This U.S. Army safety film for war plant workers was produced in cooperation with the National Committee for the Conservation of Man-Power in War Industries of the U.S. Department of Labor. It promoted worker safety on the home front in support of the U.S. war effort during World War II. The National Committee for the Conservation of Manpower in War Industries was established in June 1940, for the purpose of assisting private plants producing war materials on Government contract in the control of industrial accidents and diseases. Its services consist of (1) direct consultant service with war plant management through the medium of dollar-a-year safety men employed by private industry, who devote part of their time to rendering advisory service to nearby contract plants; (2) the training of key production supervisors and union labor representatives through courses sponsored jointly with the United States Office of Education under the Engineering, Science, and Management War Training program, and the training of foremen under a program sponsored jointly with the National Safety Council and the Vocational Education Division of the office of Education; and (3) the preparation by staff safety technicians and outside consultants of informational and technical material on industrial accident and disease prevention. This film focuses on worker behavior as the key cause of workplace accidents rather than look at hazardous job conditions. In the past, based on this attitude, workers were often openly called stupid, careless and accident-prone and blamed as the cause of their injuries. With this approach, the result of most accident investigations is to blame the injured worker and the solution is to tell the worker to be more careful. This approach ignores the role of managers and employers in making key decisions in the workplace they control. However these days, this older harsh language is replaced by so called behavior-based safety programs based on the claim that 80 to 96 percent of job injuries and illnesses are caused by workers' own unsafe acts. This number has been discredited by many other studies which identify the key role of the work environment in safety and health. Behavior-based safety programs focus attention on worker carelessness and conscious or unconscious unsafe behaviors, and place the onus for a safe workplace on workers themselves. The "unsafe worker" statistics espoused by behavior-based safety consultants and repeated by employers purchasing or developing behavioral safety programs were derived from the work of insurance investigator H.W. Heinrich in the 1930s. Heinrich's research into injury causation consisted of his review of supervisors' accident reports, which critics pointed out naturally blame workers for accidents and injuries. He arrived at the statistic that 88 percent of workplace accidents and worker injuries were caused by workers' unsafe acts, numbers echoed by today's behavioral safety programs. For more information on these programs and ways to oppose them, go to the Hazards magazine website at http://www.hazards.org/bs/ . Members of the committee were Cyril Ainsworth (American Standards Association), W.H. Cameron, Herbert Rivers (Building and Constructon Trades Department, American Federation of Labor), R.E. Donovan (Standard Oil Co. of California), Mrs. Katherine Ellickson (Congress of Industrial Organizations), John P. Frey (Metal Trades Department, American Federation of Labor), Clinton S. Golden (United Steelworkers of America), William H. Ivey, Lewis E. MacGrayne (Massachusetts Safety Council), T.O. Meisner (American Can Company), Charles A. Miller (The Texas Company), Herbert W. Payne (Textile Workers Union of America), Eric Peterson (International Association of Machinists), E.G. Quesnel (The Borden Company), R.R. Sayers (Bureau of Mines), Carl L. Smith (Cleveland Safety Council), L. Metcalfe Walling (U.S. Department of Labor), Ralph E. Walter (Nebraska Power Company), W.H. Winans (Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation), Verne A. Zimmer (U.S. Department of Labor). The film is available at the film archive of the US National Archive in College Park, Maryland.
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Accidents - It Cannot Happen to Me from SafetyInstruction.comby safetyinstruction31,300 views
love this video and would love to get ahold of some of those vintage safety posters. I did a 10 minute search online and didn't find much. Anyone have any ideas on how to locate them? 1) "WORK SAFETY preventing accidents and waste helps keep America strong." 2) "falls are the average worker's greatest daily danger" 3) "the chance taker soon finds himself an accident maker. never clean machinery in motion"
kathypitstick 5 months ago