3.7.4: Labor Movements and Working Conditions in the United States

Occupational health hazards have been recognized for centuries - particularly in high-risk jobs such as mining. During the industrial revolution(s) spanning the 19th and 20th centuries, the use of large machinery increased health risks to workers, who were often immigrants, women, and children. In the middle 19th century, the first U.S. child labor laws were passed, protecting children under 10 years of age from being hired and exploited. In 1908 the first worker’s compensation laws were passed for federal government employees, followed over the next several decades by state laws for private employees (Seabert et al., 2021). Yet many workers still faced hazardous and deadly conditions for decades before government oversight was created.

A tragic example of the exploitation of workers and lack of care for their safety was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911. The factory employed mostly immigrant Jewish and Italian girls and young women to sew shirtwaists and the owners kept the exit doors of each floor locked to prevent unauthorized breaks and theft. The employees worked 9 hour shifts on weekdays and 7 hour shifts on Saturdays, earning less than minimum wage. When a fire broke out on a Saturday afternoon, the owners of the company and some employees were able to escape, but others were trapped in the burning building due to the locked exits and shoddy fire escapes. Many jumped or fell to their death, and the rest succumbed to the smoke and flames; all in all 146 employees perished. This horrific event did spur investigations into garment factory safety, as well as increased support for union membership and workers rights legislation (Contributors to Wikimedia projects, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, 2023h).

Alice Hamilton was a pioneer of industrial health research and eventually became the first female faculty member at Harvard Medical school during the turn of the century. After studying medicine in Europe, she moved back to Chicago and began living at Hull-House - a social settlement founded by Jane Addams. Hull-House was the first of several social houses which were created in immigrant neighborhoods. These homes became community centers for education, childcare, and organizing for civil and workers rights - particularly women’s suffrage, children’s labor laws, immigrant protection, and juvenile justice reform (About Jane Addams and Hull-House — Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, n.d.). From her experience at Hull-House, Hamilton realized that very little attention was given to industrial medicine and workers’ health. Prior to her faculty appointment at Harvard, she worked for the Occupational Diseases Commission of Illinois to investigate industrial health issues. Over 40 years she exposed occupational health hazards such as heavy-metal poisoning and other occupational illnesses (National Institutes of Health, n.d., Seabert et al., 2021).

While early labor movements had initiated and enhanced worker protections, it was still an uphill battle to achieve safe and healthy working conditions. The Department of Labor was created in 1913, and some concerns about a healthy workforce were amplified due to the necessity of having healthy soldiers in WWI. In the 1920’s, much of the power shifted back to corporations - some health and safety measures put in place were really a protection for the corporations against lawsuits. To fight back, labor unions became more organized and sought the expertise of leading public health doctors of the time; including the aforementioned Alice Hamilton and another public health pioneer - C.E.A. Winslow. Winslow, a famous overachiever, also founded the Yale School of Public Health, was a writer, editor, and activist, and is credited with creating the modern definition of public health as presented in Chapter 1 (Rosner & Markowitz, 2020),(Kemper, 2015). Winslow viewed public health through a model of social activism and community service for the public good, which conflicted with the more capitalist philosophies found in medicine at the time (Kemper, 2015).

During the Great Depression (1929-1939), workers were often at the mercy of corporations if and when they could find jobs. Concurrently, corporations were often aided in covering up gross negligence to their worker’s health and safety by local governments, physicians, and inspectors. A quintessential example of health and safety violations was the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel disaster. The Union Carbide company and its contractors caused what is considered to be one of the largest industrial disasters when it hired 3,000 workers, the majority of whom were black and from the south, to divert a river for hydroelectric power supply. In digging the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel, workers were exposed to silica dust without protective gear - sometimes for 10-15 hour shifts. Workers who later testified to Congress also indicated they were denied breaks and sometimes forced to work at gunpoint. Later, many developed the deadly lung disease silicosis, some perishing within a year of the tunnel’s completion. Death estimates from silicosis ranged from 109 (the official report by the company) to potentially 700 or more (Contributors to Wikimedia projects, Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster, 2023i, Rosner & Markowitz, 2020).

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Hawks Nest Tunnel Gravesite Marker. Jarek Tuszyński. (Copyright; CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

In the 1960s a large push for government oversight on occupational hazards, consumer protection, and environmental health led to several important pieces of legislation. In 1969 the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act was passed and was followed in 1970 by the Occupational Safety and Health Act - which established the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the research arm of this organization: the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was also established in 1970, and the Consumer Product Safety Act was passed just two years later. The public had been made more aware of the health hazards of things like asbestos, coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, pesticides (thanks in part to migrant labor activists like Cesar Chavez) and lead poisoning - especially in children.

In the decades that followed, both OSHA and the EPA have been alternatively bolstered or attacked and undercut, depending on the political party in power. Conservative lobbies pursue the interests of large businesses and argue that too much regulation decreases profits and company growth. Unions, epidemiologists, and public health entities tend to advocate for more oversight due to the continued environmental hazards that workers and communities are exposed to in the name of corporate profits. To this day, there is an obvious tension between the interests of capital and those of workers, and the government entities tasked with ensuring public health (Rosner & Markowitz, 2020).