Today in Labor History—December 29

Sitting Bul
lDecember 29, 1890 - U.S. Army troops slaughtered 150 Sioux men, women and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Days earlier, they had killed Sitting Bull. (From Workday Minnesota)

December 29, 1970 – Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act. (From the TWU)

12 Workers are Killed Daily on the Job in America

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

It would come as no surprise if you were unaware that April 28 is Workers’ Memorial Day. We do not get the day off work or school. Banks do not close. Government does not shut down. The media do not even mention it.

However, it might come as a surprise that a dozen or so U.S. workers die on the job each day, given the common belief that the country is the wealthiest and greatest in the world. After all, don’t we have modern medicine, safety devices on our machines, effective training and mandatory breaks for those who operate dangerous machinery?

While American workers are responsible for the vast wealth accumulated by the richest CEO’s, bankers and industrialists, their lives and wellbeing are hardly valued at all. They are easily replaced by the millions of unemployed and underemployed. Slowing down production to a safe speed, installing safety features, and properly training employees all cut into profits and are far more expensive than a bouquet and a condolence check.

Working to Live, Not Dying to Work

Legislators routinely mischaracterize safety regulations as “job killers.” However, weak safety regulations are, in reality, people killers. In 1970, the year that the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) was passed, there were more than 14,000 deaths on the job nationally. By 2010, the number of occupational deaths was down to 4,574, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Despite this progress, there are still too many deaths occurring on the job and job deaths are increasing in some regions. The Sacramento Bee notes that workplace fatalities increased by roughly 25% in Pennsylvania between 2009 and 2010, despite a decline in the number of people actually working. There have also been many notable preventable workplace fatalities recently, like the Deep Water Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11 workers, and the Massey Upper Big Branch coal mine explosion, which killed 29 workers.

It is also worth noting that close to 3 million workers are injured or made sick at work each year.

No one should have to die or suffer serious injuries just to put food on the table.

Today in Labor History—December 29

Sitting Bull

December 29, 1890 - U.S. Army troops slaughtered 150 Sioux men, women and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Days earlier, they had killed Sitting Bull. (From Workday Minnesota)

December 29, 1970 – Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act. (From the TWU)

Work, A Deadly Disease

Lose Something At Work? (Image by scottypimpin)

Working in These Times recently published a pretty good partial history of workplace safety regulations. Knowing this history is important in the struggle to defend working conditions, as bosses and their lobbyists try to fast-track anti-regulatory legislation.

Obama, in particular, has been singing the praises of deregulation, suggesting that worker protections are merely “red tape” that hampers growth. The data in the article (from Public Citizen) is particularly interesting, as it shows just how significantly workplace safety regulations have reduced workplace fatalities and injuries. You should check out the article, but I’ll present a summary below:

Byssinosis, or “brown lung,” affected thousands of women who worked in poorly ventilated dust-clogged textile mills. It was virtually ignored until the 1960s and 1970s. By 1978, a new  OSHA rule required lung-friendlier machinery. Within a few years the incidence of brown lung fell by 97%.

In the 1980s, bosses sued to block the Lockout/Tagout rule, which would have forced employers to mark potentially hazardous equipment with colored tags and provide safety training for workers. Despite their protestations, the rule passed. As a result, hazardous energy-related fatalities declined by between 30% and 55% in the years following the enactment of the rule, preventing 50,000 injuries and 120 fatalities per year.

Despite opposition from agribusiness and the Reagan administration, OSHA enacted the Grain Handling Facilities Standard, which established environmental controls for dust and gas and required protective gear for workers and led to a 95% decline in explosion-related fatalities for certain facilities. There was also a dramatic reduction in coal mine-related deaths since Congress passed the Mine Safety and Health Act of 1969.

Obama’s Gift to Business—Decreasing Workplace Safety

Obama recently wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal calling for a massive wave of deregulation, supposedly to free up business to create more jobs and make our economy more competitive. Politicians love to claim they are creating jobs, particularly when unemployment is high. But the claim of “job creation” is really just a cover for deregulations, subsidies, bailouts, and other policies that increase profits. Business will hire more people when it is profitable to do so, not necessarily when government gives them a handout, as was seen in the wake of the massive Wall Street bailout and the less massive bailout of Detroit. Indeed, after the auto manufacturers’ were paid off by the government, jobs were cut, in collusion with the UAW.

This week, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced it was halting the implementation of ergonomics regulations. According to OSHA Chief Dr. David Michaels, ergonomic injuries are the leading cause of workplace injury and illness in the U.S. (They comprise 28% of all workplace injuries). The defeated regulation would have required businesses to count ergonomic injuries and was already considered a compromise (weakening tougher ergonomic rules implemented during the Clinton administration). The move effectively kills all ergonomic workplace regulation.

Obama’s deregulation orgy and his self-lubrication for business are not just indications of Obama’s willingness to capitulate to big business, but of the weakness of organized labor. The ruling elite have been growing cockier, and it’s not just because the Republicans took Congress in the last elections. The number of unionized workers has never been lower (see Impending Demise of Unions), and the union bosses seem uninterested in doing anything about it, like organizing new and existing members to take collective job actions. Until labor is willing to rise up and make life painful for the bosses, the bosses will feel emboldened to take more and more from workers, whether it’s workplace safety, pensions, benefits or compensation or even the right to strike.