Safety Worker
Joseph Grcic
The development of the industrial revolution radically transformed the nature of human work and human relations. Every year in the US over 10,000 workers are killed on the job and about 2.8 million are injured. There are over 100,000 deaths from diseases due to exposure to physical and chemical hazards in the workplace. The medical and other costs of work related deaths and injuries are estimated at over $8 billion yearly. Work safety issues include reducing workplace hazards and implementing safety standards without significant reductions in efficiency. It concerns such matters as the hazardous nature of some work, its organization (hours, speed), and the quality of the work environment. Although the safety of work continues to improve in the West due to labor unions, legislation, and enlightened entrepreneurs, attention is still focused on industries where exposure to such substances as textiles (brown lung disease), paint odors (emphysema), benzene (leukemia), lead (sterility), microwaves (cataracts, lower sperm count), petrochemicals (tumors, sterility), coal dust (black lung), asbestos (cancer, asbestosis), and excessive noise (hearing loss) still occurs.
Initially, concern for worker safety came in the form of compensation for injuries, as it did in Germany in the late nineteenth century. In the US, legislation to compensate workers started as early as 1920, but it did not cover the reduction of workplace hazards. Conservative free market defenders objected to government interference in the marketplace, which they claimed raised prices and weakened the freedom of contract, a cornerstone of capitalism. Defenders of increased regulation argued that workers were often in a weak bargaining position and usually had to take any job available.
An important case involving worker safety concerned the Johns Manville (now Manville) corporation, a manufacturer of asbestos. Corporate documents show that the company knew as early as the 1930s that its workers were in danger of developing cancer from exposure to asbestos but did nothing to protect them. When this information became public in the 1980s, thou sands of employees sued the company, leading Johns Manville to establish a fund to pay employees and to declare bankruptcy.
In 1970, Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) requiring employers to maintain certain minimum conditions to protect their workers. The law mandated that a safe work environment be provided through appropriate supervision and training of workers. Penalties for violation range from monetary judgments to criminal prosecution of specific individuals responsible within the firm.
Today, worker safety continues to be import ant for employees and employers. Concern about secondhand cigarette smoke has led employers either to ban smoking in the workplace or to provide special smoking areas. Injury due to repetitive hand motions by keyboard operators is another focus of regulators. Many employee rights advocates believe that OSHA is under staffed and too influenced by the private sector it seeks to regulate, while others debate the nature of acceptable risk. The global nature of the marketplace that allows firms to move to areas with minimal or no provision for safety of workers is also a concern. Some ethicists argue that the best way to reduce dangerous and un healthy working conditions is to restructure the modern corporation toward greater democracy and to empower employees, for example, by giving workers a voice in plant safety, and/or by installing them on the boards of directors, thus enabling them to influence relevant safety policies directly.
Bibliography
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