""A mine worker was forced to live in company houseing, accept payment in company script that could only be used at over preiced company stores. If a worker was sick with black lung or injured at work.. they got no pay and their entire family could be evicted.""

There was even a song about a US miner who laid charges in the mine.

Big Jack Goff, I think, was the name. Anyway, one day he got careless and blew himself up, but being a rough, tough American male landed unhurt, only to find on payday that he'd been docked pay for the time he was in the air.

Seems that song epitomises the US attitude to blue collar workers, at work and in health care.

Don T.