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#92: How America's Unions Are Keeping Workers Safe
79 Plays2 years ago
This week's guest is Rebecca Reindel, the Safety and Health Director at the AFL-CIO. The AFL-CIO, which stands for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, is the largest labor federation in the United States, representing 57 national and international labor unions with 12.5 million union members nationwide.
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Transcript
Introduction by Jill James
00:00:09
Speaker
This is the Accidental Safety Probe brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded May 17, 2022. My name is Jill James, HSI's Chief Safety Officer, and today my guest is Rebecca Rindell, who is the Safety and Health Director at the AFL-CIO.
00:00:26
Speaker
The EFLCIO, which stands for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, is the largest labor federation in the United States, representing 57 national and international labor unions with 12.5 million union members nationwide.
00:00:45
Speaker
Recently, I read a report they publish each year and the report is titled, Death on the Job, The Toll of Neglect 2022. The report is a treasure trove of data for our current times. You can find it on their website and is one of the reasons I reached out and asked Rebecca to be our guest.
Rebecca Rindell's Union Roots and Career Path
00:01:07
Speaker
Rebecca is joining us today from Washington, DC. Rebecca, thank you so much and welcome to the show.
00:01:14
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, you're welcome. So Rebecca, let's jump right in and start with your story first. We can kind of get to know you a little bit better. Tell us about your winding journey to this work and start wherever you'd like from the Wayback Machine from your family of origin and go along as you'd like.
00:01:40
Speaker
Well, thank you. It's really a real pleasure to be here and very
00:01:46
Speaker
fitting to the title of your podcast. It's accidental how I got where I am, I believe, probably like so many other folks. I grew up in a working class union family in Cleveland, Ohio. My father worked in the steel mills as a union welder and pipefeder, and my mother held various jobs with the hospital and working for the city while raising us.
00:02:11
Speaker
And I remember going with my mother to drop my dad off in the steel mills driving through the noisy and dirty environment. And I remember him getting his regular safety certifications and taking classes. And I also remember being very civilly active with my mother who, you know, had a very big drive for public service and we attended community meetings, you know, to get new lampposts on the street, food drives, city election campaigns and all of that. So that's the kind of
00:02:41
Speaker
background I grew up in, which ended up being very fitting to what I do now, but it's not actually how I ended up in the field of occupational safety and health. Yeah. Tell us more. Sure. My brothers and I were first generation college in our family, and that was thanks to our parents who really wanted us to have an education.
00:03:00
Speaker
And I benefited from union scholarship along the way. It was also just very interested in science and now, you know, what I know now is social justice. But they never really merged in a meaningful way for me until much later. I was in college, I really nerded out on biology and research, scientific method, writing up findings, discovering new things. And, you know, you really can apply the love of science in so many ways.
00:03:30
Speaker
undergraduate thesis was actually on blow flies. They're an insect which can help determine the time of death for when people die. And so I was sort of into this forensic toxicology mode and I interned one summer in my county coroner's office. I was very interested in kind of pursuing forensic pathology, forensic
Occupational Health Internship Program Impact
00:03:57
Speaker
toxicology,
00:03:58
Speaker
I did not, I had some options on the table in medicine and other things. I pursued a master's in forensic toxicology and I was just following what I really liked to do and worked in a laboratory for a while doing that while I was in school. But yeah, but then as I went through college and graduate school, I really wanted to find a more direct way to focus my real science interests with improving people's lives and with social justice.
00:04:28
Speaker
with a policy application, which I didn't really realize was called policy at the time. And, you know, really realizing I wanted to focus on prevention rather, you know, then later down the line, but I also participate in a lot of community service programs. So while all this was happening, while I was studying science, my senior year college, I became an AmeriCorps
00:04:50
Speaker
volunteer where I lived in something called the Mother Jones House and it was an intentional service community in Wheeling, West Virginia where I went to school and you know Mother Jones was an incredible force, a labor leader leading the minor strikes back in the day. Right, right, right. I'm just like you said Mother Jones and the first quote that comes to mind is pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living. Exactly and when we have Workers Memorial Day every year at the end of April
00:05:18
Speaker
The theme really is mourn for the dead fight for the living and is centered around the work we do now Which is yeah, I start the mother Jones poster in my office and think you know so much about those days Wow, it's very yeah, it's interesting, but the context was always there, you know, it was always floating around me I just didn't really know how to merge it and so the culmination of all of it was really my eye transitioned after my forensic toxicology studies to a master's in public health and I wanted to focus that on
00:05:47
Speaker
Toxicology knowledge and exposure knowledge on environmental and occupational health and it felt like a very natural place to put my skills my interest to use and Yeah, and how did you figure out that occupational health was even a thing and was it from working in the mother Jones house?
00:06:04
Speaker
You know, it wasn't. I had done some reading, but it really wasn't until that master's program that I was more emerged into it. And I did this really incredible summer internship program called OHIP, the Occupational Health Internship Program. And that's really what narrowed it into a lane for me that said, oh, no, I want to prevent workplace exposures. That's it.
00:06:28
Speaker
Wow. And so as you talk about this internship program with OHIP, you'll have to define what that stands for. But is that something that's still alive today? Absolutely. So OHIP started in 2004. It was modeled after an internship that started back in the 70s and 80s by a guy called Tony Mizaki. And in New York, Tony had student interns come investigate health and safety problems.
00:06:58
Speaker
But he knew that the best way to do that was really merging communities and public health folks with workers and labor unions. And so he had them do these summer internships. And many of the former interns have actually become leading occupational environmental health experts.
Role at OSHA and AFL-CIO
00:07:13
Speaker
who we know of today and who have been merged with that program. So Tony kind of laid the groundwork. Tony passed in the early 2000s and I think there was a group of experts in the field that said, we need a new generation of occupational health and safety professionals. And this program started in 2004.
00:07:40
Speaker
And we're, I think, so what is that? That's almost 20 years that the program is going on. And it's an incredibly immersive program that pairs students to investigate health and safety hazards with unions and worker centers throughout a summer.
00:07:56
Speaker
Wow, so people who are listening if you're just starting out in your career or maybe you're mentoring someone and trying to you know guide the next generation of our professional field that might be a direction to send people to the
00:08:12
Speaker
EHS OHIP program, is that what it's called? It's called OHIP, O-H-I, and you can find it at OHIPintern.org. Fabulous. Thank you, thank you. Okay, so thanks for taking that little divergent path. Continue with your story.
00:08:29
Speaker
Oh, well, just to say, for that internship, my assignment was I worked with New York City taxi drivers. And we were there looking at how the design of their vehicles affects their health, developing survey questionnaires, doing interviews, doing focus groups. It was an incredible experience. And I went on to work.
00:08:57
Speaker
I did a postgraduate fellowship at EPA, went indoor air quality, and I was there for a year when a job at National OSHA, Federal OSHA opened up, and I jumped on it. I went to work in the National OSHA office to write health standards, and eventually came over to the AFL-CIO to work with the labor unions on similar work.
00:09:24
Speaker
It is amazing how you learn so much about an agency from the outside. That's right. That's right. So let's back up to the federal OSHA job. What sort of laws have your hands been in, Rebecca?
00:09:39
Speaker
I worked there during the development of the silica standard, which was huge. I actually wasn't the lead or anything, but I did work on the silica standard at OSHA. And then it was interesting because I transitioned over to the AFL-CIO right around the time they were doing the public hearings for OSHA. So when I worked there, it was around the time of the proposal. And then I worked with the labor unions. It's when the final standard came out. So I really got to see it from,
00:10:08
Speaker
you know, all the different angles and throughout the process of the standard and watch it really have an impact on working people. Wow, fantastic. Thank you for that contribution, by the way. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. All right, so does this mean we're in your history up to present time here at the AFL-CIO?
00:10:27
Speaker
I'm here. Okay, great. I want to ask you like what your what your work is there, but maybe for anyone listening, who's not familiar with the AFL CIO, as it relates to, you know, what you all do with regard to our, you know, the environmental health and science work. Can you tell us how the Federation supports, supports that work? Like, what's it about?
00:10:56
Speaker
Sure. You mentioned at the beginning, we are a federation. So we ourselves are not a union. We are a federation of 57 national union affiliates. And that covers a wide array of industries and occupations that you might imagine, like manufacturing, construction, health care, bus drivers, teachers, firefighters, flight attendants, mechanics. It's also other folks you might not think of.
00:11:23
Speaker
Hollywood actors, stage hands, professional sports players like the NFL PA. And we also last fall just welcomed the National Women's Soccer League Players Association to the Federation, which is very exciting. So workers really across industries who organize and who understand that collective power is needed to really change their working conditions.
COVID-19 and Workplace Safety Standards
00:11:45
Speaker
And so essentially how union members,
00:11:52
Speaker
you know, pay dues, those go to their union to represent them, and a portion of those come to us to represent them on the national level and to, you know, work collectively. And my job at the National AFLCO is the Director of Occupational Safety and Health, and our team plays
00:12:09
Speaker
an important role in the national and international policy space where we advocate for stronger safety and health standards, laws, and other programs like training programs. We advocate for more funding for some of these agencies and programs, and we use evidence that comes up directly through the workplace, through our membership, through public records, through scientific studies and case studies.
00:12:37
Speaker
We work very closely and collaborate with our national unions and other organizations along the way. We have a national committee that works together on those issues. Yeah, wonderful. Rebecca, what are some of those, you mentioned the things that you're currently working on right now. What are some of those areas that is of interest to the federation that you're working on?
00:13:07
Speaker
Sure. Some might sound familiar because they've gotten a little bit more attention than others. Occupational heat exposure has been, you know, it's been big and folks may have seen it in the news pretty often. We are advocating for stronger workplace violence prevention standards, some stronger chemical standards like for asbestos and for some other chemicals as well.
00:13:36
Speaker
We're trying to improve some injury reporting standards, you know, that ensure that we're understanding what's really happening in workplaces and strengthening anti-retaliation.
00:13:53
Speaker
protections for workers for, you know, speaking up about unsafe working conditions. Are you continuing to work with the pandemic as well? Is that an area of emphasis too? It's a huge area. I think
00:14:10
Speaker
people think about COVID as sort of an individual. I think people have put it in a lane of individual responsibility or an individual issue, but it really is such a collective issue.
00:14:25
Speaker
When you think about all the other things I just mentioned, all the other issues, chemicals in the workplace, workplace violence, COVID is a workplace exposure. And so it's a big part of what we do. We were the first to petition the federal OSHA back in March of 2020 for an emergency standard to protect workers. We've been right on the cutting edge of
00:14:52
Speaker
of the science and of advocating for getting stronger protections that really protect workers against the airborne nature of the virus and for certain reporting requirements. COVID is in fact the worst occupational disaster ever. It's been an all-consuming job during the pandemic for our team.
00:15:18
Speaker
Rebecca, I mean, just hearing you say worst occupational disaster ever is, you know, that like stops you, right? Do you mind talking about when you say that, like, what does that mean? And I'm suspecting because you started your career gathering data that you may have something to say about that. Like, what is that? Can you give us context around that?
00:15:44
Speaker
Sure. You know, I know, you know, we think about what's going on in the public when it comes to COVID, right? You know, we know that nearly 1 million people have died in the US from COVID. We know
00:16:00
Speaker
We actually had a total lack of workplace surveillance when it came to people being infected and dying from workplace exposures. We've really had to gather a lot of this evidence on our own. There's been some good research on it, but nailing down an exact number of who've been sick at work, one of the
00:16:22
Speaker
I think biggest failures of the country is that they didn't do that from the beginning. But when you think about how you're exposed to the virus, the workplace is a very, it's a big breeding ground for it, right? People work close together, have crowded conditions, they don't have the proper protections that they need. They are exposed to people for long periods of time in indoor environments. So it's a,
00:16:51
Speaker
I think it's a, and we used to, actually when you were just saying that about the biggest occupational disaster ever, we used to say that about asbestos and that's very true, but until COVID, which is, you know, I mean, I don't mean to laugh, it's very sad, but we know that asbestos is everywhere, right? We know that it's just, it's so prevalent and we need to protect people from it, but,
00:17:17
Speaker
So since March of 2020, the unions and the AFLCO together have submitted many comments in the public dockets. We've testified, we've submitted to the agencies peer reviewed studies, surveillance data, other documentation showing that
00:17:38
Speaker
healthcare workers, many other workers remain at significant risk from COVID-19 exposures and that there are very feasible things that can be done by employers. It's something that we can prevent and that we can at least track. It's not something to do nothing about. Just in late April,
00:17:59
Speaker
the AFL-CIO and many unions and other experts testified during the OSHA hearings. They're on track to develop a final permanent COVID workplace safety standard. We testified in that, frontline workers came in and testified in that hearing to make sure that when the standard comes out, it actually makes sense for employers, for workers,
Current Safety Issues: Heat and Violence
00:18:26
Speaker
It's, it's able to be implemented, you know, easily. Yeah. Rebecca, if you had to get out your crystal ball, dust it off, try to figure out like you said a permanent standard is underway.
00:18:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we know how long it can take. Do you have any guesses? You know, I know that this is, this is on a fast track. The ETS, the emergency temporary standard that came out last year was serves as a proposal. So they're already now in the final stages.
00:18:59
Speaker
Okay. And so because the the Comet Perry closes next week. And so we're working on that. And then, I mean, I would, I would not be surprised if they get something like this out this year, I think they've already done so much work on it. Yeah, that, you know, and that's what we're advocating for the people need protections as soon as possible. So, yeah. And would the application be for just healthcare all workers?
00:19:27
Speaker
This seems to be in the health care lane because that's who the emergency standard covered. Yeah, right. OK, that's what I was wondering. All right, thank you for that context and advocacy on that. You mentioned a moment ago one of the other areas of interest has been heat illness. And for those of us who are following the work that OSHA is doing right now, we know that that's a proposed regulation as well.
00:19:53
Speaker
But this isn't like these things aren't old. I mean, are old rather. Heat illness prevention is not something that's cutting edge. OSHA has been working on this for a long time. And when you mentioned that, it made me think of I'm not sure if I had mentioned this to you in our pre-conversations or not. I worked for OSHA as well.
00:20:13
Speaker
for a state agency in Minnesota. And Minnesota's had a heat regulation for many years. And I remember when I was working for the agency, and you may or may not be familiar with this story, but when you said you cover professional sports athletes, Minnesota had a death of a Minnesota Vikings football player many years ago. His name was Corey Stringer.
00:20:39
Speaker
And he died of a workplace heat exposure. And I was working for the agency. I was not the investigator of record. One of my coworkers was. But this is not new news.
00:20:53
Speaker
This is not new news. Like your example in Minnesota and for decades, workers have been dying from occupational heat exposure or otherwise affected by it. And it's both outdoor workers and indoor workers. And there are many, I think, you know, we often think about, as we should, farm workers, construction workers, people who are out blazing direct sun, but there are indoor environments that have major heat issues, warehouses, schools,
00:21:22
Speaker
you know, a lot of the teachers have issues. So there are a lot of reasons to address this. It's a big issue. I know that with, you know, with climate change, it's been brought to the surface a bit more. And with, you know, with the warming climate, warming summers,
00:21:41
Speaker
but now it's warmer year-round in many places and regardless, it's a workplace exposure and we do know how to do some basic things to prevent or to mitigate what workers have to be exposed to.
00:21:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned different environments and atmospheres. And again, when, when I was with the OSHA agency, there was one particular factory that we just knew you could look at, you could look at the date on the calendar. You could look at the just ambient temperature outside and we knew we were going to get a complaint.
00:22:16
Speaker
And we knew that there would probably be a couple of complaints during the course of that summer period where workers in this particular factory just, you know, it would happen again and again and again. And unfortunately, for a long time, it seemed like the agency couldn't budge that employer to prevent those exposures from happening.
00:22:38
Speaker
Absolutely. One of the other areas of focus that you talked about was workplace violence prevention. I'm wondering if you can talk about your work in that.
00:22:54
Speaker
We're recording today. It's May 17th, 2022. How many shootings have we had in our, and I mean, workplace violence isn't just shootings, but just this week, just this week, there have been two in our nation.
00:23:10
Speaker
Yeah, can you talk about your prevention strategies and what you're doing there? Sure. We have been advocating for workplace violence protections for a long time as well, also not a new issue. Particularly, we have focused
00:23:31
Speaker
more recent advocacy on healthcare and social service workers. Now that's not to say they're the only folks who have violent incidents. I mean, as you just mentioned, I mean, it's more common across workplaces now, but healthcare and social service workers have astronomical rates of assaults, even if it's not fatality, very serious, significant,
00:24:00
Speaker
brutal assaults at work by patients and clients. And OSHA actually put out guidance 25 years ago on protecting, it's very detailed, comprehensive guidance on protecting healthcare and social service workers from workplace violence. And it's about employers developing a workplace violence prevention program. You know, it lays out
00:24:21
Speaker
the different elements that you should include, just like you think of the COVID plan, you think of the workplace violence prevention plan. And so these are, you know, this is really critical. So we've been advocating for OSHA to turn this into an enforceable standard. And in our report that you mentioned, there are some charts in there that really show you there's the astronomical rates in some of these settings.
00:24:47
Speaker
in psych settings, in other hospital settings, social work settings. I mean, they're literally off the charts compared to many other industries. And so it's become so commonplace, but we also know how to prevent it. And the House actually passed a workplace violence prevention bill
00:25:08
Speaker
twice in recent years, one in 2019 and one in 2021, same bill, which would require OSHA to issue such a standard and using this programmatic prevention approach. The Senate last week just introduced Senator Baldwin just introduced this bill in the Senate. This is exciting and it's good work that's moving forward. I know that it's on OSHA's regulatory agenda,
00:25:36
Speaker
it certainly doesn't help to have some legislation to push them along. So maybe there's some hope on the horizon. You know you mentioned that OSHA put out their guidance documents 25 years ago and again going back in my work history that just totally lines up when I was with OSHA which would have been 25 years ago
00:26:00
Speaker
We had a state emphasis program on workplace violence prevention, and I was part of a task force team that targeted healthcare, specifically long-term care facilities. We also combined the workplace violence prevention work with ergonomics because of the high rate of musculoskeletal injuries in the healthcare industry.
00:26:26
Speaker
And then, you know, with that went workplace violence, not that the two are together, but those are the two big drivers of workplace injury and illness in the healthcare space and really spent a lot of time in education on
00:26:41
Speaker
what sort of mitigating things can be done. I have family members who have spent their careers as paramedics and have many, many stories of workplace violence that they experienced in their work in the emergency services.
00:27:01
Speaker
Absolutely. That is a very high-risk profession for that. OSHA has had other guidance too for late night retail, for taxi and livery drivers, for preventing violence. It's certainly not restricted to healthcare and social service. As we're seeing in some other settings, there are ways for
00:27:23
Speaker
employers and workers to work together to, you know, identify potential, you know, it's just like identifying other exposures on the job, right? Where might they come in? How can we control them? How do we get ahead of it? Who's communicating with who? How do you mitigate it? If something is going, if you can't prevent it, how do you, you know, mitigate it? So it is certainly about adequate planning.
00:27:48
Speaker
And I think your experience speaks to that too. There have been emphasis programs that really can focus on that model as well. Yeah, yeah. Rebecca, you just brought it up a second ago about the AFL-CIO's annual report. And I talked about it in the beginning. And we'll be sure to put it in the show notes. But would you mind talking for a few minutes about what this annual report is about and what sort of
00:28:16
Speaker
discoveries have been made, maybe where you even get your information, what are we seeing right now?
00:28:23
Speaker
Sure, I'd love to. Hot off the press, the end of April. The AFL-CIO releases an annual report and it's called Death on the Job, the Toll of Neglect. And this report was started in 1992 because at the time no one was comprehensively tracking job fatalities, injuries, illnesses in the United States.
00:28:46
Speaker
And they weren't looking at job safety, agency enforcement, and other activity. And they also weren't looking at actions by the federal government and how our country is doing to reduce work-related injuries, disease, and death. And so consequently, also having a need to name the actions and the activities that are needed to improve working conditions in the country.
00:29:11
Speaker
This report was started by my predecessor in 1992. We're carrying this forward. We hear all the time such an incredible advocacy tool that it is. Everybody, you know, keeps a copy of mine's right here next to me. We keep a copy of it for reference. And so, you know, 31 years later, it's still the most comprehensive report issued on the state of workplace safety and health in our country.
00:29:40
Speaker
We know, though, now we pull for data sources, we do pull from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we pull data from OSHA, data from MSHA. And then, you know, we also provide context a little bit in a narrative of, you know, other peer reviewed studies, things that have come out to give context of what is really going on and also what's needed.
00:30:03
Speaker
And so the data out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for this report, the most recent year is 2020. And as you can imagine, that was a year where things looked a little different in terms of workplace injuries.
00:30:16
Speaker
illnesses fatalities, maybe because just work looked very different that year. So we know that the pandemic set a bit of a different landscape for what work looked like in the year that we reported on this this most recent report. Some people were out of work completely, for many others, a lot of work
00:30:35
Speaker
wasn't taking place in person. And so there were some decreases, but it's sort of not, you know, the decreases published this year may not paint a full picture of how work normally looks. So it's an interesting transition year. And we know that for other workers, essential workers on the front line, they worked with fewer protections and less oversight of all the job safety hazards
Labor Movement Resurgence Post-COVID
00:30:59
Speaker
because of COVID. And so they were exposed to greater risk and leaving them disproportionately impacted. And we also know that many of those workers were people of color. And you could see a lot of the disproportionate impacts do come out in the report. You know, Black and Latino workers still have a higher job fatality rate than other workers.
00:31:21
Speaker
You see the industries where COVID exposures were high, people were still working. Those were also the industries that had a lot of reports of workplace injuries and fatalities. So certainly having to go to work in person.
00:31:37
Speaker
you know, can be very dangerous. And we do lay out, there's an executive summary if people want to check it out. We also have nifty infographics on our website that people are welcome to use and grab and just on the statistics. Yeah.
00:31:56
Speaker
Yeah, when I read it the other week, and gosh, I'm sad to say this is the first time I knew the report existed and you've been doing this for 31 years. So first of all, thank you. And when I picked it up, I'm like, oh, I've always gone down the rabbit hole that is the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
00:32:20
Speaker
which is great, has a lot, a lot of data, but you can definitely go down various rabbit holes. And OSHA is also good about putting out data, but it's often dated. It takes so long for things to become public. And so when I read your report, I thought, oh my gosh, it's an
00:32:42
Speaker
comprehensive read I like the narrative that you added to it and I really like the high points that were you know that were pulled out in terms of you know these are the really these are the really burning issues of our time right now and yeah thank you so much and I also another piece of the report I'm thinking about is you have a breakdown by state which I thought was really interesting can you talk about that piece too?
00:33:08
Speaker
Sure, at the end of the report, we have what are called state profiles. So, and these are designed so people can grab them and go. You have a one page with all of the sort of the cliff notes of your of your state on workplace safety and health. It's
00:33:27
Speaker
you know information on the fatality rate and the number of inspections being done and you know the number of employees and employers and just gives you a bit of a landscape of state specific because our report is both national and it is state by state. Yeah and we cover you know throughout it we cover funding of the agencies
00:33:52
Speaker
We FOIA data on whistleblower complaints and enforcement complaints. I don't know who else is looking at that stuff in the level of excruciating detail that we do. And so I think, like you said, it's just very handy to have all in one place. And also it gives you a picture. I think the most important thing about this report is you can see where we've been.
00:34:18
Speaker
and then where we are, because you have to look at, you have to go backwards and see where have we come? How far have we come and where do we need to go? Absolutely for context. Yes. You had mentioned that your predecessor had started this report back in 1992. So it's in your hands now, Rebecca. So this is your annual baby.
00:34:38
Speaker
That says it. Wow, thank you so much. Thank you so much for that. Anyone who's looking for data, man, I'd say go to their website or look in our show notes and you'll be able to find it there. We'll make sure Naeem, our producer, puts it in the show notes for you.
00:34:53
Speaker
You had mentioned when we were talking earlier about some of the work of the AFL-CIO in terms of introducing workplace health and safety standards and you talked about current times and
00:35:08
Speaker
and what you're working on right now. Just for historical context, do you have information or could you share things that the AFL-CIO has championed in the past that those of us who've been at this work for a while might go, oh really, I didn't know that?
00:35:26
Speaker
Sure. I think every OSHA rulemaking, every standard that federal OSHA has put out, the AFL-CIO has definitely been involved in at least every major health rulemaking. So when you think about, I mean, certainly a lot of the safety ones as well, but when you think about
00:35:48
Speaker
Lead exposures, asbestos, you know the standards on all of those going back and beryllium when you think about the cotton dust standard, you know the AFLCO has been involved in every rulemaking and when I say involved meaning.
00:36:08
Speaker
you know, pulling together comments for it, testifying, bringing in workers, really understanding, you know, really advocating for critical pieces of the standard to be in place, like exposure assessments and medical removal protections, anti-retaliation provisions. And so all of those health rule makings over the years, we've certainly been directly involved in. And many of the unions have too, where their members are closely affected.
00:36:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that historical context. And speaking of history, I mean, the labor movement has been around for a really long time now. Do you see or I guess, you know, what are you seeing? Are we seeing a surge in the labor movement? And
00:36:57
Speaker
and maybe putting it in historical context for us because there wasn't certainly a height in our country of the labor movement itself. And I don't know when that was, I have a guess, but putting it in context, what are we seeing today? Sure. We really are seeing a great resurgence. And the labor movement, I think people think sometimes is it a
00:37:28
Speaker
Is this a new thing that we have? It's like, well, no, the labor movement never went away, right? Now more than ever, the workers are really standing up and speaking out, taking action for better and safer working conditions and a host of other reasons, better pay, retirement, et cetera. But some people have said, oh, it's because of COVID. And that is true. But I wouldn't say that it's
00:37:56
Speaker
that the working conditions really are any
00:38:00
Speaker
different necessarily. Working conditions in many settings have been poor for a very long time. And the pandemic, what the pandemic did was really expose that and really brought that to the public eye. Many of these workers, you think about the people we really relied on when everybody else was staying home, people who are making our food and different products, manufacturing and grocery stores and the meat processing,
00:38:29
Speaker
transportation, corrections. There are people who are at work no matter what. But what the public, I think, realized with the pandemic is what happens when there aren't enforceable workplace standards in place. And they also realize when laws aren't strong enough for workers to speak up or to ensure their own safety on the job.
00:38:50
Speaker
People also became more aware of when employers aren't following the laws that do exist and also how difficult it is to make your own workplace safer and the power dynamics in the workplace that became even more real.
Historical Impact of Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
00:39:06
Speaker
People really realize that organizing together is the only way to really make the changes in many cases. When there aren't strong laws or when your employer isn't keeping you safe,
00:39:17
Speaker
People want to band together and collective action has been, you know, very critical for them to do that because they didn't have any other options, many workers. And when you think about it, you go back a century, decades, decades, you go back a century, you think about things like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
00:39:41
Speaker
You know, the anniversary of that was just in April. And for folks, you know, hopefully a lot of folks know about that. Yeah, tell the story. Please take time and tell the story of the triangle short ways fire. Sure. It's certainly not, you know, the the only example of major example of
00:40:01
Speaker
workers coming together and organizing around safer working conditions, but this is when garment workers were working on the top level of a very high building in New York City back in 1911, crammed and crowded, dirty, just crowded, unsanitary conditions.
00:40:19
Speaker
uh and a fire broke out and the doors were the employers had locked the doors because they didn't want uh garment garment workers stealing fabric and so the doors had been locked and workers had to face and it was mostly women and also children um who were working here and they had to face the decision of of
00:40:44
Speaker
staying up there and in the middle of the fire or many of them left to their death and so you see you've seen a lot of you know horrifying pictures when you look at the triangle shirtwaist factor of a lot of women on the sidewalk around the building because you know huge tragedy and but the fire alone wasn't what made the shirtwaist maker such a focal point for the worker safety because workplace deaths weren't
00:41:12
Speaker
totally uncommon at the time. In 1911, I think more than 100 workers died every day on the job. But nothing would have happened if people hadn't united and made demands of their employers and also demands of their government to have a stronger
00:41:28
Speaker
You know, to have stronger standards. And so they started organizing actually a few years before the fire and in the years leading. So people think it was the fire that started it, but they were, the women were already organizing and it was the years leading up to the fire. They were, they held the general strike.
00:41:45
Speaker
Women workers were also attacked and beaten for trying to organize. It really spurred though, what it did is it also helped a lot of women from different classes came together around after the fire. There were women of all sorts of classes who came together to fight for better standards and leverage all of their resources to actually win
00:42:12
Speaker
fire safety laws and worker compensation laws in New York and then those trickled to other states.
00:42:24
Speaker
As a result of those decades of working people doing those unions, there are now both federal and state laws that provide basic safety and health protections that we all have come to know, of course, and worker rights. But workplaces are a bit safer today than they were in the early 1900s for sure. But there are many problems that remain.
00:42:48
Speaker
you know, in the report that we mentioned that we release, you know, it's still more than 5000 workers die, traumatic injuries, we have 120,000 workers who die from occupational diseases, many millions of, you know, several millions of workers are severely injured every year. So we do have a long way to go. And I think the fire, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire was one of the events that led
00:43:12
Speaker
to longer term social and labor reforms in the U.S., right? Yeah, right. One of the witnesses of the fire. I was wondering, okay, go for it. Was Frances Perkins. And she later became the Secretary of Labor under FDR. So yeah, definitely, you know, it inspired people to change.
00:43:35
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, and under, under Frank Francis Perkins leadership, um, correct. I believe I'm correct in saying this, Rebecca, you know, we have her to thank for our 40 hour work week and breaks mandatory breaks. Um, yeah, I mean, and she was, yeah, you're right. She was, she was there. She was witnessing these women who were leaping, as you said, to their death that day. And so she was certainly one of the champions.
Women in Unions and Leadership
00:44:02
Speaker
Yeah, and it's important to remember that it does take many decades to win very basic safety, workplace safety, health laws, and protections, and that they can also disappear. You hear people say, why do we need unions? We have laws now. But not for everything, as we found out in the last two years. Exactly. Not for everything, certainly not for emerging hazards, also not even for some of these
00:44:28
Speaker
hazards that have been around for a long time. And also protections aren't necessarily permanent. We know that they can be taken off the books if people aren't there to hold the government accountable.
00:44:41
Speaker
You have that you think about in terms of history, think of the coal mine disasters, you know, you think about the Golly Bridge disaster with the asbestos so, or sorry, with silica. And so there are many examples of horrific
00:45:00
Speaker
safety and health conditions, but it's not like we're out of the woods. We know that, you know, people are exposed to some pretty nasty stuff every day still. That's right. That's right. We still have, you know, everyone listening likely knows someone within their inner circle, whether a family member or friend who has experienced
00:45:21
Speaker
some sort of adverse effect from workplace health and safety issues. I know I have them in my family for sure. You probably have them in yours as well. Yeah. Rebecca, we were talking about women. We were talking about what the women in the triangle shirtwaist factory were working on. We talked about Frances Perkins.
00:45:48
Speaker
You focus on women in your report as well and their representation within the labor movement itself. Can you talk a little bit more about what you're finding and what you're seeing right now, specifically with women in the workplace?
00:46:06
Speaker
Sure. Well, I think there's a lot to say. I'll try to keep it short. But I think when I talked about workplace violence earlier with health care and social service, workers, women really bear the brunt of those injuries, too. So there are certain hazards where women are really
00:46:29
Speaker
largely represented by being exposed or being injured, which is certainly some areas to focus on. We recently came across reports that show that next to the military, the AFL-CIO is the largest organization of working women in the country.
00:46:50
Speaker
And each year the, you know, the gap between the number of union men and union women in America is getting smaller and women are actually projected to be the majority of union members by 2025.
Encouraging Safety Involvement and Resources
00:47:05
Speaker
So it's certainly, you know, certainly, and I think largely due to representation in the public sector. That is really, I think, the main driver.
00:47:16
Speaker
of that and so local and state government workers. And yeah, so, you know, we're growing, the labor movement's growing. There's a lot of, you know, a lot of context about why the growth isn't as fast as it used to be. You have the break to work, you know, so-called break to work laws. You have, we have a bigger service industry now and not as many manufacturing jobs in the US. There's a lot to get into there, but essentially,
00:47:49
Speaker
the unionization rates, that does seem to be some of the breakdown. Interesting. I mean, following along with you said women are making up will be soon the largest working cohort that are represented in the country soon. You also at the AFL-CAO have the first female president, right? In fact, we do. Yes. President Liz Schuler is
00:48:08
Speaker
when you look at the industries that are growing and you look at
00:48:15
Speaker
the first woman president of the AFL-CIO. And she came into office at the end of last summer. And she comes out of the trades, and she comes out of the IBEW, the electrical workers. And she's really committed to, she loves labor, committing
00:48:40
Speaker
committed to busting myths about labor, to really leveraging the diversity in the labor movement, and really looking, you know, driving forward on social justice issues and innovative approaches to really making sure that every working person has a voice on their job and, you know, pushing for stronger workplace safety laws in my lane, but many other
00:49:03
Speaker
you know, many other lanes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Rebecca, as we as we're rounding up our time together today, I'm wondering, are there are there other things you'd like to share and or is there good news, encouraging news that you'd like to leave our audience with?
00:49:25
Speaker
Well, you know, that's a big question, but I would guess no problem. You know, we are always looking for also ways to to get our message out there. So if there are good vehicles for, you know, if people want to be bridging the gap with, you know, workplace safety unions in workplaces, we want to hear what's going on in the field. You know, we love hearing from people. There's a general contact.
00:49:54
Speaker
email address through our website. Of course, some of us are on Twitter and all of that, but we're here to represent workers in their workplaces, and that's what we do. I really encourage people to check out the OHIP program that I mentioned. I think it's just a fabulous program.
00:50:17
Speaker
If folks know anything about Tony Mizaki, he was an incredible leader in the 70s and 80s and 90s. And he has an amazing story. So I would just say that I think where we're going, we really have to also think about where we've been and what's made us successful to drive forward and get standards to get
00:50:38
Speaker
protections passed, it's just, it's harder these days than it used to be. There are a lot more barriers and we're not going to let that stop us. We're fighting for, you know, stronger, safer working conditions. And I think, you know, just building on collective action to do that. So please check out our report. Please check out the program OHIP and yeah, we'd love your podcasts. So thank you so much for doing this.
00:51:05
Speaker
Oh, well, you're very welcome, Rebecca. I really appreciate you taking the time today. And thank you so much for being the next champion of your annual report. I don't think I'm ever going to miss it again. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for your work and advocacy. Thanks a lot, Jill. And thank you all for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good. Making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day.
00:51:35
Speaker
If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any other podcast player you'd like. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes. It really helps us connect the show with more and more health and safety professionals like Rebecca. Special thanks to Naeem Jarisi, our podcast producer. And until next time, thanks for listening.