August 12 2010

[Updated 11/14/11 below] Barrick Goldstrike is the largest gold producer in the world, with a stock market value of $51.0 Billion. With that kind of wealth, one has to ask why workers at the company's Meikle mine near Elko, Nevada were compelled to use a broom handle to keep a reset button depressed, so tons of aggregate rock would continue to flow down a shaft. That jerry-rigging along with the mine management's failure to correct other defects, such as missing clamp bolts and load-bearing plates on the aggregate carrying pipe system, led to the death of Daniel Noel, 47, and Joel Schorr,…