quarry.
              Otherwise, if a trucker has four trucks and they
          want to haul for us, before they are allowed to start
          hauling for us or go on our call list, they have to meet
          certain qualifications.  That would be the point at which we
          have to deal with that.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  You're not
          currently doing that now, I take it.
              MR. RICHARDS:  No.  We deal with certain
          qualifications when they come on.  They are told, for
          example, they must have insurance; they must have various
          thing.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Right.
              MR. RICHARDS:  The drivers must have hard hats. 
          But as far as getting any certification from the owner of
          the trucks that the driver that he's going to send that day
          has had site-specific training for our quarry, we're not
          doing that, that I'm aware of.
              MR. PAQUIAN:  That's correct.  At this point,
          we're not, but we need to further get some recommendations
          on that.
              MR. RICHARDS:  And in our industry, that would be
          difficult, because when they send that truck, it's not
          always clear whether that truck is going to go into the area
          regulated by MSHA or the area regulated by OSHA.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Well, then, how do you
          propose that that be handled then?  I mean, as far as, I
          mean, truck drivers who come onto a mine site, do they need
          site-specific hazard training?  And if so, at what point
          should that be required to be given?
              MR. RICHARDS:  My personal view is -- and I don't
          know that the industry would agree.  My personal view is
          that if they are not going to get out of their truck, other
          than to cover their load, that they shouldn't even have to
          have the site-specific.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Should they have
          anything?
              MR. RICHARDS:  As far as MSHA?
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Right.  I mean, I guess
          that's what I'm asking is:  Should this rule require that
          truck drivers who never get out of their trucks have
          anything in the way of training?
              MR. RICHARDS:  I don't think so.  Now, let me
          state:  We have employee truck drivers who drive mine
          trucks, who haul within our quarries, et cetera.  We expect
          that we are going to train those, and we would like the
          rules to distinguish between your independent outside hauler
          who are just picking up and leaving the site, and the truck
          drivers who are working within the quarry, the people who
          haul out of our pit to the crushers and this type of thing. 
          We're not asking for exemption for those.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  And those people get out
          of their trucks and --
              MR. RICHARDS:  Yes.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  -- are on the mine site
          for some period of time.
              MR. RICHARDS:  Yes.  Their job is within the mine
          site all day or all shift.  What we're wanting a distinction
          on is the independent truckers who, like the gentleman from
          the New Mexico Associated Contractors was talking about, who
          come in to pick up, and what they're coming in to pick up is
          just what I was describing.  More than likely, they're
          coming in to pick up base.
              They may haul three loads of base, and they may
          haul three loads of asphalt.  They're not going to be
          required to get out of their truck, other than to cover
          their truck, their load, if they don't have the automatic
          covers, before they leave, go onto the highway.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  If, in fact, we
          were to decide to require some kind of site-specific hazard
          training for those truckers who don't get out of their
          trucks, do you have any recommendations or suggestions -- I
          mean, you indicated that that would be very difficult to --
          you know, that kind of a requirement would be difficult.
              But assume for the moment that we are going to
          require something along those lines.  Do you have any
          suggestions for how we might go about requiring something
          like that, that would impose the least burden on you?
              MR. RICHARDS:  Well, I think first you could do
          it two ways.  One, you would have regulations which would
          define the criteria in which they maintained their exempt
          status, if they're going to have an exempt status or their
          status as an independent, which is they stay on specific
          marked roadways; they go to specific designated loading
          areas; and this type of thing.
              Someone whispered in the back, They stay on the
          yellow brick road, but it's not really that ridiculous.  You
          know, if they had specific loading areas, specific routes,
          cross the scale to the specific loading area, et cetera,
          those type of things, definitions put upon the operator of
          how they keep these people separate and distinct.
              If you're going to impose something on the
          drivers, then it would be site-specifically that in order
          for them to qualify to come in, they have to know that the
          driver has to have a hard hat and know that if they do get
          out for some reason, even if it's just to bump the tires on
          their truck, they have to have their hard hat on, this type
          of thing, rules that they are not to leave the immediate
          vicinity of their truck, rules that they're not to get off
          of their truck.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Uh-huh.
              MR. RICHARDS:  This type of thing.  But well-
          defined rules, so that we know where our responsibility ends
          and we know what we have to do to qualify drivers and
          independents to come in, that doesn't create a burden in
          which they can't meet, and then a recordkeeping requirement
          to go with it that is reasonable to track; for example, that
          if we qualify to put on our call list an independent with
          six trucks, that they're told that their drivers must
          have -- you know, be informed of this, and we can rely upon
          the owner of the trucks to train their people.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Do you have --
              MR. BRELAND:  Just to follow up on that a little
          bit, I guess about the yellow brick road, we've had a lot of
          truck driver fatalities, customers and what have you, and a
          lot of times that could be tied to lack of information, like
          traffic patterns, where they may mix with other mine site
          haul trucks and what have you.
              So I think what we were trying to get at is that
          there's some minimum type of information that would need to
          be relayed to those types of customer truck drivers, if you
          will, that come on.  Do you see that as something that you
          do now typically at your sites, that you inform drivers
          where to go and where to pick up their  loads and stay in
          their trucks?  Do you do some of that already?
              MR. RICHARDS:  Yes.  Absolutely.
              MR. BRELAND:  So you really -- maybe we're not
          talking about anything different much than what you're
          doing.  And if that's the case, if you have some process
          that you require your sites to do, it might be worthwhile if
          you submitted that as a suggestion of how you handle these
          truck drivers and the qualification beforehand, as well as
          when they come to sites.
              Also, if you have some sort of clear definition
          of the different type of contractor you're talking about,
          this visitor type that would come in and pick up loads, that
          would be good to offer up your suggestions for that.
              On the bilingual issue, do you presently have or
          use some bilingual posters, safety stickers, et cetera?
              MR. PAQUIAN:  If I may interject, we mostly
          translate the English posters into Spanish.  That's one way
          that they can actually tell exactly, you know, what occurred
          in each situation.
              And I do appreciate also the fact that some of
          the videotapes that you all provide through the catalog, at
          the prices that you all provide them for, are extremely
          attractive, and I wish we could find a vendor or anybody
          that, you know, could translate those into Spanish.  That
          would be extremely helpful.
              MR. BRELAND:  We are looking --
              MR. RICHARDS:  To answer your question, yes, we
          do have.  For example, at the entrance to our quarries, our
          seatbelt signs are bilingual.  You have bilingual safety
          stickers posted in our loaders, trucks, some of our
          vehicles.
              MR. PAQUIAN:  Their hard hats, they've got
          stickers -- we use the universal sign, and we use the
          English and the Spanish.  We just try to cover every single
          base.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.  And then just on the
          crossover training issue a little bit, where you talk about
          some of these sites, where you may have a couple of batch
          plants, asphalt plants, and crushers, in general, are you
          using some of the same people to run like the plant
          operations themselves, or mostly is it the heavy equipment?
              MR. RICHARDS:  It's mostly going to be heavy
          equipment.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.  That really is all I had. 
          Thank you.
              MR. STONE:  Let me ask you just a couple of
          questions.  First of all, about how large is your operation? 
          About how many employees?
              MR. RICHARDS:  Total we have between 550 and 600
          employees, but keep in mind that we are a concrete supplier,
          an asphalt supplier, as well as an aggregate producer.  And
          we do some of our own trucking, as far as the aggregate.  As
          far as our mine operators, 150 --
              MR. PAQUIAN:  About 150, 180 tops.
              MR. STONE:  Okay.  And in terms of the training
          you currently provide, to what extent are you training your
          workers, your miners, in Spanish, and are you doing it -- do
          you have group training now that is in Spanish?
              MR. PAQUIAN:  We actually -- our trainings take a
          little longer than usual, because we start first in English,
          and then after that, we flipflop back and forth in English
          and in Spanish.
              MR. STONE:  Okay.
              MR. RICHARDS:  We have some sites in which
          they're predominantly Spanish, also taking into account to
          make up the workforce.  I mean, if we have a group of
          workers who all speak Spanish, some of which speak Spanish
          and English, and some who speak only Spanish, the training
          will generally be done only in Spanish.
              MR. STONE:  Correct.  Okay.  And your
          recordkeeping now, is it -- do you find it to be fairly
          cumbersome under Part 48 requirements?  Or is it really not
          so bad, because you're already providing those records for
          OSHA?
              MR. PAQUIAN:  I don't I see a problem with that.
              MR. STONE:  It's not currently a major issue.
              MR. PAQUIAN:  It's not a major issue.
              MR. STONE:  That's it.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Anything else?
              (No response.)
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Thank you very much.
              MR. RICHARDS:  Thank you.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  The next speaker is Ed
          Elliott from the Rogers Group.
              MR. ELLIOTT:  Hello.  My name is Ed Elliott. 
          That's spelled E-D, E-L-L-I-O-T-T.  I'm a safety manager for
          Rogers Group, Incorporated.  Our headquarters is in
          Nashville, Tennessee, but we do have operations which would
          fall within this district in Arkansas.
              I just wanted to -- I gave a presentation at the
          Northbrook meeting, so I'm not going to go back and answer
          those questions again, but I would like to make some comment
          concerning some points that were raised this morning.
              The first, I would like to talk a little bit
          about enforcement.  Obviously this will be an important
          factor that you must consider.  I think the basics of
          enforcement can be covered by inspectors, verifying that
          training has taken place and that a plan has been approved.
              This could be done by the employee carrying some
          form or card with the necessary information, and it doesn't
          necessarily have to be a government-approved form.  This
          would help.  And then the operator should be able to provide
          the information that that training has been done and that
          they have a training plan.
              But I think the most important part of making
          training a significant -- making it significant in the fight
          against accidents is MSHA's help.  And to some, this is a
          contradiction in terms, by some of the comments we've had
          this morning, which I agree with.
              But in particular, the Government can and must
          help the small operator to comply with the new rule.  This
          cannot be done by the inspector and enforcement.  MSHA must
          support training and education as much as enforcement.
              Second, I would like to speak to instructor
          certification.  This should be done, I believe, by the
          operator certifying that training according to their plan
          has been completed, and the plan itself would identify how
          instructors would be selected.
              Another point was raised about how much training
          should be required before being assigned or assigning a new
          miner to work.  I think this would depend upon the
          experience and demonstrated knowledge of the individual, but
          through my years of training that I have been an instructor
          as well as taking different classes, that the most effective
          training is where the employee is actively involved in the
          training process, not just sitting in a classroom and
          listening to someone give information to them, but actually
          having them involved.
              And I think they could accomplish -- of course,
          to accomplish this, the best way would be one-on-one
          training, both in the classroom and on the work site, and I
          think that flexibility needs to be there, where the operator
          can do some one-on-one training and maybe, according to
          their plan, there may be some done in the classroom; there
          may be some done actively as they are standing, watching an
          operation take place.
              But the training plan should explain how the
          operator will train, which must include where the training
          would be conducted.
              As far as the cost, I've heard -- I think, Mr.
          Stone, you've mentioned several times talking about that,
          and I do not at this time have anything that I can give you
          our costs as such, but I will commit that either at the
          meeting -- I plan on attending the meeting in Atlanta.  I
          will either have some cost numbers for you in Atlanta, or I
          will submit them in writing for the cost of our current
          compliance with Part 48.
              MR. STONE:  Thank you.
              MR. ELLIOTT:  Which I would say, if followed in
          its most restricted form, is very costly, and I could -- and
          I'll go into a little bit more of that at a later time, but
          I will get you that information.
              I think I heard something mentioned this morning
          about post -- or an assessment of some form or instructor
          evaluation.  I think this is a very novel idea that could
          certainly be something that a company would include in their
          training plan, some form of assessment that can be used to
          determine if the instructor was getting the information
          across to the individual and how effective it was.
              And we've had circumstances -- and I use the
          words very carefully about assessment.  I think a test, a
          lot of people freeze up with a test.  I venture to guess
          most of us in here, if somebody put down and gave us a test
          on what we heard this morning, we might be in trouble.  But
          there are a number of ways that you can assess the
          effectiveness of training, and that should be, I think, an
          element that would be looked for in the training plan.
              About truckers and hazard training:  Within the
          Rogers Group, we try to do this as much as possible with
          signage.  We, too, will have periodically a driver come in,
          and there are clearly marked roads and directions that
          they're given to follow.
              And to me, that would be sufficient.  If they're
          not involved with mining or extraction process or the
          milling process, I think the necessary safety hazard
          training could be given by signage.
              And it still puts the operators -- you mentioned
          customers and fatalities.  I think there was one, a
          Fatalgram, that I saw when a customer backed under a pile
          that had basically been left with an open face, and it fell
          and covered the person.  I think this is not something that
          has to be covered by hazard training, as much as it is the
          operator's responsibility to see that there is a safe
          workplace.
              And I don't believe, even though they may have
          taken some form of training, it wouldn't really have covered
          that circumstance, I don't believe.
              I want to mention about bilingualism and the
          bilingual training, and I respect the problem that some
          operators would have with this.  But I think you would also
          run into the problem that if you started developing Spanish
          versions, where would it stop.
              I think you would, therefore, have to consider
          other versions of training, when it would be requested.  And
          I think that would be something that we would try to -- I
          think the state grants programs should be in a position to
          work in that direction, where they could help in dealing
          with the bilingualism issue.
              But I want to say again about the training that
          the state grants program does a great job.  In some states,
          it is more effective than others, and I believe coordination
          of the state grants program, with active MSHA oversight,
          could be the most effective at implementing any new rule you
          come up with.
              But it would take that oversight and seeing that
          that money was efficiently being used.  And as I say, there
          are so many excellent examples of that, that I don't need to
          go into that.
              The last thing I want to say is that I think it
          will be a mistake to believe that promulgating new rules or
          allowing enforcement alone will have a dramatic effect on
          safety in the mining industry.  People are going to get out
          of this directly in proportion to what they put into it, and
          there's going to be a burden upon the industry itself to
          make a difference when this new rule comes about.
              And we are within the Rogers Group supportive of
          training.  We've done it for years.  We more than comply
          with Part 48, and most of this is done because our
          superintendents have found that it's good business.
              We may have an employee come in -- haulage is a
          very serious issue.  We may have an employee come in, and we
          will give them the basic training, both in the classroom, on
          the work site, but then again, before that superintendent
          would release that person to do independent work, they may
          have someone ride with them in that truck as many as three
          days, before they will release that person to begin doing
          some independent work within a haulage truck.
              So the people that are doing the training now
          are, I think, doing a good job with it.  They see the
          benefits from it, but if the rules are seen as being too
          restrictive, voluminous, more descriptive of exactly how the
          training would be done, I think there will be a great deal
          of resistance.  So the flexibility of that training and the
          simplicity of it, I believe, will be very important.
              And I want to say again:  I thank you for having
          these public meetings and allowing people to give input. 
          And that's all I have.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Thank you, Mr. Elliott. 
          I just have one follow-up question.  I just want to clarify. 
          As far as instructor qualifications and instructor
          assessment, your recommendation is that the rule provide
          that the plan address how those issues would be handled
          without specifying how they should be handled, that they
          need to be addressed in the plan, but not to set any
          parameters or criteria for --
              MR. ELLIOTT:  Yes.  That is correct.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.
              MR. ELLIOTT:  I would see MSHA as giving classes
          similar to what they do now and saying, We have a program
          that we can put your employees through, that will give them
          the fundamentals necessary to go out and develop an
          instructor certification, if you want to call it, or
          whatever.  But I wouldn't say to eliminate those things, but
          just give them as options.
              I think there's some people that come in -- I was
          very fortunate.  When I went to school, I came out with a
          bachelor's in education, and I had a teaching certificate in
          two states.  I felt I understood the techniques and
          fundamentals of instruction, but I didn't have the rules and
          regulations as far as guards and so forth.
              I didn't feel I needed to go through a class to
          prepare me to be an instructor, so being restrictive and
          saying it has to be that certification, I think doesn't
          always -- it still is not going to make a difference.  There
          are people that have degrees in education, and they're still
          not good instructors.  So there's not going to be the magic
          bullet to say, If you have this, you're going to do a good
          job out there.
              So the less restrictive -- I think the more you
          put on the performance of the operator to demonstrate that
          the training is going to be effective, and that's what we
          need to do.  There are a lot of ways to do it and a lot of
          great ideas out there that we may not even consider here.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.
              MR. BRELAND:  Well, just to follow up on that
          same idea, an assessment by the operator of the
          effectiveness of the training, if you have some ideas, it
          would be good to put those suggestions down and submit them
          on the effectiveness of that.  Would you be -- by monitoring
          their training or interviewing the employees some or --
              MR. ELLIOTT:  I think what I do in the training
          that I'll use an assessment, particularly if I'm in an area
          where I know there are some people that have a problem with
          literacy, I may put them in small groups and have a game. 
          I'll ask questions, based on what I've covered.  And then
          I'll give a little prize to the winning team.  And I'll
          direct verbal -- I'll make a verbal assessment.
              Then as far as first aid is concerned, we will do
          it in writing.  I will give a test in that case.  So there
          are many ways that you could do it, and I would say the most
          important thing is to find a method that the operator can
          assure that the knowledge is being imparted to the employee,
          and how they do that would be up to them, but they should be
          able to show that in their training plan, to assure that the
          training is effective.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.  And then also you said like
          the hazard training for truck drivers, you try to do
          primarily with signage.  Do you have some examples of that?
              MR. ELLIOTT:  I think you could -- speed limits,
          truckers staying in their vehicles.  You would have traffic
          patterns; you would have signs on where they would go to,
          the different piles.
              What we do at some of our operations, we'll
          actually have a sign that says it's number 8 or 57, and we
          have communication with the -- most of the truckers -- well,
          today, I guess, forever have had -- seemed like the CB was
          invented by truck drivers.  But we communicate with the
          truckers through the CB, and some method to make sure that
          they are restricted to an area which limits their exposure.
              Anything, any traffic signage that would do that
          or give them specific directions, I think, would be
          sufficient.
              MR. BRELAND:  And what do you do as far as like
          follow-up?  Do you monitor that some?  I mean, are your
          regular employees instructed to take some sort of action if
          they see them not following signs or getting out of trucks
          or --
              MR. ELLIOTT:  Yes.  If we have a problem with a
          customer that comes in, then our loader operators, who are
          actually loading the customer vehicles, are given, are
          empowered to talk with that customer.  If we find it's a
          problem --
              Just in the last couple of months, we had a
          problem at one of our facilities where the drivers were
          coming through; they were driving too fast.  The loader
          operator had mentioned it to them, couldn't do anything
          about it.
              The loader operator then instructed or told the
          superintendent of the problem, and the superintendent
          contacted the supervisor, and told them, Either you obey the
          speed limits or we're not going to load you.
              We have to be careful about customers.  If you
          put things that are too restrictive, then they're going to
          find somewhere that's not as restrictive.  So it's an area
          that we need to limit their exposure as much as possible as
          the operator.  I think that's our responsibility.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.  That's all I have.  Thanks,
          Ed.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Kevin?
              MR. BURNS:  Your experience with the state
          grants, do you think that they're sufficiently staffed at
          this time to handle the bilingual needs of the industry?
              MR. ELLIOTT:  No.  I don't believe they will be
          sufficiently staffed once the new rule comes about.  And I
          think from an efficiency perspective, I wonder how -- you
          all would know more about the process of how one goes about
          receiving state grant.
              But I think the Educational Field Services, the
          new unit that's being developed and if training rule is
          going to be enforced, I think it vitally important that that
          area, they be more active in what goes on in those state
          grants.  I'm sure they will be.  But that is critical.
              MR. BURNS:  That's all I have right now.  Thanks,
          Ed.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Thank you very much, Mr.
          Elliott.
              MR. ELLIOTT:  Thank you.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  The next speaker on the
          list is Bill Scarbrough.
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  My name is Bill Scarbrough, 
          S-C-A-R-B-R-O-U-G-H.  And I want to thank you guys for
          the -- being able to sign up late, come up here and talk,
          because I didn't really want to talk, but I thought, well,
          you know, if you don't say anything now, you know, forever
          hold your peace.
              I'm the safety director and also the H&S director
          for Arkhola, which is a subsidiary of APAC-Arkansas, which
          is a subsidiary of APAC, Incorporated, and we have various
          companies throughout the South and the Southeast.  Our
          particular operation is located in Fort Smith.  We have two
          sand operations and three rock quarries in the area, in
          Arkansas and Oklahoma.
              And thanks to MSHA, I have my job.  In 1978, I
          was hired strictly to do the training part.  When the
          regulations came on board, why, they hired me as the
          training person, and I was going to do all this, develop the
          plan and the training.  So in that regard, I have MSHA, you
          know, to thank for that, because from there on, I moved on
          up in the company.
              But a couple of the comments that I'd like to
          make:  First of all, the gentleman, the first gentleman, I
          think pretty well mirrors the way we think on it, as APAC as
          a whole.  The last gentleman made a couple of good comments.
              But I'll just go down this little list here that
          I made a couple of comments on.  The newly employed,
          experienced miner, I do think those are going to have be
          well defined.  Bringing a guy in -- I can remember back when
          I first developed plans, as trying to figure out, you know,
          who's going to be the newly employed, experienced miner;
          some guy from a construction outfit with two years'
          experience.
              Well, if you do that, you're going to have to go
          back and make sure he's had that.  If he puts it on his
          application and you don't verify it, you're not going to
          know.  And this is the hardest thing you have when you hire
          DOT truck drivers, is going back and checking the
          recordkeeping on them, if anybody's ever done that, so
          you're going to have to verify his experience.
              So I feel like if a guy comes in and he's got a
          certificate, that he should be a miner.  But also you're
          going to have to look at, Well, what kind of training did he
          get?  Was it good or bad?  So you don't know what kind of
          training that man had.  So, you know, that puts you in
          another position.  But I believe that coming on board, he
          should have some sort of acclimation to your operation,
          which we do that now.
              But also, you know, what do you call these guys? 
          I mean, how many years does it take to be a newly employed,
          experienced miner, if you allow someone to cross over, so I
          think that's going to have to be well identified, and there
          also has to be some way of checking up, to make sure that
          that's verified that that guy, in fact, had that.
              The second thing I had on task training:  I think
          task training should be performance-oriented.  You may get a
          guy that he can operate a front-end loader.  Well, how much
          time do you spend on him?  As soon as you determine that he
          meets the qualifications, you can certify him.
              To what extent do you go in task training?  I
          know one of the biggest problems I had was figuring out who
          gets task-trained for what.  Does a guy that runs an
          electric drill get task training?  Obviously equipment
          operators, plant operators, do have to have specific
          training.  Where do you end it?  I mean, do you go down to a
          pencil?
              I've had an MSHA inspector recently that
          probably, if he was enforcing these, if you had a hand
          screwdriver, he would have wrote you a citation if you
          didn't have task training on it.  So I think we need to have
          some well-defined limits.  You guys laugh about that; now,
          this is true.
              I'm going to have to mirror the first man's deal
          there.  We do have some over-zealous inspectors, and I've
          had -- I've been there 20 years, and I've had a lot of good
          ones and a lot of bad ones, but to me, when you're running a
          really good, clean mine site and the guy comes in there just
          to write citations, in order to keep up with another
          inspector, and he tells your men this, that's a big problem,
          you know.
              So I think we're going to have to address this
          thing, and I'll get on down to enforcement here in a minute,
          in a little different manner.
              Refresher training, I believe that 15 minutes
          ought to be the minimum.  We have some things that can be
          covered in 15 minutes, and you have some that may be two to
          four hours, such as first aid training.
              So you could cover rights of the miners in 15
          minutes easily on refresher basis.  Most of the men know
          that.  You don't need to sit there 30 minutes and go over
          it, because anybody that's ever done any training knows you
          can cover a lot of ground in 15 minutes.
              You know, I talked to my preacher one time and I
          says, You know, when they teach you when you're going to
          seminary how long to make a sermon, what do they tell you. 
          And he says, Well, five to six minutes, and then they're
          asleep.  Well, how many in here has ever been to a five- or
          six-minute sermon?  My guy now is about 20 minutes to 30
          minutes, and the Assembly of God up the street is an hour,
          hour and a half.
              And I know for a fact that once you get over that
          six or eight minutes, you're gone, because then I get my
          little book out, and I'm checking my appointments for this
          week.  And you guys know that, too.
              So you can cover more ground in 15 minutes,
          unless you have a good video or something, than you can with
          anything else.  So I think you need to have at least a 15-
          minute minimum, and it may take a little keeping up with,
          but you're going to get more out of your training.
              I think the first gentleman's deal there about
          the more you can stretch this out and the more you can
          repeat your training to that guy, the better off it's going
          to be, because back years ago, I used to sit in here, and I
          was teaching this stuff, just like you guys had in there,
          and I would look over in the corner.  Joe Blow's asleep; you
          know, this guy over here, you can tell his eyes are glazed
          over.  You're not getting there.
              You can't sit there eight hours with these kind
          of people and get what you want.  What you want is as much
          hands-on training.  You've got to get in there with that
          guy, get him out there on it, because you're going to lose
          them, you know.
              And if you guys remember back -- and I can
          remember, because we were active in MSHA and the National
          Stone Association when you guys got pulled out of that
          training.  Had you guys implemented this right in the first
          place, we wouldn't be sitting here, and you guys know it.
              I mean, obviously -- and if it's not done right
          the second time, we're going to be sitting here 20 years
          from now again, you know.  And I am for the training.  We
          are doing most of the training, although it may not be
          perfectly documented, you know, and I think that the
          training is fantastic, but it's got to be put out in a
          logical manner, where the supervisors can understand it and
          can document this thing with ease, because once you get it
          complicated, you're going to have a nightmare, and this is
          what the current standard is in my opinion, a paperwork
          nightmare.
              Going down to the training certifications, the
          5023s, that was my biggest problem, keeping up with those. 
          We do still keep up with them.  We don't do it by the book
          like you guys say.  But I still make those guys sign them. 
          We still use those 5023s.
              I'm negligent on the task training.  I don't keep
          up with that, not like I should, and I've got to admit it. 
          But we are doing it.  I mean, I make sure we're doing it at
          our places.  We do not put people on pieces of equipment
          unless they're trained.
              Qualifications of instructors:  I went through
          the school in Oklahoma, in Krebs, back in December of 1978. 
          A guy by the name of Ron Avner was the instructor, now
          deceased, and it was a real good school.
              The problem is:  Who went to the school?  Well,
          you had guys in there that didn't give a care about what was
          going on.  They were up there killing three days.  You had
          guys like me.  I'd just been hired, and I was really
          anxious, and I really enjoyed it, and I got a lot out of the
          class, but yet you turned out people that weren't very good
          instructors.  There was no way of saying, You're
          disqualified.
              You can't put somebody out there teaching unless
          you have somebody evaluating that person before you certify
          them, and I think I can certify the people at my mine site,
          because I have an assistant working for me, and I monitor
          him.  Not everybody else can do that.
              But I think that you should put some minimums in
          there, like if you've got two years of college; you've taken
          speech; you've also taken some other things; if you've got a
          four-year degree, you should almost be an automatic teacher. 
          But what you need is a follow-up, to make sure you're a good
          teacher.  You need some kind of follow-up.
              I've got guys -- back when this first came out,
          we all had to have certified instructors, and MSHA came out
          and said, Well, if you'll send in that they've got these
          qualifications and this and that, then we'll make them an
          instructor.  So I still have a whole bunch of guys, old
          employees, that are instructors.
              Well, how many of those guys are good
          instructors?  Well, none of them probably today.  You know,
          they're good for equipment instruction, to take a guy on a
          piece of equipment, but to get up here and do this, they'd
          be worthless.
              So, you know, back then, there was a lot of guys
          certified to be an instructor that probably shouldn't be
          today, and I know this for a fact.
              I do think, though, that there ought to be
          something in place to make sure that the quality of
          instruction is good, and you're going to have to have
          somebody going out and checking on it.
              The enforcement, I think -- I think an MSHA
          instructor can do the basics.  He can determine whether your
          man has had the training or he's got his certificates, but I
          think you're going to get down to the little details of it;
          you're going to have problems if he's allowed to go in there
          and write a citation for each little paperwork thing,
          because just like the first gentleman said, it's going to be
          a field there for him to write you 20, 30 citations on
          little minor things; that's going to get you back in these
          meetings again.
              You can't make these operators mad by doing stuff
          like that.  They're all going to get together and put you
          back in that same position.  I think if it's done right,
          maybe if you had -- if MSHA had an education enforcer that
          goes out to the quarries or wherever, and he checks the
          records, and he says, Okay, you've got these errors here. 
          He says, I'm going to help you correct them; you guys get
          them all corrected; I'm going to come back again in two or
          three months.
              He checks you, and if you're not doing it right,
          then he takes some kind of enforcement action, and then that
          takes off these little bitty citation deals -- okay? --
          because that's what going to make everybody mad.  Nobody's
          going to say anything if you come in and say, Okay, you
          know, you're deficient here and there; you need to correct
          this.
              Give them a chance; you know, don't come in there
          and start writing those things.  You know, have some way of
          working with these operators, and then if they don't comply,
          you come back and it's a blatant disregard, write them up. 
          I have no sympathy for somebody that doesn't take your
          advice the first time.  They need to learn.
              But I think if you open it up where these MSHA
          inspectors come in here writing, you're going to have a
          whole lot of stuff in the courts to take, because you're
          probably going to find that your MSHA inspector made some
          mistakes, and you're going to have to eat them, you know,
          because they do make mistakes, too, just like I do and most
          of the people in this room.
              The hazard training for customers, you know,
          that's one of our biggest problems.  Back when I first did
          my plan, Bart Benedetti [phonetic] -- I don't know if
          anybody in the room remembers him, and he had a lady working
          with him called Billie, and I can't remember her last name.
              But then he said, Okay, for the hazard training
          on customers, you have the sheet, and you have the hazards
          inherent to your mine, and you have the truck drivers come
          in and sign these.  Okay.  Your truck drivers come in, and
          as I was sitting there, I was thinking, Well, why couldn't
          we have the sign-in sheet, with a carbon copy.  The guy
          comes in; you sit them there; they sign the sheet.  He keeps
          a copy, and you keep a copy for yours.
              You need this for your one-time customers,
          because you can't make your customers mad.  When you do,
          you're not going to be in business, and those miners out
          there working are not going to be there.
              We have people coming in for a pickup load of
          sand, a pickup load of gravel, you know.  For the most part,
          our mines are well marked.  We have the signage up.   You
          know, If you get out of your truck, you're not loaded.  You
          must stay in your vehicle at all times.
              However, if you're loading a pickup, you may make
          that man get out and stand in front of that pickup, because
          you don't want to accidentally knock something on top of his
          cab.  I'm not familiar with how those guys do that, but our
          loaders, our loader operators have instructions not to load
          anybody that's not in their truck.  I mean, that's a
          standard deal, and they don't do it.
              But you have a problem with the occasional guy,
          which is the one-time guy.  You have a problem with the
          occasional customers that come in, and we have contract
          truckers that work for us.  That's not a problem.  We can
          handle those.  They sign the subcontract with us every year
          that they'll abide by the safety laws.  Most of them are
          stable enough, where we can have them sign the sheets and
          everything, and that's not a problem.
              It's your one-time customers, and you can't
          afford to make those people mad.  You know, they're also a
          big part of your business.
              Contract welders and those kind of guys, I think
          there needs to be a well-defined limit of how long does that
          guy stay on your mine property in order have complete
          training.  If he's coming in for a day or two, maybe hazard
          training is sufficient, if he stays in one place.
              However, I have contract welders that literally
          work with us at all five locations, and I probably feel like
          they probably should have maybe the 24-hour training, which
          I would be glad to comply and probably pay them.  That's me,
          because I know I have some.
              However, I have other guys, like an electrician,
          that in a certain area, if you required him to do that, he's
          going to thumb his nose, and you're not going to get your
          work done.
              So we have big problems with that, and I don't
          think most of those electricians would mind hazard training
          with site-specific stuff.  You stay in this area, and that's
          it.  You've got to wear your hard hat; you've got to do this
          and that.  I don't think they would mind that.
              Now, if they get out into the plant area, you
          know, I think that they should have more.  I think that's
          something that should be required.  And I think that's
          pretty much it.
              And I think the main thing I see is trying to
          eliminate a paperwork nightmare like we had before, and I
          think this is one of the items that -- the reason why we're
          here today, is that everybody looked at that and they saw
          it.
              I know from my dealings with it, it was -- I
          spent hours and hours and hours, putting stuff together and
          working with it, going out to the plants and working, trying
          to get task training oriented, you know, and it's a big job.
              And to have someone come in and write you a
          citation on each little bitty thing is not going to cut it. 
          I mean, it's going to get you right back there.
              And thank you.  That's all I have.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Mr. Scarbrough, I've got
          a couple of questions.  I wasn't clear on what your point
          was on the newly employed, experienced miner.  You indicated
          that somebody had to verify the experience that the
          individual had.  I didn't know whether you were talking
          about the operator verifying that employment or MSHA
          verifying that employment or the rule providing that that
          employment be verified.
              If you could, you know, maybe address that --
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  Well, as I understand it and
          back when I was dealing with this, if a guy came from a
          construction industry -- say, he was a hauling unit operator
          for a construction outfit and he had been that for seven
          years, you could bring this guy in as a newly employed,
          experienced miner, and then give him X amount of hours of
          training, and then certify him.
              So if we're allowed to do that, if you don't
          verify that guy's training or verify where you worked
          somehow, then you're going to have a problem there, because
          then you'll have guys coming in and saying, well, they got
          two or three years here, and they really didn't.  And then
          maybe they can operate it, but they don't have the
          experience and background they really need.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  So you're talking about
          somehow the rule provided that experience, alleged
          experience, be verified.
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  Right.  If I remember right --
          and somebody in this room can correct me -- back then you
          could do that.  It was allowed, to call that person a newly
          employed, experienced miner, if he came from another
          industry, doing almost the same thing.  All you had to do
          was like an eight-hour task training or whatever.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Refresher training.
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  Refresher-type thing and get him
          oriented, and I did that.  I'm not saying it was right, but
          I was told at the time it was okay, and we did that.  And I
          don't know if any other gentlemen in this room have also --
          or ladies have done that, but at the time it was allowed.
              I think that, you know, you need to have some
          real black and white definitions on this, because if you
          don't, the inspector's going to come in and he's going to --
          you know, he's going to say, well, They're not this or that,
          and you're going to get a citation.  The more black and
          white you can have these requirements, the easier it will
          be, you know, to implement.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  One of your
          recommendations was that refresher training be allowed in as
          little as 15-minute increments, and I was just curious as to
          why 15 minutes was what you selected as a minimum.
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  Well, I think you could do some
          in ten, but I think to make it legitimate, you're going to
          have to go 15 minutes.  I don't think you can do anything
          less.  I like 30 minutes, too, but I think with 15, you
          could do a session every week and hit an hour a month.
              Basically we do that now with five-minute safety
          talks every week, and we're covering more than five minutes. 
          We use the Fatalgrams religiously.  Every five-minute talk
          that I send out to my quarries and sand plants has a
          Fatalgram with it, which I think is one of the best tools
          that you have to give these guys.
              So I think it can be done that way.  I think you
          get better results with a little bit all along, rather than,
          you know, one eight hours in a year and they forgot it.  I
          can give a guy training for a lock-out, and next month go
          back out there and he may not remember everything.
              But if you went over it a little at a time and
          you had 15 minutes of lock-out here, after you've had
          initial training -- you can't do initial lock-out training
          in 15 minutes.  But you could do some follow-up.  You could
          do -- in 15 minutes, you could do lock-out of certain
          things; next week cover a lock-out of something else; and by
          the end of the month, you've reinforced this over and over,
          because I know the attention span of those guys, and it is
          not sometimes 30 minutes or an hour.  And these guys in here
          know it, too.
              If you've got a good lock-out video, which we do,
          30, 45 minutes, they'll pay attention to that pretty good,
          you know, but it's hard to sit there for an hour or 30
          minutes and me talk and get it by them.  You know, you've
          got to have some tools, and you guys have good tools.  Those
          MSHA films and stuff you put out, we use those.
              Every plant that I have has a TV video deal, and
          we have all of those -- we took the liberty of copying all
          those MSHA tapes like on one or two tapes, so they've got
          everything right there, and every one of my plants has those
          tapes on site, so they can use those for their refresher
          training.  So --
              But you can't do first aid, maybe, in 15, 20
          minutes.  You might could that in hour increments.  You
          cover shock, breathing -- I mean, however you want to do it. 
          Some of the stuff can be covered that way, and I think that
          would be an effective way of doing it.
              And also the same way with the 24-hour deal.  I
          agreed with the first gentleman that up to six months
          allowed, you know.  You might even could say, Well, okay,
          they get eight hours the first month before hire; they get
          eight hours again; and then so many hours scattered out.
              But the more you can scatter that training out
          during that newly employed's training phase there, the
          better he's going to be, because most of these guys get
          hurt, at least in my company, in the first year.  So the
          more you can enforce that as you go along, the better.
              If you give it to him all in the first week, he
          won't even know where he's at.  I mean, you know, a month
          from now, he won't know that.  But if you start him out
          good, give him some basics, and then later on, keep
          reinforcing it, you're going to do better.
              And I think anybody in here that's done training
          or teaches knows that.  My wife's a school teacher, and
          that's what she does.  She doesn't teach them WordPerfect
          all in one day.  You know, she teaches it to them every day
          for so long, and at the end of six months, they know it, you
          know.  And that's true with most things, you know.
              So that's my opinion on that.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  I just have one
          other question.  You were talking about, as far as
          enforcement, that the best thing for MSHA to do is to come
          in and point out, you know, areas where maybe the operator's
          falling short in the training and give them an opportunity
          to do what he needs to do, and then issue citations at some
          later point.
              Are you talking about the initial stages of this
          rule going into effect, or as a general --
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  I think as a general rule, that
          every so often you should have one of your people come in
          that's real experienced with training, that knows what's
          being done and kind of go through the books and look.  And
          it won't take them long to tell.  But he can get into the
          intricate parts, whoever does this, and tell whether you're
          doing it right.
              And just because they find a few little paperwork
          errors, they don't feel like they've got to write you up. 
          They say, Okay, I found these paperwork errors; you're going
          to have to correct this stuff, because under the current
          standard now, every violation that an inspector sees, he has
          to write.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Well, that's actually in
          the Mine Act.
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  I know it is.  I've been there
          for 20 years.  But, anyway, if you have those and they find
          an error here on that -- the guy didn't mark a past
          training -- that's a citation.  Correct?  Is that correct? 
          If he sees that, that is a citation.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Well, the Act says that
          if an inspector finds a violation, he has to write a
          citation.
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  That's correct.  So if he finds
          ten of these things that your supervisors made, that's ten
          citations right there.
              Okay.  If he comes in, he's probably going to
          find more than ten, because my supervisors don't keep
          perfect records.  And, you know, I can't be everywhere with
          them, and I have a system, and I can't be there with them. 
          Also, you know, it's going to happen.
              If you have a good general way of checking
          people's book and making sure they're in compliance and
          they're doing what they're supposed to be doing, I think
          that's what you need to do.  I think you're going to really
          make people mad.
              If you open it up for an inspector to come in
          there and write 20, 30 citations at a time on this training
          deal, you're going to be right back here -- I can guarantee
          it -- in 20 years, because they're not going to get --
          they're going to take away your funding again, because
          you're going to make everybody mad, you know.
              If you're going to do it, do it right.  Go in
          that thing and get something that works, and that way, you
          know, you're not going to have this trouble, because
          everybody wants the training and they need it.  But if you
          make it like this, it ain't going to work.  I've seen it. 
          I've seen what happens.
              The biggest problem that most of the operators
          have are these inspectors coming in and writing little bitty
          nitpicky things, because they can't find any big stuff.  And
          I've been there, and I've seen it.  Not all of them are that
          way, but you have a few, you know.
              And I know you can't help who works for you. 
          Sometimes you can't change those people.  I have guys that
          work for me that aren't the greatest, too.  You're going to
          have that in any big organization.  But you've got limit
          maybe the ability on some things, and if you want to make
          this training thing work, that's what you need to do.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  Thank you.
              Rod?
              MR. BRELAND:  Well, just to follow up on that a
          little bit, the flexibility thing, I think everybody's got a
          lot of interest in.  We've heard that at every meeting and
          certainly MSHA has interest in that.
              But one of the troubling things about the short
          increment blocks is the tracking.  You said you do -- if you
          were going to track that and demonstrate you'd done the
          training or even keep track of who's gotten the training for
          your own purposes, you're talking about these 15-minute
          blocks, and you have problems with the 5023, and I can
          understand that.
              But have you got some ideas of how you would
          monitor that for yourself, for your own plant?
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  I think it's fairly easy.  You
          have a blotter there, and you have your training here, and
          the meetings that those guys are at, they X, and they also
          sign for them.  Then you go back and you're keeping track of
          the times of the meeting.  I don't think that's too hard.
              I'm not going to be able to computerize that, but
          for me, it's not going to involve that much more on that
          part.  I think it's pretty easy.  You could have a chart
          here, have all your training for the year lined out
          practically, and have those Xs.  And if a guy at the end of
          the year falls short, you make it up, you know.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.  So it would be simple for
          you to do a manual tracking system, and --
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  I'm not saying it's simple.  I
          mean, if I'm going to have to do it that way, I will do it
          that -- I mean, there's nothing about this thing that's
          going to be simple, I can tell you.
              MR. BRELAND:  Well, I mean, for your own
          purposes, wouldn't you want -- I would think, even outside
          of a requirement, you'd want to know what training people
          had had, so you'd have sort of tracking.
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  That's correct.
              MR. BRELAND:  I assume you have some in place
          now, so it really wouldn't be an additional requirement if
          you were allowed flexibility to use whatever it is you're
          doing now.
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  I think if we had the
          flexibility, the paperwork would fall in place.  I think our
          guys would rather have the flexibility.  And I'm not saying
          we would do 15 minutes.  We might only do that with two of
          those.
              MR. BRELAND:  Right.
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  The rest of them might be an
          hour or two, but we still have to keep up with it, you know,
          and I think we're better suited, by those incremental
          training, rather than coming in in the wintertime and eight
          hours.  You know, everybody shuts down on a bad-weather day
          and you give the eight-hour training.  Well, is that any way
          to train, you know?  Most of them would rather be home that
          day.
              So you've got a couple of guys in the back that
          are mad.  They want to be deer hunting or something, you
          know.  So those incremental deals are the way, and the 15-
          minute deal, allowing people to do that, is just another
          tool, not saying we have to do that, but at least having the
          ability to do it.  That's their problem if they don't want
          the paperwork.  If they don't want it, they can do eight
          hours in a year.
              I personally like that idea.  I think I can
          really sell this to my supervisors better if every Monday --
          because we're doing it anyway.  We're giving those five-
          minute safety talks, and they're not lasting just five
          minutes.  They're probably 15 minutes in the morning, and so
          that would make it.  At the end of the year, they're getting
          more than eight hours' training.  Figure it up, you know.
              MR. BRELAND:  I think we're all on the same page,
          agreeing that the quality of training what's important to
          everybody.
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  Absolutely.
              MR. BRELAND:  The -- you had a couple of sand
          plants and a couple of quarries.  Do you have a different,
          like, training plan for each, or do you have like a company
          standard process --
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  No.  I still use my plans that
          were approved back in 1979 and probably would go in and look
          at those, and depending on what you guys come out with, make
          some alterations to them.  We pretty much use the standard
          same thing.  At the sand plants, we use the same thing, and
          at the quarries, we use the same, because obviously you
          don't have explosives at the sand plants, you know.
              So pretty much, you know, those plants are all
          almost identical in what they do, with the exception of the
          Arkansas River.  There we have a dredging operation which
          the Coast Guard is over the tow boats, and so you guys have
          no jurisdiction over them or the barges at the time.
              But basically what they do is essentially the
          same.  And you just have various small things at each
          location that may be different, you know, such emergency
          numbers or location of some first aid equipment or something
          like that, but essentially they're the same.
              MR. BRELAND:  That's all I had.  Thank you.
              MR. STONE:  I just had a couple of questions. 
          First of all, about how large is your operation?
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  Our operation is 350 people with
          about 125 miners, maybe 130.
              MR. STONE:  And you currently provide a great
          deal of 15-minute increments and training.  Is that
          accurate?
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  Correct.
              MR. STONE:  And do you maintain records of that
          now on the Form 5023, or are you not doing that --
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  I do that for refresher
          training, and our refresher training is conducted different
          from the 15-minute or five-minute safety talks.  And every
          month, I put out -- or timely, I put out, like, This is time
          for first aid training, and the supervisors conduct that.
              And at the end of the year, I send out the final
          training, along with the 5023s.  All of my supervisors are
          certified instructors, so they can do that.  I'm not
          required by law to do this, but I do this.  And that's been
          done ever since time began, because I realized the value of
          that back then.
              I did not like the extensive paperwork you guys
          had, is what I didn't like, and I don't think that's what
          most of these gentlemen really like.
              MR. STONE:  Right.  Well, that's certainly
          something that we're trying to consider alleviating and do
          some more flexible --
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  I think that's what cost you
          your deal was your paperwork.
              MR. STONE:  Do you have any sense of what the
          paperwork time is currently per miner, that this Form 5023
          is costing you?
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  I don't think it's very much for
          me.  I mean, I'd have to say the way I'm doing my training
          now, it's training that I would want them to have anyway.
              MR. STONE:  Right.
              MR. SCARBROUGH:  I'm not sure that you could say
          that it's costing.  I would say if this goes in effect, I'll
          probably have to hire somebody to go and monitor my mines
          and do a whole of this, somebody like myself in 1978,
          because I see it's going to take a lot more work that I
          don't have time to do.  And right now, I just monitor it,
          and I'm not as careful as I should be, to be perfect in it.
              Like I see today, if there's no change in it,
          where he can come in and write 20, 30 citations on it, I'm
          going to have to hire somebody, and the cost will be
          substantially more.
              MR. STONE:  Okay.  Thank you.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Thank you very much, Mr.
          Scarbrough.
              The next speaker on our list is Peter Ward from
          Hanson Aggregates.
              MR. WARD:  Good morning.  My name is Peter Ward,
          P-E-T-E-R, W-A-R-D.  I am on record from the Ontario meeting
          point by point.  I did want to address something that came
          up twice this morning, and that's the cost of training.
              If you have minimum compliance, I don't
          believe -- you should be proud, but if you have minimum
          compliance, I don't believe the cost would exceed 5 cents an
          hour.  And what I don't want this process to be hung up on
          is the cost of training.
              Education and training is a cost of doing
          business, and we just have to accept that.  If we have
          people talking about the burden of training at 5 cents an
          hour, or if we have a Cadillac program at 10 cents an hour,
          what is that compared with the operating cost, say, of a 988
          that guy operates at $80 an hour?  I think we get
          sidetracked on the cost.  The cost is minimal.
              And whether you have a huge organization like
          ours with over 100 million tons, when you -- if we look at
          our total cost and give you a lump sum, for argument's sake,
          three-quarters of a million dollars, whatever it may be,
          that would frighten the small operators.
              If you're looking for a cost of training -- and
          my friend and competitor, Ed Elliott, has offered to put in
          costs -- I would request that Ed do it in a cost-per-ton
          basis or cost-per-hour, not lump sum, because it's the small
          operator that's going to say, It cost them half a million
          dollars; we can't afford that.
              If you get it down to the 5 or 10 cents an hour,
          as a labor burden, they should be able to absorb that.  If
          they cannot absorb that, then they are under-capitalized and
          shouldn't be in business.  I mean, it's as simple as that.
              I just didn't want this meeting to get hung up on
          cost.  It is minimal, and we don't want to load the gun for
          you, the payback side is so huge.  At a very minimum,
          effective training will give you a ten-to-one payback.  But
          I didn't want to go too far into that.  We know it to be a
          case; we have it documented.  We are submitting that.  We
          have permission now to let you have those five-year records,
          and we will submit those.
              But nobody should be allowed to say they can't
          afford to train.  If they can't afford to train, they can't
          afford to be in business.  That's my five minutes.
              MR. STONE:  No.  I'm sure I would agree with you. 
          Are you going to be submitting any other materials in
          writing related to costs?
              MR. WARD:  Yes.  I needed -- I was asked this at
          Ontario, and I needed to get authority to release numbers. 
          But we have a four-year history that we will be submitting.
              MR. STONE:  Okay.  Because one thing that we
          would welcome would be any documentation you provide, not
          only on what the costs are, but if you had any evidence to
          support the paybacks.  We certainly believe that they exist,
          but quantifying them would be a tremendous asset for us.
              MR. WARD:  We can do the payback more than the
          costs, because so often people like myself have multiple
          responsibilities, and depending what spin I'm trying to put
          on it, I can either add the secretary and add the company
          cars, but you have these other responsibilities.  That would
          be -- I can make the number wherever you want it to be.
              On the other -- it's the truth.  I can make it
          high; I can make it low, just by padding it and putting
          overhead in there, part of the president's salary.
              But if you get it down to the costs that we were
          incurring through unplanned events and the costs we are now
          incurring through unplanned events, and all we have done is
          had an aggressive training program, which was as simple as
          teaching the people the laws that govern their trade and
          holding them accountable, we can show you the reduction
          there.
              If you want to get into costs, I can just say
          that if you get eight hours at 10 bucks an hour, allow $10
          documentation for documentation, you can come up with about
          5 cents an hour to be in minimal compliance.  And I go back
          to my first statement:  If they can't afford that, they
          really shouldn't be in business.
              MR. STONE:  Thank you.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Thank you very much, Mr.
          Ward.
              The next speaker on the list, or speakers, is
          Elsa Roman and Jim Murray from University of Texas at
          Austin.
              MS. ROMAN:  Yes.  My name's Elsa Roman, 
          R-O-M-A-N.
              MR. MURRAY:  James Murray, M-U-R-R-A-Y.
              MS. ROMAN:  We represent The University of Texas
          at Austin.  We are part of the state grants program here in
          the state of Texas, and the reason we decided to attend this
          meeting is because we want to be prepared to effectively
          assist the operators here in the state to comply with
          whatever requirements are effected in the future.
              There are three basic points that I would like to
          address, the first one being with whatever the requirements
          end up -- or result to be.  We would like to suggest that
          they be as similar to Part 48 as possible.
              We have received quite a bit of feedback from
          operators on this issue, the Part 56 issue, and much of the
          feedback we have received is how much of a change is it
          going to be; how much of a change am I going to have to
          make, in order to stay in compliance with the requirements
          that are going to be effected.  So we would really like to
          see them remain as similar to Part 48 as possible.
              We have worked throughout the years with many of
          the operators who are here in the room, and most of them are
          in -- most of them, of not all of them, are in compliance
          already, because they have been providing the training as
          required by Part 48.  So whatever changes are made, if they
          can be as little as possible, that would mean having to make
          as few changes as possible.
              Would you like to add anything?
              MR. MURRAY:  I was making note of some of the
          comments, and I would like to raise more questions that I
          would like not only you but all of the people to think
          about.
              Certainly this issue of, for instance, the truck
          drivers coming on the property or other visitors, short-term
          contractors that don't come on a regular and frequent basis,
          how to handle that has always been one of the biggest
          problems that we've seen when addressing training plans,
          when addressing training.
              A lot of plants handle it with signage.  I think
          in some cases, when you look at smaller sites where there is
          no gate guard, there is no gate, and it's two or three miles
          into the office, they're already exposed to the hazards
          before, you know, they've had an opportunity to get any
          training, so maybe signage might be the way we want to go on
          those rather minimal requirements.
              But it's not clear in the regulations exactly
          what that requirement is.  You can read in Part 48 what
          hazard training must consist of, but, of course, there's no
          way to test the effectiveness or if a person even sees a
          sign driving in.  So I think that has to be amplified in the
          regulations, to make sure everybody is meeting the spirit as
          well as the letter of the law on that particular issue.
              The training plan issue that was raised early
          this morning, I think it would be a good idea for MSHA to
          give -- if not a form type program with a cafeteria style,
          like was mentioned this morning, some better guidance.  I
          know in Part 48, it names the issues of information that
          must be provided, but these guys aren't in the business of
          putting together long federal required documents.
              We came up with one that we've used here in
          Texas, and with minor modifications, it's been generally
          accepted by MSHA as being a good basis.  Well, if we can do
          it here in Texas, then I think it might be something that
          certainly could be done on a federal level, where you could
          have them kind of fill in the blanks.
              You're not asking for lesson plans.  I don't know
          whether you want to do that or not, but for a training plan
          addressing the issue or the courses to be taught, how
          they're going to be taught, the course objectives or subject
          objectives, and the evaluation methods and the training
          methods, fine.  That could be done on a federal basis.
              When it gets down to individual lesson plans for
          teaching those courses, that would be, you know, something I
          don't think anybody wants to get into right now, as far as
          having any regulation over that.  But a general training
          plan on how they should approach it, with options that they
          could pick from, I think might be a good idea.
              The issue always comes up, especially from those
          of us in the federal grants program:  How can you
          effectively and cost efficiently train people when you're
          hiring one or two at a time and doing this 24-hour training? 
          That has always been a problem for us.
              Even going to a small mine site in Amarillo when
          we're based out of Austin, to do two or three people, would
          not be very cost-effective to the state grants program.
              The issue wa raised this morning about a form of
          criteria-referenced instruction through interactive CD-ROM-
          based computers.  That, I think, might be something that has
          to be considered in lieu of the mandatory minimum hours of
          instruction.
              Under that, you set the criteria in the program
          that the men must be tested on, and they don't even realize
          that they are being tested on it, the way some of these
          programs are designed.  OSHA's been using a lot of those
          programs.
              And if the person can get through and has the
          knowledge, minimum knowledge required by the regulations,
          then if he can do it in four hours rather than eight hours,
          so be it.  Make it responsive to the subjects he must know,
          the knowledge he must have, rather than some arbitrary
          eight-hour thing.
              We've already eliminated the requirement that
          each subject have an hour assessment to it, and say, Well,
          the training in total for all those 12 or 10 subjects must
          be 24 hours for new miners and 8 hours for annual refresher,
          but we don't say that you have to spend 30 minutes on
          explosives, two hours on this or that, even within the
          training plan anymore.
              So why do we carry that further into the entire
          minimum requirement for annual refreshers, if we set up some
          criteria to judge whether they have the knowledge, which
          could be for those companies that have the technology, the
          ability to apply this interactive criteria-based training.
              MS. ROMAN:  On the instructors' training course,
          that issue has also been raised.  We would strongly like to
          emphasize consistency.  We would very much appreciate
          guidance dealing with consistency.
              What the instructors' training course should be,
          what it should include, the subject matter, the curriculum
          has been addressed several times.  There are many programs
          out there.
              They are all different, so what each person gets
          in terms of preparation is not consistent, and we have
          experienced how that consistency -- how that lack of
          consistency has affected via training.
              And other people have already commented on how
          ineffective some of the training has been, either training
          they have received or training they have done, where people
          are falling asleep, where people don't care.
              Because of these comments that have already been
          made, we strongly believe a curricula developed by MSHA is
          strongly needed, so that people out there doing the training
          are not just out there to fulfill a requirement.  They
          are -- the whole purpose of training is effectiveness in
          terms of keeping people safe.
              And popping a video in a TV for 15 minutes or 45
          minutes is not going to cut it.  It's just not going to cut
          it, if we're talking about effectiveness.  And several
          people have raised the issue of effectiveness.
              So because of that issue, we strongly feel the
          ITC course has to be something which gives the industry
          guidance on how to be an effective trainer for the purpose
          of reducing safety and health problems.
              MR. MURRAY:  There is another issue I'd like to
          bring up, and that is we get calls virtually weekly, two or
          three calls a week.  The contractor -- and it was mentioned
          this morning -- calls an operator who's asking for bids from
          contractors to come on their property and do some sort of
          work.
              And he says, the operator says, We've got to have
          this 24 hours of training or this 8 hours of training. 
          They're not really sure.  And they say, They gave us your
          name, and they want us to do the training for them.
              We have to go back and say, Well, are your people
          experienced in heavy industry and so forth?  Well, yes;
          they've been doing whatever they do for a number of years. 
          Well, under the criteria, as I understand it, in the CFR, it
          is basically up to the operator to decide whether they are
          newly hired, experienced miners, or must go through the 24-
          hour training as new miners.
              And the criteria is not clear to the mine
          operators how to make that decision.  And basically if they
          call us and ask us, from what I've gathered over the years,
          we have to say it's based on an individual basis, but that's
          not a very satisfactory answer, when they might be sending
          different crews out during different periods of their
          contract.  And that makes for an extreme burden on the
          contractor.
              They tell them that, You've got to do the
          training.  Well, obviously if it's site-specific training,
          they have to get involved with the mine operator, if they're
          a contractor, to get that site-specific training.  How do
          they do that? 
              Well, we tell them, either they have to have
          their people sit in on training being done by the mine
          operator, or they have to get a certified trainer, which
          means they have to come to us and get one of their
          contractor people certified as an MSHA trainer, and, again,
          they don't have true mining experience, only in their
          contractor field.
              Then they have to go back, file their own 
          training plan, and do training under that training plan, but
          then it's an aborted or a truncated form of training plan,
          because they still cannot do the site-specific for the mine
          operator that they've contracted with.
              Now, they can send their certified trainer to
          that miner operator and get that person trained under their
          plan and then go back and do it, but that gets pretty
          complex, too.
              So this whole issue for contractors becomes
          rather confusing.  I've got contractors out there.  Every
          one of their employees has a pocketful of 5023s.  They have
          one 5023 from the contractor himself, who's filed a plan
          with MSHA and got it approved and they do generic training,
          the new miner, you know, up to the point of site-specific
          and the annual refresher up to the point of site-specific.
              But then every time that contractor sends one of
          his people to one of several mines that they might be
          working with, they have to go through site-specific
          training.  Well, if you look carefully at the regulation,
          that word "site-specific" is not clarified at all.  So what
          is site-specific?  You can give training on fire and
          evacuation in generic terms, or you want to get into it very
          specific on certain mine sites.
              And I know deep in my heart it's not being done. 
          Basically what's happening, I think, in a lot of cases is
          when they show up, they're given what is essentially hazard
          training, to implement the contractor's plan in order to
          give them the full coverage.
              But I think it is necessary that the issues for
          contractors be clarified.  That is one of the areas where
          we're having a lot of accidents, where people are getting
          hurt, and I think there's things falling through the
          regulatory cracks on how that training must be conducted and
          what falls into that training.
              MS. ROMAN:  One other issue I'd like to bring up
          is the training in Spanish, which has been -- or bilingual
          training.  We at the State of Texas, our program, we have
          been providing training in Spanish since we have been part
          of the program.  We translate the Fatalgrams into Spanish. 
          We translate our material that we develop or the material
          that we receive from the Mine Academy into Spanish.
              So in preparation to meet or to help operators
          meet this requirement, because many of the operators that we
          deal with have primarily Spanish-speaking employees.  We
          would like to see more material, primarily videos, because
          the video in Spanish really does assist in the training.  We
          would like to see more material, primarily videos, being
          offered by the Academy or by MSHA, in the language -- in
          Spanish language.
              We do a lot of translation ourselves.  We do all
          of the training or most of the training in the state of
          Texas in Spanish, but we do need more assistance, especially
          with these new requirements, because the mom-and-pops out
          there who are not fulfilling the requirement currently and
          who are the ones who have the Spanish-speaking employees are
          going to be the ones who need the most help.
              MR. MURRAY:  The Academy role as far as providing
          training materials, I think, is very important and should be
          much more publicized and incorporated into the regulations
          than it is now, so that they know where to get certain
          material.
              I would also like to say with regard to the
          training certification for MSHA instructors, MSHA does
          provide a basic lesson plan for doing the instructor
          training course, which involves basically teaching people
          how to teach.  It does not address specific issues of what
          is going to be taught.
              But even there, it does not dictate how quickly
          that course can be done.  We do it on a three-day basis, and
          as a method of evaluation, we videotape a presentation that
          is required for them to become certified.  But that's
          certainly not in any form of regulation, and it's given to
          the individual student at the end, to do with as he or she
          desires.  So it's not evaluated by anyone else.
              There is no set regulatory criteria to say what's
          pass or fail in this course, so everybody makes mistakes
          when they're taking a how-to-train-the-trainer course, when
          they get up, especially some of the people that are sent
          that are not used to public speaking at all.  And so we
          can't say that they're not going to do better when they're
          among their own people, so we're not looking for perfection.
              But there is no minimum standard addressed. 
          Right now the criteria is primarily based on whether we feel
          they met certain basic criteria from the lesson plan, as far
          as coming up with performance objectives, giving overviews
          and doing an evaluation, and addressing the points generally
          that they have given in their overview and lesson plan.
              But there is no criteria there, and as to whether
          the course could be one day or a week -- I heard somebody
          say that they have one course that's a 40-hour course on how
          to do, you know, the training course.  That's not
          established yet either, so that might want to be addressed.
              That's all I have.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  I've got a couple
          of questions.  It wasn't clear to me in your earlier
          statement, Ms. Roman, what percentage of operators you think
          are in compliance right now with Part 48.  I thought I heard
          you say that you thought that most of them were, but --
              MS. ROMAN:  Most of the operators in this room,
          if not all of them in this room.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Oh, okay.  I guess that's
          what I'm looking for, is to get some sense for what the
          breakdown is of operators who are in compliance, you know,
          for the most part with Part 48 requirements, and what
          percentage of operators may not be anywhere near to being in
          compliance.
              MS. ROMAN:  Well, in the state of Texas, 80
          percent, more than 80 percent of the mine sites are less
          than ten employees.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Right.
              MS. ROMAN:  So if I had to just pick a figure out
          of the air, I'm going to say at least 60 percent of the
          operators in the state of Texas are not in compliance.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  Not even close to
          being in compliance; I mean, are not providing any training
          at all or providing minimal training?
              MS. ROMAN:  Right.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  You also
          mentioned, I guess, a generic training plan, to provide
          assistance to particularly small operators in developing
          their program.  Now, did you say that you have got something
          along those lines, because if you do --
              MR. MURRAY:  Yes, ma'am.  We developed a plan
          that we use in the instructor training course, to give them
          a clue --
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  As to what --
              MR. MURRAY:  -- as to what they have to do --
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  -- a plan should look
          like --
              MR. MURRAY:  -- and it's cross-referenced to the
          regulations, so they know why they're doing it.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Could we get a copy of
          that?
              MR. MURRAY:  Sure.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  I mean, you can
          either give it to us today or send it in by mail later on,
          whatever is most convenient for you.  Yes.  We would
          appreciate having a copy of that.
              Let's see.
              MS. ROMAN:  If I can make another comment
          regarding the instructors' training course, some of the
          feedback we have received from operators is the need or the
          desire for a refresher.
              We have explored the possibility of offering a
          refresher ITC, like a one-day or something along those
          lines, because people do recognize that it's been five years
          or ten years or fifteen years since they have gone through
          the course, and things have changed.
              So maybe addressing or thinking about the
          possibility of, within the ITC requirements or standards or
          whatever it is you decide upon, to have some type of
          requirement for a refresher.
              MR. MURRAY:  That might go along with what was
          raised earlier, where you've got dead people on the rolls as
          certified trainers, that would check out -- I don't know how
          MSHA would say that a trainer is qualified or not qualified
          today, because inspectors don't have time to sit in on
          classes, as you know.
              They're shorthanded enough, so to send them out
          on a special mission to watch one trainer at one mine site
          do training is a little unrealistic.  But maybe some follow-
          up -- and most of them are asking for it -- I will say
          this -- and they would like a more content-based refresher
          than so much going over the fundamentals of teaching.
              They want to say, Well, what's a better way to
          teach accident prevention.  They want to get more specific
          sometimes in a follow-up type training.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  I just have one
          other question.  You indicated that some guidance or some
          specificity on what site-specific hazard training might be.
              MR. MURRAY:  Exactly.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Do you have any
          suggestions for how we might define that or what we might
          require?
              MR. MURRAY:  I would prefer to defer to the mine
          operators themselves on that issue.  I could come up with
          some, but I don't think I'm prepared at this point to give
          any details.  Obviously there are some generic portions,
          most of the topics that are addressed under annual
          refresher, but I think I could very easily, based on the
          questions I've heard over the years, determine what type of
          site-specific questions.  I'd be glad to provide that.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Rod?
              MR. BRELAND:  I want to follow up on a couple of
          things.  One, Ms. Roman, you talked about in general people
          want us to stay as much like Part 48 or similar as possible. 
          I assume that's in the training requirement, not in the
          recordkeeping area.
              MS. ROMAN:  Both.
              MR. BRELAND:  Both?
              MS. ROMAN:  Uh-huh.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.  In using the same kind of
          format, the 5023s and stuff?  That's the feedback you have?
              MS. ROMAN:  I didn't get too much specific
          feedback, specifically on 5023s, but the comments we've
          received are, I want to make as little change as possible to
          what I'm doing already.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.
              MR. MURRAY:  One thing I would add:  Back in
          1985, '86, the Mining Academy came up with a computer-based
          5023 form, and it was not Windows-based.  It doesn't work on
          most computers today, and the man that designed it has been
          transferred somewhere else, so they don't claim to know
          anything about it now.
              I still have one copy left, and I would loan
          that, up until a few years ago, and I never heard back from
          people, saying it wasn't working on some of the newer
          computers.  But that should be a basis.  Like the man said,
          MSDSs now can be put on computers; why not the 5023.  And
          that would certainly, especially for the larger operations,
          where it really becomes a burden, keeping all those
          individual booklets, would be a read godsend.
              MR. BRELAND:  You talked about the time related
          for training not being hours but the subject.
              MR. MURRAY:  Competency rather than minimum
          hours, if you will.
              MR. BRELAND:  You know, some of the comments
          earlier, you're talking about that have to relate to tasks
          and maybe the person's capability or their prior knowledge
          to some of it, or are you talking about in all subjects,
          even the general --
              MS. ROMAN:  Well, for instance, any subject that
          you're going to teach, you've got to come up with certain
          performance objective that you're trying to get across to
          the student.  Those can be built into some form of
          assessment in a computer-based training, to see if that
          person is being trained through that, knows that
          information, and that meets question that most people are
          asking:  How do we test the effectiveness?
              I'm not proposing that we get into pre- and post-
          testing, you know, after we do platform training.  But most
          students I've heard from that have taken tests on these
          interactive computers, they don't really feel like they're
          being tested, because if they miss the question, it runs
          them back through the program again, until they get the
          answer right.
              And that's why sometimes they can get through it,
          especially on annual refresher.  Some of those guys, it's
          not a question of the information that they have. They've
          been trained; they know it.  When there's a noncompliance,
          in many cases, you and I both know what the reason is.  It's
          non-enforcement by the operator themselves.
              And so if they've got the knowledge, why waste
          the money having them sit in a classroom for eight hours, if
          it's not a training problem?  And that's why I say
          criterion-based training would be much more effective, where
          the minimum criteria of information that they have could be
          assessed.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.
              MR. MURRAY:  If they meet that assessment, then
          they can go back to work.
              MR. BRELAND:  Do you have some suggestions on
          development of that minimum criterion?  Is that something
          you're doing?
              MR. MURRAY:  Yes.  It would take almost something
          like this, where the professionals in the field that are
          doing a lot of the training could sit down very easily --
          and the Academy people -- and develop criteria on each one
          of those subjects that we're talking about.
              MR. BRELAND:  If you had some ideas or examples,
          that would probably be good to submit.
              MR. MURRAY:  Okay.
              MR. BRELAND:  If you have ideas also for the
          requirement for -- you mentioned the refresher training, I
          think, Elsa, of the trainers themselves.  There's a two-part
          issue or question on that.  One, you say there's this
          multiple of types of instructor training courses that are
          going on.
              If you have a more favored one, you should make
          that known, what it is.  And if you have a means that you
          think is effective for assuring that trainers are staying
          current or doing effective training, those suggestions would
          be of interest to us as well.
              The other thing, on the bilingual training, you
          said that you do most of the bilingual training in Texas. 
          You mean, most of the training you provide is bilingual, or
          you do most of the bilingual training that is done in the
          state of Texas?
              MS. ROMAN:  I would say that we do most of the
          bilingual training that is done in the state of Texas.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.  So you spend a great deal of
          your time doing that, your work group themselves.
              MS. ROMAN:  Yes.
              MR. BRELAND:  Okay.
              MS. ROMAN:  And we have noticed over the years,
          as people have become more familiar with who we are and with
          what the requirements are, the percent of training we are
          doing in Spanish has steadily increased.
              MR. BRELAND:   Okay.  How about the materials? 
          You say you do some translation, and I was aware of that,
          with Fatalgrams and some other things.
              MS. ROMAN:  Uh-huh.
              MR. BRELAND:  But are you sharing that back with
          the Academy now?
              MR. MURRAY:  In fact, in the Academy's products
          catalog, they have listed some of the videos that we've
          translated into Spanish.  They're basically the same video
          with just voice-over in Spanish.
              MR. BRELAND:  That's all I had.  Thank you.
              MS. ROMAN:  And we do provide Fatalgrams free of
          charge to anyone in the state of Texas, and we also provide
          them to other state grants programs, so that they can share
          them as they wish.
              MR. BURNS:  Have you had discussions with the
          Academy about producing the videos in Spanish and English,
          you know, when they start, because it's not the same -- I
          mean, I've done that myself, gone from English to Spanish,
          and it's not the same thing as developing it originally in
          Spanish.
              MR. MURRAY:  We certainly are not in --
              MR. BURNS:  Sometimes you have to stop the
          video --
              MR. MURRAY:  -- the, you know, production of
          videos.  What we did was offer a while back to do the voice-
          over for that, and that's as far as we've gone on that
          issue.  But it would be something that the Academy certainly
          has the facilities to do.  Whether they have the personnel
          to do it, I'm not sure.
              MS. ROMAN:  The latest videos in Spanish from the
          Academy really have impressed me in the quality of both the
          video and the translation, because we take a look at
          hundreds of videos in Spanish, and I'll tell you that the
          vast majority of them are really not that great.
              So obviously the Academy has found a resource to
          do that for the industry, and if they would continue to do
          that, it would be really great.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  That's been recently,
          that the quality has improved?
              MS. ROMAN:  The last year or so.  Yes.
              MR. BURNS:  Okay.  I guess the only other
          question I had for you was the issue of the contractors.  Is
          that an issue that is brought to your attention pretty
          regularly?
              MR. MURRAY:  Very regularly.  I would say there's
          hardly a week goes by that I don't receive at least one call
          from a contractor who has just applied to work on a mine
          site, and he wants to know what he has to do to comply, and
          the regulations are very confusing.
              MR. BURNS:  Yes.  Okay.  That's what I wanted to
          find out, how big of an issue that really is.
              MR. MURRAY:  And, of course, we don't know how
          many contractors are out there, because of the way the
          system works.  If you ever apply and get a number, then
          you're on the list forever.
              MR. STONE:  I just have a couple of questions
          really of clarifications of previous questions.  One has to
          do with your statement concerning Part 48 and the requests
          of operators that the new regulation be as similar to Part
          48 as possible.
              At the same time, we are hearing requests for
          more flexibility in the rules, and you also expressed a
          desire to have the regulations themselves clarified, so that
          the language is clear, so that, for example, for contractor
          training, it becomes easier for them to understand what they
          must do to be effectively trained.
              It seems to me that these are not necessarily in
          conflict.  The greater flexibility is not necessarily in
          conflict with being as close to Part 48.  The fact that
          someone might be able to comply with Part 46, the same way
          they comply with 48, doesn't mean that they couldn't comply
          through some other means that might be more flexible or
          easier.
              MR. MURRAY:  I think we are saying that they'd
          like it easier, not harder, so they'd like less subjects
          rather than more, at least the same subjects.
              MR. STONE:  Right.  Okay.
              MR. MURRAY:  That's what, I think, we're saying.
              MR. STONE:  Okay.  But the point was that the
          fact that you're requesting it be similar to 48 doesn't mean
          that you want the language to be identical.  You want it to
          be clearer or more flexible, but still effective.
              The other question -- maybe I just didn't
          understand what you said earlier.  You said that you believe
          about 60 percent of the small mines in -- aggregate
          operations in Texas currently provide -- don't comply or
          provide no training at all.  I didn't understand which
          one --
              MS. ROMAN:  Don't comply with the Part 48
          training parts.
              MR. STONE:  Don't comply.  Okay.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Substantially don't
          comply?
              MS. ROMAN:  Substantially don't --
              MR. MURRAY:  I would have to say so.  I've made
          calls to a lot of them -- and they're mom-and-pop
          operations -- and a lot of the families are the employees,
          and they just don't see the need.  It's --
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  They're really not doing
          any kind of training at all.
              MR. MURRAY:  Basically they say they know how
          to -- they've been working around here, haven't been hurt
          since '73, so -- that's when he lost his leg.
              MR. STONE:  And a related question:  One of the
          first things that you said, I thought, was that most are
          already in compliance with Part 48.  Is the "most" -- I
          didn't understand --
              MS. ROMAN:  Most of the people in this room.
              MR. STONE:  That was your response.  I'm sorry. 
          Okay.  That's it.  That was my only other question.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Anything else? 
              (No response.)
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Thank you very much.
              We have reached the end of the individuals who
          have signed up to speak, and I would like to ask now if
          there is anyone in the room who has not spoken, who would
          like an opportunity to come up here and make some -- yes.
              MR. SUMMERS:  My name's Don Summers, on-site
          safety and safety consultant.  I've had the privilege of
          being on both sides of the fence with MSHA, as well as the
          independent contractor.  I guess my first question:  Are we
          going to change the Mine Act to comply with Part 46 and Part
          48?
              We was talking about the inspectors coming out
          and advising.  I don't think the Mine Act allows the
          inspector to do this.
              As working with contractors, I think the training
          plans should be submitted, should be individually for that
          particular contractor.  We go on Part 48, and we talk about
          explosives and the eight subjects or nine subjects that's
          required by law to be covered under Part 48 training.
              For instance, an Anthony Crane or a small
          operator might not have the explosives; they might not have
          the high walls to contend with.
              We have a certain amount of subjects that's
          required by law to cover, and it doesn't apply.  It's not a
          rubber stamp.  It doesn't apply to everyone.  So we need
          flexibility for each contractor.  We can't have just a
          stamped plan and everybody falls into the die.  That doesn't
          happen.
              I've had the fortune of going to about 22 states,
          all the way from Washington State to Florida, from Minnesota
          down in Texas.  Each district we go through, whether it be
          metal/nonmetal or coal is a different interpretation. 
          That's a problem with people throughout the United States.
              How are we going to correct that?  I don't have
          any idea.  But it's something that you guys ought to be
          aware of.  That's all I have.
              MR. BRELAND:  I don't have any questions, just a
          comment.  You know, the Educational Field Service group is
          going to be working with trying to make that more
          consistent, as far as the differences across district lines,
          on how we've applied training the past.
              When you talk about plans that exist, that's
          something different than the Part 46, but it's all being
          kept in mind as this is going forward.
              MR. BURNS:  I guess your first statement, you
          know, we don't have the authority to change the Mine Act,
          and we're not going to be doing that.  But certainly working
          within the Mine Act, I think there may be some ability to
          deal with some of the people we're talking about here, to
          evaluate plans and evaluate what's going on and not
          necessarily write citations.
              That could either be done by the Educational
          Field Service group, who will not be conducting inspections
          or investigations, and those are the cases where the
          authorized representative is required to write a citation. 
          So there may be some flexibility within the Mine Act.
              This is really the first meeting where this has
          really been raised as an issue, so we haven't had a real
          chance to evaluate it, according to the Mine Act, but I
          think there may be some flexibility there, to do that sort
          of thing, to help the smaller operators or even a larger
          operator that may not have a complete plan, but is still
          effectively training people, but there are areas that they
          are somewhat deficient, to make corrections and improve
          their plan and not have to be faced with heavy enforcement.
              So I think certainly Rod's group can do that, and
          there may be some other opportunities similar to the CAV
          program, where maybe that can be done, too.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Thank you very much, Mr.
          Summers.
              MR. SUMMERS:  Thank you.
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  I'd like to ask again: Is
          there anyone else in the room who would like an opportunity
          to speak?
              (No response.)
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Is there anyone in the
          room who's already spoken who would like to come up and
          address some of the issues that have been raised today?
              (No response.)
              CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO:  Okay.  What I'm going to
          do now is just give you a real short summary of some of the
          comments we've gotten at some of the other meetings, and
          also give you an idea of what comes after this, as far as
          the rule-making process is concerned.
              As far as MSHA approval of training plans, we
          have gotten some comments that plans should be submitted to
          MSHA for approval as they are currently under Part 48,
          whereas other commenters have suggested, as was suggested
          here today, that minimum criteria be set in the rule or in
          some other fashion, and that if operators meet these minimum
          criteria, that the plans would be considered to be approved.
              As far as minimum training increments for --
          particularly for refresher training, we got a lot of
          comments, suggesting that the 30-minute or more restriction
          that's currently in Part 48 not be adopted in Part 46, and
          that short periods of training should be allowed to be put
          towards compliance with the eight-hour annual refresher
          training.
              As far as independent contractors, I mean, we got
          a lot of comments today, as we have at some of the other
          meetings, talking about responsibilities of contractors
          versus production operators for training for employees of
          contractors.
              And we have had a lot of production operators or
          operators state that independent contractors should be
          responsible for the comprehensive training for contractor
          employees while the production operator would be responsible
          for site-specific hazard training for those employees.
              And, again, the whole issue of categories of
          various types of employee:  Who is a miner, for purposes of
          training, and who must receive the 24 hours of new miner
          training or the 8 hours of annual refresher training?  Who
          should get site-specific hazard training?  We've gotten a
          lot of comments indicating that those categories of
          employees should be specifically set out in any rule that we
          develop, and that it is clear who needs to get what kind of
          training.
              We've gotten a lot of comments, saying that the 8
          hours of initial training of the 24 hours of new miner
          training, which is required in Part 48, should not be
          adopted into the Part 46 training requirements.
              A lot of people have pointed out that some of the
          mine sites that will be affected by this rule are very
          small, and that it is really not necessary to require 8
          hours of the comprehensive, initial new miner training
          before a miner is allowed to begin work, and that it should
          either be a lesser period of time, such as 4 hours or 2
          hours, or cast in terms of specific areas that need to be
          covered before a miner can begin work.
              I would say we've had pretty unanimous agreement
          that supervisors should receive the similar training to what
          miners are currently required to receive under Part 48, and
          as many of you probably know, I mean, there has been a
          change to Part 48 recently, which brings supervisors under
          the same requirements as miners.
              As far as training instructor qualifications,
          we've gotten a broad spectrum of comments all across the
          board on this issue.  Some commenters have advocated that
          the rule establish no specific requirements for instructors,
          that mine operators should have the discretion to determine
          who is qualified to give miner training, whereas other
          individuals have advocated that the Part 48 type instructor
          qualification system be adopted in Part 46.
              There have been a number of individuals who have
          indicated that they believe people with the hands-on
          experience at mine sites can provide very good training,
          although they may not really satisfy, you know, the Part 48
          type instructor requirements that are in effect currently
          under Part 48.
              We still are taking a look at how we distinguish
          between new miners and experienced miners.  We've gotten
          some comments today and at some of the other meetings that
          whatever we put into Part 46, whoever is currently in
          compliance with Part 48, should not have to alter
          significantly what they're doing under Part 48 to comply
          with anything under Part 46.  And I think that that
          consideration will probably have a lot of bearing on how we
          determine what definitions we develop for new miners versus
          experienced miners.
              And we have also gotten a lot of comments that
          whatever we put together in Part 46 should recognize OSHA
          training, because you have a lot of crossover of employees
          and a lot of individuals, miners as well as others, receive
          training under OSHA, and that we should accept that in some
          fashion if it's appropriate, as compliance with MSHA miner
          training requirements.
              As far as effective date and compliance
          deadlines, some people have advocated that we give six
          months after the publication date for compliance with new
          Part 46 requirements.  I would say we have probably gotten
          more suggestions that the deadline, the compliance deadline,
          looked more like a year, to allow the industry and affected
          individuals to come up to speed with what we may require.
              I think that that probably pretty much summarizes
          the main areas, the main issues that we've gotten comments.
              As far as what happens next, as I indicated in my
          opening statement, we're intending to develop a proposed
          rule that will be published in the Federal Register sometime
          in the early spring of this year.
              We've got a very short time deadline, so the
          sooner the better, but obviously it's going to take some
          time to develop the rule and the preamble that goes with it,
          and to get the necessary clearances, bureaucratic
          clearances, within the Department and also within -- you
          know, from the Office of Management and Budget, which also
          has got to review the rule.
              After the rule is published, there is what's
          called a comment period after that, during which we will
          hold, I would expect, at least two public hearings, which
          would be similar in format to the meetings that we're
          holding now.
              Written comments will be received during the
          comment period.  Everyone here is encouraged to participate
          at that time, and after the comment period closes, which
          will be several months after the publication of the proposed
          rule, we will then go into the development of the final
          rule, which, as I indicated, we are expected to develop and
          publish on or before September 30 of 1999.
              So that will give you some idea of what our
          schedule is going to be.  You know, keep your eye on the
          Federal Register, on whatever other means you have of
          getting information about what is going on in MSHA, for, you
          know, times and dates and deadlines and things like that.
              Again, I encourage you, if you've got anything
          else that you would like us to consider, to submit it to us
          on or before February 1 in writing, additional comments,
          suggestions.  If you need to know what address to send that
          to, you can come up to the front.  But basically it's the
          Office of Standards, Regulations, and Variances in MSHA, at
          the Arlington address, which is 4015 Wilson Boulevard,
          Arlington, Virginia 22203.
              If there's anything else, speak now or forever
          hold your peace.  If you have any questions, you know, any
          additional things that you'd like to discuss with us, please
          feel free to come to the front at the end of the meeting,
          which is right now.
              So thank you very much.
              (Whereupon, at 12:00 noon, the meeting in the
          above-entitled matter was concluded.)
          //
          //
          //
          //
          //
          //
          //
          //
          //
          //
          //                            REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE
          
          
          IN RE:                   Public Meeting on Mine Safety and Health
          DATE:                    January 5, 1999
          LOCATION:                Dallas, Texas
          
                              I hereby certify that the proceedings and
          evidence are contained fully and accurately on the tapes
          and notes reported by me at the hearing in the above case
          before the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
          
          
                                               Date:  January 7, 1999
          
          
          
                                                  Barbara Wall               
                                               Official Reporter
          
                                               Heritage Reporting Corporation
          
                                               1220 L Street, N.W.
                              
                                               Washington, D.C.  20005