For nearly a decade a major battle has been waged over conditions in coke plants. While the steel industry has resisted clean-up efforts tooth and nail, the United Steel Workers of America (USWA), prodded by rank-and-file coke oven workers, has won definite improvements in conditions in coke plants. Still, most plants...
Tag - OSHA
A COSH group is a “committee on occupational safety and health.” It’s a regional coalition of workers, trade unions, and health and legal specialists.
Chest pain, coughing and dizziness brought Joe to the doctor, who performed a check-up and advised him to quit smoking. The doctor never asked about the fumes Joe found so irritating at his factory job. Nonetheless, smoking didn't help, Joe knew, so he went back to the job, resolving to cut out cigarettes except while...
This issue of Science for the People magazine is concerned with occupational health and safety. The Stony Brook Chapter chose this topic, not because of any particular expertise we possess in this area, but rather because of its relevance to workers' lives and to their organizing efforts. We knew that at least 30% of...
Where did this concern about health and safety grow out of? The issue itself has existed for a long time. Public concern with toxic effects of chemicals created fertile soil in which workers' complaints about conditions inside the plant grew. The threat that workplace hazards might leak into the community was another...
The health care system and the industrial health and safety conditions in America can only be described as institutional murder. In recent years radicals have worked to create alternatives to present health structures, to confront and expose the capitalist health system, and to organize around health and safety issues...
Occupational health and job safety issues have yet to become "hot" topics with the left like community health clinics, air pollution, or poisons in food, but lately there have been stirrings of interest. The topic has been discussed a bit in Science for the People but I think that it's important that SESPA members do...
Cancer, like many other health problems results in large measure from the environmental and social conditions in which people live. Its solution requires social change, not merely the great American know-how that is advertised as the cure to all our problems. People will have to get together and use their political...