Open Access“Educate the Individual . . . to a Sane Appreciation of the Risk”A History of Industry’s Responsibility to Warn of Job Dangers Before the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
Author(s) -
David Rosner,
Gerald Markowitz
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
american journal of public health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.284
H-Index - 264
eISSN - 1541-0048
pISSN - 0090-0036
DOI - 10.2105/ajph.2015.302912
Subject(s) - occupational safety and health , obligation , government (linguistics) , argument (complex analysis) , law , administration (probate law) , public relations , business , political science , medicine , philosophy , linguistics
The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 and the Workers Right to Know laws later in that decade were signature moments in the history of occupational safety and health. We have examined how and why industry leaders came to accept that it was the obligation of business to provide information about the dangers to health of the materials that workers encountered. Informing workers about the hazards of the job had plagued labor-management relations and fed labor disputes, strikes, and even pitched battles during the turn of the century decades. Industry's rhetorical embrace of the responsibility to inform was part of its argument that government regulation of the workplace was not necessary because private corporations were doing it.