Lessons to be learned from the Triangle Fire And Workplace Injuries Today

Lessons to be learned from the Triangle Fire And Workplace Injuries Today

By Patrice Woeppel, Ed.D.
http://www.patricewoeppel.us
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire on March 25, 1911 killed 146 young women, most between the ages of 13 and 23 years of age. It was a Saturday, the shorter 8 hr. day of their 6-day work week. On the entire 9th floor factory, only one door was unlocked, and that opened inward, thus allowing only a few to escape. A small number made it into the elevator. Fire ladders were unable to reach beyond the 6th floor, fire escapes collapsed, and the 27 buckets of water, the only fire prevention available, was no match for the conflagration. Many burned to death. Most leaped to their deaths in a desperate attempt to escape the flames, to reach the fire ladders, or to leap into the fire blankets, the latter of which collapsed from the weight of the falls.

In the previous year, a successful union movement had established the International Ladies Garment Workers Union In NYC. The Triangle Factory was a holdout, leaving these young women at the mercy of the unscrupulous owners, and unsafe working conditions.

Earlier, when the Fire Commissioner had ordered sprinklers to be installed in warehouses, the Protective League of Property Owners argued that the Fire Department was seeking to force the use of “cumbersome and costly apparatus.” The Associated Industries of New York insisted that fire code changes would force the “wiping out (of) industry in this state.”1 Does this begin to sound similar to what we hear from industry today?

Last year, business interests launched a fierce battle against OSHA reform legislation. Marc Freedman, a director at the US Chamber of Commerce, is reported to have stated that forcing a company to abate a hazard while it is challenging a citation could cause expensive workplace shutdowns.2 No concern for the safety, the lives of workers was expressed.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) records 5,214 worker fatalities for 2008, the most recent year for which their data is completed. But devastating as this number is, this is the fatalities from worker injuries in a given year, and as such, is a gross under-report.

Worker deaths from occupational diseases, primarily from toxic chemical exposures, are conservatively estimated by NIOSH and other researchers at 50,00 to 60,000 deaths each year, or ten times the number of fatalities from work injuries.3,4 Additionally by 2015, the number of persons disabled from occupational illnesses and injuries is expected to reach 8.5 million.5 It is a disaster of monumental proportions that goes largely unrecorded. The United States has no comprehensive occupational health data collection system.

Diseases such as cancers and mesothelioma may not show up until decades after exposure. The long latency period, combined with the lack of sufficient disease data is a continuing problem. The under-reporting of work-related diseases also severely hampers the epidemiological data-gathering so essential to diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, and ultimately, prevention of occupational diseases. And because the magnitude of occupational injuries and diseases is not generally known, it tends to get ignored.


The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has the responsibility for setting safety and health standards, monitoring and ensuring the safety and health of the workplace. But constant legal challenges by industry, claiming that regulations interfere with profits, have interfered with OSHA’s effectiveness for decades.



Worker deaths often cost an employer far less than correcting a safety/health hazard in the workplace; and employers are virtually immune from prosecution for the disease that cripples, or the corporate negligence that injures and kills.



Under current OSHA regulations, if a worker is killed through the repeated and willful negligence of the employer, it's a mere misdemeanor. One has to prove the act to be "willful," before proceeding to referral to Department of Justice (DOJ) for prosecution. Even in those few cases when OSHA deems a citation "willful" and allows it to go to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for prosecution, the crime carries a maximum penalty of not more than six months in prison and a fine of not more than $70,000 or both. In its nearly 40 years of existence, only 79 willful fatality cases have been prosecuted by DOJ, with a total of 89 months of prison time served for all cases combined, or an average of 1.1 month per case.6 The criminal penalties for the depraved indifference that kills workers are miniscule compared to those for accounting fraud – or even the felony charges meted out for drug use.

By contrast, in 2009 alone, EPA prosecuted 387 cases under environmental laws for a total of 76 years in prison and fines of $96 million.7

The average OSHA fine for a serious violation is less than $1,000; the median fine for a worker death after negotiation is less than $5000. Sadly, there are fewer inspectors now than there were in 1975. With this paucity of inspectors, it would take 137 years to inspect every workplace in the country just once.



Occupational diseases and injuries combined are thought to be among the five leading causes of illness and death in our nation.8 As we have lagged behind other nations in our lack of a national comprehensive medical database, we have also lagged behind in the research into the causes and consequences of occupational illnesses that would lead to improved diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, and ultimately prevention, of occupational toxic exposures and resultant diseases.9 Additionally “34 of the 50 US states have minimal to no surveillance, or epidemiology, capacity in occupational health.” 10 A national comprehensive occupational disease surveillance database would also lay the groundwork for health care and academic institutions' continued research into the causes and consequences of occupational illnesses and injuries.

While the United States has set permissible exposure limits on less than 500 of the hundreds of thousands of chemicals in use in workplaces throughout our country, the European Union regulates 30,000 chemicals utilized in their workplaces, and many that we allow here have been banned for years in the EU. Even the small number of chemicals, upon which exposure limits have been set in the US, are grossly out of date based on more recent scientific data.



In this country, OSHA is required to prove that a chemical is a danger at a specific amount, in order to limit it. In the EU, a producer must prove that a chemical is safe, before it is allowed to be used. We have it backward. We must change the way we regulate chemicals in use in industry. The onus of responsibility needs to be on the producer to prove that a chemical is safe before use. Further, we need to begin to cluster like chemicals together for review by OSHA – not a review of chemicals one at a time, as is done now. Chemicals should be regulated for toxicity at any point along the chain of manufacture, use and disposal, with a focus on the cumulative impact on the environment. There needs to be a focus on alternatives to dangerous chemicals, and development of safer products and technology.11


According to REACH [Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals: the EU's regulatory agency for the production and use of chemical substances], the cost of regulation is minimal compared to the cost of saving lives. The cost has been estimated to be less than one euro per year per person over the entire 11-year phase-in period.12 It would be in our best interest to start adopting regulatory practices similar to those of the EU.


OSHA, EPA, other agencies need to work together to best accomplish the goals. Just one example of failure in this regard is the pathogenic sludge from feedlot cattle that ends up on soil and in rivers that causes massive numbers of E. coli infections every year.13

The current OSHA regulatory system puts the pressure on OSHA, rather than on the employer, to come to closure in an investigation, which sometimes takes years, and contributes to the failures in worker safety and health. Immediate abatement is needed to compel employers to abate violations immediately upon identification.
The Miner Safety and Health Act of 2010 would have required abatement of a violation immediately upon identification, rather than having to await the end of negotiation process; would have included victims, family members in the negotiation process; and improve whistleblower protections, as well as increase criminal penalties.
With regard to the now 100-year-old workers’ compensation system, there has been very little general public awareness of this system that maims and kills with impunity, nor the magnitude. The time is long overdue to re-evaluate a structure which clearly doesn’t meet the needs of seriously injured, ill, or toxic chemical-exposed workers, or the families of workers who died from their work – a system that has fostered devastating and lasting damage to families, to communities, to our environment.

The abuses in medical treatment under workers' compensation are legion and varied. Themes that run throughout the experience of injured workers are the delays; the denial of treatment; the inadequate, inappropriate and cursory medical treatment; inhumane treatment; and the shunting of costs that should be paid by workers' compensation to others, including injured workers and their families. One must ask why a system of medical treatment is based on the payer's needs, rather than the diagnostic and treatment needs of the patient. The major purpose of this duplicative, and duplicitous, medical system has been to save money for the employer and the insurer.



The current system is costly in lives, and costly in dollars. The economic burden for occupational illness, injury and death in our country falls heavily on families, and on taxpayers; with only about one quarter of the cost being paid by workers’ compensation.14 What is needed is a national program with uniform coverage of health care and adequate loss-of-earnings benefits,….independent of industry involvement and insurance industry control.”15 In fact, it is well documented, that such a program would not only be effective, but do so at far less cost.



Unions are a critical component of the solution. No worker is likely to speak up about a dangerous, unsafe, or toxin-exposing workplace on his/her own. Only with union support is one likely to speak out. Public employees are the heaviest sector where there are still unions,which is why they are under attack by those who would throw the middle class under the bus, while giving tax breaks to the wealthy. It should also be noted that OSHA doesn’t cover state and local public employees, and neither do 24 of our 50 states.16


Increasingly as a nation, we have been all too willing to push corporate costs onto workers and taxpayers; and all too willing to cut protections for workers, communities. Serious fines, tort liability, meaningful criminal liability, all are needed. Only when corporations are hit meaningfully in the pocketbook will real change occur.


The sheer magnitude of occupational illnesses and injuries cries out for our attention and resolution, and would dramatically improve the health of our nation.

As David Michaels points out, regulations don’t kill jobs, they stop jobs from killing workers.
End Notes:
1. New York Herald, cited in Triangle Fire Quote Summary, The Cry Wolf Project, p.1, http://www.coshnetwork.org/sites/default/files/TriangleFireCWP.pdf.
2. Morris, J. Congress to consider legislation to toughen toothless OSHA. The Cutting Edge, 10/14/10, http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=21662.

3. Leigh, J. Paul; Markowitz, Steven; Fahs, Marianne; Landrigan, Philip. Costs of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses. University of Michigan Press, 2000.
4. Steenland, Kyle; Burnett, Carol; Lalich, Nina; et al.Dying for Work: The Magnitude of US Mortality From Selected Causes of Death Associated With Occupation, American Journal of Industrial Medicine, Vol 43, pp 461-482, 2003.
5. Daub, H., Hardy, B. B., Kennelly, D., Podoff, D., Schieber, S.J. Social Security Disability Insurance, 1986-2006: Statement by the Social Security Advisory Board. Social Security Bulletin, 66 (3) (2005-2006):1, cited in LaDou, J. Workers’ Compensation in the United States: Cost Shifting and Inequities in a Dysfunctional System. New Solutions, Vol 20(3) 291-302, 2010.
6. op.cit. Morris, J.,2010.
7. ibid.
8. LaDou, J. Occupational Medicine in the United State: A Proposal to Abolish Workers’ Compensation and Reestablish the Public Health Model, International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine in the United States. 2006; 12 (2) 154-168.
9. Smecker, Frank, The Silent Killing of America’s Workforce: An Interview with Patrice Woeppel., Jul7 23,2010,.http://www.truth-out.org/the-silent-killing-americas-workforce-an-interview-with-patrice-woeppel-deadly-inadequacy-workers-co.
10. Kriebel, D. Jacobs, M.,Markkanen, P., Tickner, J. Lessons Learned; Solutions for Workplace Safety and Health. University of Massachusetts, Lowell, MA. 2011, p.126.

11. Geiser, K, Tickner, J., Torrie, Y. Reforming State-level chemicals management policies in the US: Status, Challenges and Opportunities. New Solutions, Vol. 19, No. 1, 2009.
12. Ackerman, Frank. The Unbearable Lightness of Regulatory Costs. Global Development and Environment Institute,Working Paper No.06-02, Tufts University, 2006, p.6.

13. Woeppel, Patrice. Depraved Indifference: the Workers’ Compensation System. iUniverse Press, 2008, p.170.

14. op. cit. Leigh, et al, 2000.

15. American Public Health Association, Workers’ Compensation Reform Policy. 11/10/2009, New Solutions, Vol.20 (3), 397-404, 2010.

16. Hellman, Gary. Labor Advocates say Ohio Bargaining Bill Threatens Protections for Public Employees. Occupational Safety and Health Daily, 3/14/11.