Laboring for Health - cont.

 

By agitating, struggling, and fighting, unions managed to earn the passage of some of the most significantlegislation and practices in our history: child labor laws, the minimum wage,health and safety regulations. And they continue to be the strongest and most vociferous proponents of workplace environmental issues.

 

Several events in the early 1900s created an impetus for occupational safety and health legislation. Jacob Riis, a New York City police reporter, pioneered the use of photography for social justice, recording the hazards of tenement life and advocating for reform; his efforts helped give rise to modern social work. Upton Sinclair’s famous book, The Jungle, about the health and safety hazards of the meatpacking industry was published in 1906. And in 1911, a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company sweatshop in New York City killed 146 young seamstresses who had been locked in by company management, many of them jumping to their deaths from the top floor of the building. The resulting public uproar led to important changes in building codes and working conditions and brought new energy and converts to the union cause.


More public action was to come. In 1919, the International Labor Organization (ILO, now a UN agency) was asked to “draw up a list of the principal processes to be considered unhealthy, ”and in 1930 the organization published its first Encyclopedia of Occupational Health and Safety...

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