 We came out on strike because of the inhumane working conditions, but people who was being misused so badly. We're fired up! We're fired up! Can't take no more! We're fired up! Can't take no more! We're fired up! Occupational safety and health is a major social concern of the 1980s. These people are part of that movement. They are asserting their right, now written into law, to a healthy and safe workplace. This right has had a ragged history. It's not always been recognized. Work has killed millions. They've died from explosions, falls, electrocution, dangerous machinery, from breathing in poisons in the air. Millions more have been mutilated or permanently disabled at work. This year it's estimated that up to 100,000 people will die from job-related injury or disease. Over 5 million will be injured at work. Following the Civil War, the American economy was expanding rapidly. In the closing decades of the 19th century, production rates were climbing and millions more workers were needed. Between 1900 and 1910, nearly 9 million people immigrated to this country, looking for work and a better life. But many also found harsh conditions, long hours, low wages. The work was tough and dangerous. As the production rate went up, so did the pressure on workers and the casualties. Railway workers had one of the most dangerous jobs. Nearly 15,000 were killed between 1902 and 1908. Mining accidents were frequent. 4,700 died building the Panama Canal. In a single Pennsylvania county, 526 workers were killed in one year. There were few government rules covering safety and health. And workers had few rights. There was no legal protection for unions. When workers did organize against these harsh conditions, their strikes were usually broken by the company, sometimes with the aid of hired police or government troops. Outraged journalists and social reformers began to support workers' efforts to organize. Photographer Louis Hein exposed the horrors of child labor. Novelist Upton Sinclair, in his classic work, The Jungle, described the brutal lives of Chicago's stockyard workers. He said, I wish to frighten the country by a picture of what its industrial masters are doing to their victims. Exposers like these finally led the government to create the first agencies to protect workers. Woodrow Wilson won labor support by agreeing to improve safety in the workplace. In 1913, the Department of Labor was established. Pressure for change was often finally effective only after a major tragedy. After 361 men died in the Mononga Mine Disaster of 1907, the Bureau of Mines was set up to supervise mine safety. Gradually, industry began to regulate itself in what is known as the voluntary safety movement. The National Safety Council, founded in 1913, set voluntary guidelines for safety engineering and better working practices. Companies put guards around dangerous machinery, set up first aid stations and began safety classes. But safety education stressed that most accidents were the workers' own fault. This film, made by the National Association of Manufacturers in 1911, was one of many that singled out workers' carelessness as a cause of disaster. But many terrible tragedies were not caused by workers' carelessness. The same year that film was made, a fire burned a triangle shirt waste factory in New York. Because many of the exits were locked, 146 people, mostly young immigrant women, died. Again, it was only after the tragedy that the first permanent commission to inspect factory safety was set up in New York. During the same time, industry helped establish a system to compensate workers for accidents. While this workman's compensation system gave employees a measure of financial security for the first time, it took away their right to sue the company for damages. The amount of compensation was limited and workers were not represented on the boards that decided claims. But this growing concern for workplace safety had some noticeable results and accident and death rates fell. In fact, many industrialists thought the safety problem was solved. This safety film ended with an idealized picture of a steel worker's life. The Safety and Health Committee can be one of the most important committees in the plant. Workers today, like these at a Chicago steel plant, know the safety problem isn't solved. And we know all of us working in that plant that there's just a myriad of problems out there in safety and health that we've got to begin to do something about. One thing is for sure, if we've got a record, a backlog of safety and health grievances and good, well-attended meetings where people bring out specific problems, we're going to be in a much better position to negotiate those kind of health and safety provisions that we need because they're going to be based on something real. I've got a list here of 26 accidents that I've heard about. Many of them are serious. The guy got 200 stitches. 200 stitches? 200 stitches. Another guy got shocked with 2200 volts. There was a burner killed in the 34th. He didn't pick up his car at the end of the turn. They found him. They went out to look for him a few hours later and the blood was already drying. Everything was under several tons of steel. The one case I think some of the people here are aware of is this case of Jesse Bustos at the 30 inch. When I finished on screwing, I had no idea that this piece of steel was supposed to drop on the generator. When it dropped, when I finished on screwing, when that piece of steel dropped, it grabbed the tip of my glove and I got caught, these two fingers. I was stuck for 45 minutes. They couldn't do nothing until the doctor got there. He got there, I think, in about 20 minutes. I got the morphine shot. It took them more or less 45 minutes to get me free. The foreman there should have told us what the job was exactly going to do, what it was supposed to do. And they should have never let me do that job by myself. I was an apprentice. They didn't tell me what was supposed to happen. They didn't give me no safety tip. That is their job. Management must provide safety training before the man is put to work on that job. You have a union. Something that we didn't have at the beginning. You have your union. You stick to that and fight. That's the only thing you can do. The most important thing is policing this thing. And nobody else is going to police it but us. Thank you. That's right. Like workers today, workers in the past faced not only sudden death or injury from accidents, but slow death from fumes, dusts and poisonous gases. Doctors were slow to investigate these industrial poisons and the diseases that could result from them. The first major American study was not until 1910 when a young doctor, Alice Hamilton, investigated the effects of lead poisoning. There were further government studies into health hazards, but few industries applied their findings and workers' health was virtually ignored by industry until the 1960s. Bob Samuel has silicosis, resulting from 28 years exposure to silica dust. I started working in 51 as a laborer and I went to chipping. And I chipped for the rest of my time until 1978. I first noticed I was getting sick back in the late 60s and I got started getting short of breath. Push, push more, blow, keep blowing, keep blowing. Then I went to the doctor and the doctor took an x-ray but they didn't tell me what was wrong. So we decided we would call in the federal government. So after they come in there, they found out I ate a silicoce. But the company themselves have never told me that I had to find this out to doctors. The company knew all along because you had guys that had it was dying for me. In the 1930s, hundreds of men were hired to dig the Gauley Bridge Tunnel in West Virginia. They, too, were ignorant of the risks they ran. Desperate for jobs during the Depression, they worked with virtually no protection in a tunnel thick with silica dust. 476 men died here from silicosis. My name is Walter Kincaid. I worked in a tunnel four or five weeks. Every day I hear of someone dying with silicosis. I worked until I got sick and the doctor told me that it was silicosis. And he also told me that anyone that worked as much as 24 hours would not be living 15 years. I think something should be done for our wives and family after we are gone. Once again, after the deaths, there was a public outcry. I personally believe that 2,000 men are doomed to die as a result of ruthless destruction of life by American industry. The next year, in 1936, the Wall Shealy Act was passed. Although it only applied to contractors doing business with federal agencies, it was the first time the government directly imposed health and safety standards. One of the areas the rules covered was the use of respirators. The respirators are one of the oldest protected devices in history. And for years, workers' health continued to depend on respirators alone to keep poisonous dusts and fumes out of their lungs. But respirators often don't fit properly. They leak or simply don't filter out enough of the poisons. Today, government strongly favors cleaning the air and factories through ventilation and other devices. But through the 1930s and 40s, industry continued to rely on ever more elaborate respirators. Today, thanks to the cooperation of safety men in many industries and government departments who supported and helped guide the development of respiratory protection, the menacing the air is removed for those who wear respirators. For where men once died, we who wear respirators can now live safely. And life for us, like the air we breathe, is good. Red respirator is not going to do you no good. I wore it for 28 years, and it didn't do me no good. My lungs is filled with that dust. I can walk about me block, block an ass, that's about the best I can do. Just put it rough when you're trying to go up the flight of steps, when you used to run up there and I can't do that now. And a lot of nights I get up, I have to get up all through the night and be coughing. I still spit up that dust and it's still all in the pores of my skin. Can't get clean. You don't know tomorrow, next week, next year. You just can't sit and think about it, but you just have to go ahead on out and try to enjoy yourself. Do the thing that you've been doing, try to do the thing you've been doing, but don't worry about it. Me and my wife sit down and talk, told her once never to come, it's just come, I just try to do the best I can. A lot of lonely nights you can't sleep you, you know you just die day by day. The 1930s, the depression, years when you were lucky to have a job at all. But Franklin Delano Roosevelt began new deal legislation to help people during the depression. He introduced jobs for the unemployed, social security, a minimum wage and the 40 hour work week. Although most of these laws did not directly affect safety and health, they permanently raised the level of government concern about working conditions. The National Labor Relations Act made it a legal right to unionize. And in the 1930s, industrial unions organized and sought the right to represent all workers in an industry. In the automobile industry, for example, the United Auto Workers struck at Flint, Toledo and Detroit and won the right to collective bargaining. Labor was emerging as a powerful force that would be better prepared to deal with later health and safety issues. Then came the war. Health and safety on the job suddenly became an important issue, largely because preventing accidents meant saving work days for the war effort. Save a day to keep them rolling, save a day to keep them flying. Save a day that Americans of tomorrow may live in a land of peace, in a land where freedom reigns. Safety supervision was stepped up in federal war plans, and the need to keep workers healthy led to some advances in industrial engineering and medicine. The Public Health Service laid down its first standards, setting maximum levels for dangerous air pollutants at work. But these first standards were often far too lenient to clean the air effectively, and they could only be enforced in plants with federal contracts. For the rest of industry, they were only voluntary guidelines, so many workers' health still depended on the goodwill of the company. With the end of World War II, the workplace itself was changing. As an explosion of technological inventions and chemical discoveries brought a new slew of dangerous dusts, fumes, and gases that threatened workers. Workers usually did not know what they were handling, or whether these synthetics might cause cancer years later. But in the 1950s, research into the health effects of these chemicals was minimal. It was not until the 1960s that a new revolution in occupational safety and health began, supported by two parallel political movements. The environmental movement began to question the long-term effects of chemicals on our health, and the civil rights movement made people more aware of the rights of each individual. These movements created a climate of reform which encouraged other groups, including workers, to demand more control over their lives, including their safety and health. We're going to help shape a better future for the working people of this country and for their families. We are pledged to bring safety to the workbench and to bring safety to the job site. Labor leaders worked with the Johnson administration to propose a new government agency to enforce health and safety rules. This year, I asked the Congress for a workers safety bill to protect you. But once again, the law was not passed until after a major disaster. 78 miners were killed at Farmington, West Virginia in 1968. I think all of us have been at fault in not taking aggressive action to preserve 20th century safety and health standards for the workers. Now there's a revolt in the mines, and the workers are going to get the kind of conditions that they deserve and should have had. Within one year, the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act was passed, and in 1970, Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act. This confirmed in law the right to a healthy and safe workplace and established the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA. The act says that employers have the primary responsibility for providing a safe and healthy workplace. OSHA is responsible for making safety rules and enforcing them. Workers have a right to talk to their supervisors, their union, or OSHA, about safety and health problems. Jim Belrose suffers from failing eyesight and severe skin discoloration. These job-related problems affected both him and his father, who worked at the same plant. I worked 24 years in a plant. They made silver nitrate. I take silver bullion and turn it into a liquid form. Then we would put heat under it. As it started reacting, you'd get yellow poisonous fumes off of it. When they weighed silver crystals up, there used to be a real strong dust that came off of them. But there helped turn the skin dark. My father worked there for a while. His eyes discolored when he was there. His complexion was dark, too. He was a real old-fashioned type person. As long as you got a job, you just do it, shut your mouth, and get your pay at the end of the week. And if it hurts your body, it hurts your body. Don't worry about it, you know? And it's the same with a lot of the older guys. They wouldn't ever say anything. Well, I think one of the things, too, that they were always told it was never harmful. Like his father, Jim was skeptical. He and his coworkers called in medical investigators from Mount Sinai School of Medicine and asked management to make changes. We were told, if we didn't like the way they operated, that we could go for a walk. And that's what started the whole thing. And so our walking was right to Osha. The first day they were there, they found 52 violations in 10 minutes. The four or five guys that really started the whole thing, you know, they were afraid of losing their jobs. But they came to the point where it was a difference between your health and the job. So we took a choice of our health. I was afraid to lose this job, you know? Because they said, well, you know, if you don't like it, you know, like the way I run the company, leave, you know? And we had four little kids at that time, you know, smaller children. And I wasn't working, so I thought, oh my goodness, here we go. You know, so yeah, I was for them, you know, because I know that he didn't feel good a lot. And like our family life wasn't what it should have been because of it. I sued for our eyes and we fought the case. Just a little while ago I got my final settlement. They didn't want to pass because they said that was just a hazardous occupation and those things just came naturally. People shouldn't have to endanger their lives just for the pleasures of other people. Get Osha in there and make an effort. Today there are 20,000 chemicals in the workplace that are suspected of being toxic. About one-fifth of all cancer cases are associated with exposure to chemicals on the job and Osha is working to reduce these dangers by setting more comprehensive rules. In addition to Osha's presence, the unions are spending more time and money on safety training and devoting more contract language to health and safety. Workers are demanding the right to see their own medical records, to be told the names and properties of the chemicals they work with, to know the level of risks they take on with the job. We have been trying to get the company to give medical examinations for over two years and so far they haven't complied with any of Osha's orders. Osha had ordered the company to give comprehensive medical examinations to its workers, some handling the toxic chemical DES. DES is a female hormone that can cause sexual malformation. People at that time were working without respirators and if they used respirators they were dirty, they weren't clean, they had no training program. People were very ill. Some of the guys grew breasts. Alls I did was mix these little packets of pure DES into some liquid and I was exposed to this and my breasts enlarged and itched and I had a lot of trouble and I was becoming impotent. He got the contamination so terribly bad that he finally had to have surgery and they had to cut him, they had to open him up breast to breast. My life now is just, I got a divorce since 1976, my ex-wife got married again because she didn't think I was a good, I don't know what the story was but anyway, that's what happened. The big wheels of the company, they didn't care if you had to go get an operation or anything, they just figured what the heck, them not me. They were doing the right thing by being on strike. They probably shut the place down but it's probably the best thing for all people ever going to work there again. The reason why I took the DES job in the first place because it was more money and right at that time I was in the process of getting married and I thought it'd be better for me and my wife if we had more income coming in. I was hoping that I wouldn't be one of the ones that would get it but I did. Over the years, American workers have won the right to organize unions and the right to have safe and healthy workplaces. Sometimes these two rights are exercised together. In Mississippi, Gloria Jordan is trying to organize her chicken processing plant and one of the main issues is what she knows to be harsh and dangerous working conditions. If you're looking for a job who want a better job, then listen to this message from the people. The dangerous job is cutting on the saw. These saws were placed right in front of the ice house and they would keep the ice door open so the people's hands would get so cold they weren't able to know if they were cutting the chickens or cutting their hands. Preparative job opportunities for processing plant workers. My family and me got three or four finals cut off. Excellent pay scale, life and hospitalization. Girl got one her breath cut off. Paid holidays and paid vacation. You only have three times a week to go to the bathroom. If you couldn't do what you had to do in your clothes then you would be suspended. You would break out and we call it chicken rash and it looks like chicken box all over your body. As the workers have said, treats the chickens and his plants better than he treats the human beings who work for them. The permission of going to the bathroom, you asked him please, so let us go to the bathroom and he wouldn't let you go. A pregnant woman, three months pregnant, has to go to the bathroom and he wouldn't let her go. Within five hours she had a miscarriage. To the workers of the cell. That is not misusing human being that is taking the life. We're very sure that this is the right thing that we're doing, striking and making it better for our children because we have already won. We've never been so free in our lives. Our beginning to change our attitudes to protest about dangers that used to be accepted as part of the job. We are moving from haphazardly protecting workers or compensating them after the fact to trying to prevent hazards from happening at all. Workers themselves are making history by questioning their working conditions, finding out the risks they run and claiming their legal right to safety and health.