“Right to Work for Less” Also Means Less Safety for Workers
Unions call “right to work” the “right to work for less,” meaning less pay and benefits.
But RTW also means less safety on the job, as Alex Bradshaw, a Louisville labor and social justice activist; and Richard Becker, an organizer for SEIU/NCFO, documented in a Leo Weekly article, which is posted on the Kentucky State AFL-CIO website.
The authors write: “Professor Rolland Zullo of the University of Michigan points to the ominous consequences of passing RTW laws, which make resources for worker safety scarce. Zullo states that ‘RTW laws result in the underfunding of union safety training… [and] accident prevention activities.’ Further, Zullo’s research — which pulls from both the U.S. Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics — concludes that ‘the rate of occupational fatalities is 34 percent higher in RTW states.’ One possible reason for decreased worker safety in RTW states, Zullo writes, is that an ‘objective of organized labor is to protect worker safety and health.’”
Anti-union business and industry reacted with near hysteria to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which Congress created in 1970.
In the 1960s, approximately 14,000 workers were dying on the job every year. Millions were being disabled from accidents and injuries at work.
Unions looked to Washington for help in stopping the slaughter. No union leader worked harder for federal worker safety and health standards than Tony Mazzocchi, a longtime official of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, now part of the Steelworkers.
Mazzocchi was an ardent environmentalist and chair of the first Earth Day rally in New York City on April 22, 1970. He was dubbed “The Rachel Carson of the American Workplace.” Carson, who authored Silent Spring, is often considered the founder of the modern environmental movement.
The Occupational Safety and Health Act set uniform, national workplace safety and health standards. The law also created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration—OSHA for short—as part of the labor department. OSHA was empowered to enforce the standards.
OSHA was officially established on April 28, 1971. That’s why unions observe April 28 as Workers Memorial Day.
The reactionary John Birch Society, famous for flights of conspiratorial fantasy, helped lead the anti-OSHA charge, revving up a “Put OSHA Out of Business Campaign.”
An article in the Bircher magazine accused OSHA inspectors of using “Gestapo-style tactics.” The Gestapo was Adolf Hitler’s murderous secret police.
The Birchers have long equated unions with communism. They argued that union-backed OSHA was another step toward a Red America – like fluoridated drinking water, which they said was a secret communist plot to poison Americans.
“Just like a rabid dog, it needs to be destroyed,” an Idaho Bircher and small business owner said of OSHA.
Small business and big business organizations teamed up with the Birchers, right-wing politicians and right-wing newspaper columnists and radio hosts in hopes of killing OSHA. They failed, but the Reagan administration and both Bush administrations did all they could to fatally weaken OSHA.
They slashed OSHA’s budget. They limited new safety rules. They rolled back old ones. They reined in OSHA inspectors. To run the agency, they hired executives from the industries OHSA oversaw.
Probably the worst example of the fox guarding the henhouse at OSHA was Thorne Auchter, a Florida Republican and Reagan campaigner who The Gipper named to head OSHA. OSHA had cited Auchter’s family-owned construction company for safety violations.
On his first day as OSHA chief, Auchter demanded the destruction of booklets that warned against the danger of cotton dust.
Later, he ordered staffers to recall three worker safety videos commissioned by Eula Bingham, OSHA head in the Carter administration. Auchter “threatened to withold funding for union safety and health programs that did not return the videos.”
Copies of two of the videos, “Worker to Worker” and “Can’t Take No More,”survive and can be viewed on You Tube.
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader said Auchter “shackled” OSHA. Unions charged Auchter with the “systematic and insidious dismantling of OSHA.”
This Workers’ Memorial Day marks OSHA’s 45th anniversary. If today’s Republican party had its way, there wouldn’t be a 46th.
This Workers’ Memorial Day marks OSHA’s 45th anniversary. If today’s Republican party had its way, there wouldn’t be a 46th.
This Workers’ Memorial Day marks OSHA’s 45th anniversary.
If today’s Republican party had its way, there wouldn’t be a 46th. If this GOP had been controlled Congress in 1970, there wouldn’t have been an OSHA.
Republican Richard Nixon was president in 1970. Less than union friendly, he objected to parts of the legislation that created OSHA. But Nixon signed the bill, which passed the Democratic-majority House and Senate with bipartisan support.
Nixon hailed the legislation as “an example of the American system at its best.”
When the Birchers and the rest of the right-wing noise machine declared holy war on OSHA, Rep. William A. Steiger, a Wisconsin Republican, rushed to the agency’s defense.
Steiger co-sponsored the OSHA legislation. He said Bircher claims that OSHA employed “Gestapo like tactics” were “shoddy and irresponsible.”
The likes of Nixon and Steiger would, of course, would be detested “RINOs” – Republicans In Name Only — in today’s GOP of the tea party, a 21st century Birch Society clone.
Every Republican running for president wants to cleave OSHA funding to the bone, or abolish the agency.
Almost all Republicans in Congress hate OSHA – and unions — with Birch Society fervor. Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe also likened OHSA to the Gestapo.
The Gestapo tortured and took the lives of thousands of innocent Europeans.
OSHA is saving the lives – and limbs – of thousands of innocent Americans.
Berry Craig
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The TRUTH will set you FREE.
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