Harry Targ
The stench is vomit-making as never before. The
fat and plucks, the bladders and kidneys and bungs and guts, gone soft and
spongy in the heat, perversely resist being trimmed, separated, deslimed;
demand closer concentration than ever, more speed. A helpless, hysterical
laughter starts up. Indeed, they are in hell; indeed they are the damned. Steamed, boiled, broiled, fried, cooked.
Geared, meshed.
In the hog room,108 degrees. Kerchiefs, bound around
their foreheads to keep the sweat from running down into eyes and blinding,
become saturated; each works in a rain of stinging sweat. Almost the steam from
the vats seems cloud-cool, pure, by contrast. Marsalek falls. A heart attack.
(Is carried away, docked, charged for the company ambulance.) Other hearts
pound near to bursting. Relentless, the conveyor paces on.
Slow it, we got to slow it. (Tillie Olsen, Yonnondio: From the Thirties, 1974)
American workplaces from the dawn of the industrial revolution
to the recent past were living hells for workers. Novelist and essayist Tillie
Olsen described working conditions in meat-packing plants in the 1930s. Others
have written about auto assembly lines, mines, textile assembly plants, and
food-processing plants. Analysts such as Harry Braverman, in Labor and Monopoly Capital (1974),
pointed out that employers have
usually sought to control the minds and motions of workers. Profit-making has
been seen as tied to controlling every movement of workers, the speed-up of
production, and cutting costs for health and safety. After years of labor
mobilization, the Occupational Safety and Health Act passed in 1970 to begin to
address the problem of how dangerous it was to go to work each day.
Every April 28, workers across North America assemble to
remember those workers who died or were injured on the job. Workers’ Memorial
Day, initiated in the United States by the AFL-CIO in April, 1989, celebrates
the inauguration of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (1970).
Workers’ Memorial Day is about remembrances, reviews of progress toward safety
and health, and re-commitment to making the workplace safer.
In April, 2013 the AFL-CIO issued its annual data-based
report, “Death on the Job: the Toll of Neglect,” to review the current state of
worker health and safety, given the administration of OSHA rules initiated over
forty years ago. “Since that time,
workplace safety and health conditions have improved. But too many workers
remain at serious risk of injury, illness or death as workplace tragedies
continue to remind us.” These tragedies have occurred in mines, oil refineries,
fertilizer plants, meat-packing plants, manufacturing facilities, and on
construction sites.
The AFL-CIO report indicated that 4,693 workers were killed
on the job in 2011 (13 workers per day). Over 3.8 million work-related injuries
were reported with unofficial estimates of such injuries doubling or tripling
that total. Particular sub-groups, such as Latino workers and those born
outside the United States, experienced excessively high injury rates,
presumably because of their fears of raising safety concerns within the
workplace.
The report indicated that workplace inspections had
decreased over the years because of budget constraints limiting the hiring of
inspectors. Given the numbers, federal OSHA employees could be expected to
investigate a workplace once every 131 years and state OSHA inspections can be
expected every 76 years. Penalties for workplace violations also are inadequate
to deter violations.
The Report indicated that budget allocations for OSHA must
be dramatically increased, more laws must be passed to regulate the complex
reality of workplace dangers, and worker rights to protest dangerous conditions
at the workplace must be strengthened.
This year, Workers’ Memorial Day events will highlight
demands to address contemporary issues of concern such as
-defending the OSHA process from political campaigns to
reduce workplace regulations.
-requiring employers to establish work-site safety and health
programs with worker participation to address enduring hazards.
-adding safeguards against respiratory diseases from silica,
combustible dust, and Black Lung.
-protecting workers who seek to challenge workplace safety hazards,
particularly for immigrant workers.
-passing more legislation such as the Protecting America’s
Workers Act to expand protection for workers not yet covered by OSHA rules.
-increasing worker voices on the job including creating an
environment that would allow workers to freely choose to form unions.
Earl Cox, Community Services Liaison, Northwest Central
Labor Council, Indiana AFL-CIO,
concluded as he announced the 2014 event that legislators must be made
aware of workplace health and safety “…so when a vote comes up to slash funding
for OSHA, they vote to protect workers and not corporate interests.” The
AFL-CIO believes that “safety laws and regulations don’t kill jobs—but unsafe
jobs kill workers.”
(For those living in Tippecanoe County, Indiana Workers’
Memorial Day events will occur April 28, Inside the Depot, Riehle Plaza,
Lafayette at 5:15 p.m.)
