Health and Safety Are the Key

The men and women who are employed in mining must be in good health. Even though mechanization has reduced the amount of physical work required, the individual must still have reasonable strength and good hearing and eyesight. A physical examination is required by law upon starting employment in the mining industry and medical check-ups are carried out on a regular basis.

For mining companies the development of safe job procedures, combined with common sense, has always been a high priority. Accident prevention is the responsibility of everyone who is involved - management, workers, unions and governments.

Each mine also has a rescue team. These usually consist of six to eight miners specially trained to find and assist miners who are trapped in the event of cave-in, fire or some other accident.

Powerful modern ventilation systems have considerably reduced the risks which were once associated with mining, but mining companies, unions and governments continue to work with research organizations in order to certify that working conditions are always getting better.

Skill Level Increasing
While many workers who are not skilled and who have little formal education still work in the mines of North America, the increasing complexity of mines today demands that those who wish to advance to the highly skilled and better-paying jobs should have a minimum of secondary school education. Technical training from a technical high school or community college is an advantage and, of course, higher education like an engineering degree or any other university degree, gives a young miner many more probabilities for better positions in the future.

Mining companies provide the inexperienced worker with a time period of initial training which is common to all employees. This common core training (or stope school, as it is sometimes called) includes an introduction to the basics of mining and mining safety procedures, classroom study on surface and underground, followed by on-the-job training as helper to a miner with experience. Specialized training is afterward a necessity to become qualified to operate individual machines.

Office Staff
There are the professional and technical staff whose duties encompass such things as sampling, surveying, drafting and planning besides the miners and various supervisory personnel. Directing their activities are the mining engineers and geologists who map the progress of the mining operations, design the mining methods, and direct the search for new ore.

Upper management most of the time includes a mine manager and a mine superintendent. Naturally, there are also secretarial and personnel accounting at each mine.

Mill and Smelter Worker
The treatment of ore requires another set of skills, and thus, another group of specialized operators are on the job to watch over the ball mills, flotation tanks and other machinery. Assayers and chemists are also on hand to perform the analysis of samples for the control of the mining and milling operations.

When the metal concentrates are shipped out for refining, still another team of workers comes on the scene - furnace men, smelting equipment operators and refinery operators, only naming a few.

Computerized "programmable logic controllers" are common in most mills and smelters, so operators are demanded to monitor an entire sequence of operations from a control console that keeps tabs on what is happening in many parts of the plant.

In conclusion, the gold, copper or other metal is ready for shipping, making the shippers the last workers in the unbroken line of individuals who discovered, mined and processed it.