Chapter 1: What historical event highlighted the need for workplace safety reforms?
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When Eric Reyes-Buriga first got a job in the stone fabrication industry, he liked it. He worked with customers and learned a skilled trade.
For me, it was interesting because I'm the kind of person that likes to learn a lot of things. It was something new.
Reyes-Briga, who's now 36 years old and has two children, was making countertops, like the ones you may have in your kitchen or bathroom. He would take large slabs of stone and cut them to a customer's specific dimensions, then polish and round off the edges, exactly to spec. He says they took basic precautions in his shop. No one told him about the risks.
About two years ago, Ray Espariga's father-in-law, who he worked alongside, had trouble breathing.
He was diagnosed with a disease he had never heard of, silicosis. Silicosis is an irreversible, incurable lung disease caught from inhaling small particles of silica dust over several decades, usually in heavy industrial settings. It's been called Grinder's disease, Miner's pythus, and Potter's rot. It's the world's oldest known occupational disease.
There's evidence of it occurring in Neolithic men who chiseled tools and weapons out of stone. It's also been seen in the lungs of Egyptian mummies. Reyes Pariga's wife encouraged him to get a CT scan himself. He had been cutting engineered stone for about a decade. His results came back positive for silicosis.
It was shocking because... Like, pretty much I had to start rethinking about my entire career, that I had to start from scratch again, had to look for a job, had to look for something that I had to be, give me enough money to support my family. Imagine seeing my kids suffering every time they see their grandpa, and then seeing me at the same time, in the same place, pretty much.
It's a disease that's 100% preventable. The appropriate number of people that should get silicosis is zero.
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Chapter 2: What is silicosis and how does it affect workers?
Employees there worked long shifts, 10 to 13 hours a day, six to seven days a week. It was essentially a sweatshop.
We could see this building from Washington Square, and the people had just begun to jump.
With doors to the main staircases of the factory locked and smoke billowing out of the building, young garment workers crowded at the 8th, 9th and 10th floor windows while firemen below struggled to get nets out to catch them.
This one, the window was too crowded and they would jump and they hit the sidewalk. And the weight of the bodies was so great at the speed at which they were traveling that they broke through the net. And every one of them was killed. Everybody who jumped was killed. It was a horrifying spectacle.
At least 146 people, mostly Jewish and Italian immigrant women and girls, died in the Triangle Fire. The owners of the factory had locked the doors to all but one exit to prevent employees from stealing a stray blouse while on the job. The accident captured the public's attention at a time when Americans were beginning to see the toll that industrialized workplaces were having on employees.
In the early 20th century, there was really a massive, I think using the word slaughter is not too strong, of workers.
Gerald Markowitz is a historian of public health, a professor at John Jay College in New York, and an author of over a dozen books on occupational and public health.
In the first couple of decades of the 20th century, there's an estimate that 35,000 workers died every year on the job. Two million suffered injuries. So that's the context for the Triangle Fire. But it was, in a sense, the tip of the iceberg of what was happening to workers in a wide variety of industries. Steel, railroads, mining, iron, meatpacking.
Until this time, responsibility for worker safety was generally laid on the individual workers themselves, not on their employers. In response to the Triangle Fire, an industry group called the National Association of Manufacturers attempted to double down on this idea by producing a silent film called The Crime of Carelessness.
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Chapter 3: How did the Triangle Fire influence labor laws in America?
When they died, the company buried them in unmarked graves. Other sick workers left the job site and went back home to their families in the South, where it's very likely they died of the disease at their homes. Workers were dying so quickly that it became a national news story. The blues singer Josh White performed a song about the tragedy, titled, Silicosis is Killing Me.
I was there digging that tunnel for six
Digging my own grave. Silicoses eat my lungs away.
There's even video footage of some of the sick workers.
My name is Waller Kincaid. I worked in the 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 lived in 15 years. I think something should be done for our wives and family after we are gone.
It was both a news story as well as a congressional investigation and really put occupational disease on the political map. put silicosis on the political map. 1935, a wave of fear was sweeping the country. Silicosis was taking its toll from the ranks of American workers. Cause of the disease, dust. Results of the disease, disablement, poverty, death. Cure for the disease, none.
Secretary of Labor Francis Perkins ordered reports into the disaster and had the Department of Labor make a film raising awareness about silicosis, aptly titled Stop Silicosis.
After years of exposure to silica, once strong and healthy, John Steele is now weak and emaciated. And this led to congressional hearings in the 1930s. And I think that that very much stimulated a national concern about chronic disease. It was really the first time that occupational diseases reached a national consciousness and a recognition that something needed to be done about it.
But it didn't rise to the level of national legislation.
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Chapter 4: What were the consequences of the Hawksnest Tunnel disaster?
But instead of focusing solely on profits, Gallagly took a different approach.
Safety is a religion to me. It turns out that if you operate really, really well, you're doing a lot of things right, and that begins with safety.
I spoke to occupational safety experts who said their research shows that when you prioritize health and safety procedures, your production processes just function better. They become more efficient. Gallagly updated facilities that he felt were unsafe. He got pushback from investors who balked at the idea of spending money during a bankruptcy. Gallagly insisted.
Then he turned to the company's culture.
A lot of executives will stand and say, you know, safety is one of our top priorities, and very few of them can walk into a plant and do an audit. Most of those executives don't have a pair of coveralls at every plant in the system. I did.
He also instituted bonuses for employees who performed well on safety. Workers who failed to report safety problems in their areas were fired. Lyondell Bissell even made sure their downstream clients followed correct safety protocols.
If they couldn't pass our safety audit, we would not sell to them. I can think of multiple instances where we just said, I know you'll pay a very good price, but we're not going to let you use our product.
Under Gallogly's leadership, the company not only emerged from bankruptcy, but made a stunning turnaround, helped by the shale boom. Its stock price rose roughly 200%. They were also recognized for their strong safety record. Gallogly retired from Lyondell Basel in 2015, and the company's track record has faltered since.
In 2021, there was a fatal accident at a plant in La Porte, Texas, that killed two workers and put dozens more at risk.
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