Laboring for Health - cont.

 

Or that unions were the most important group behind passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) in 1970? Without the efforts of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers ( OC AW, now called PACE), and particularly those of its late legislative director Anthony Mazzocchi and vice president Robert Wages, there would have been no OSHA.

 

Mazzocchi also assisted OC AW member Karen Silkwood, a worker who revealed that the Kerr-McGee corporation of Oklahoma was falsifying safety data about its nuclear fuel rods - a case that received national attention. OC AW also instigated one of the first union corporate campaigns - a public drive that includes intense research and community coalition building to put pressure on corporations as p a rt of a 1973 strike against Shell Oil on health and safety issues. They created coalitions with environmental and community groups, and forged alliances with Shell Oil workers in South Africa as well. In the end, Shell agreed to bargain on these issues.

Labor also has a vested interest in health issues because it includes more than a million health care members. Since the 1960s, we’ve seen a huge leap in the organizing among health workers. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and 1199 - now merged - were the major forces in this organizing, and now have more than 755,000 members in the health field. SEIU and 1199 have also taken strong positions linking the wellbeing of their members in hospitals and in home health care work to the health and safety of patients and the public. Their Americans for Health Care campaign is an important part of the struggle to achieve health care for all...

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