Protective gear, OSHA, etc.

In the late 1930's, when I joined the work force, there were no regulations for safety apparel. Railroads and a few other industries insisted on steel-toed shoes and a few prudent workmen wore aluminum helmets.
Employers were absolute dictators, able to command wages, hire as they pleased, indulge in nepotism and fire at will for whimsical reasons. The adage that, "Men are standing in line, waiting for your job," was an immutable truth. In 1932, for example, one of every fifteen men was out of work. It got worse before it improved.
Employers were not required to protect their workers in any way - insurance, protective clothing, masks, ear muffs, helmets, and tethers were unthinkable. The Golden Gate Bridge was a pioneer in hanging life nets below structural steel erectors. Even that failed in a noteworthy accident when a structural member hit the net, along with a number of workmen, tore a hole through it and the men fell to their deaths. Scaffolds were innocent of railings. It was every man for himself.
When I started on the river the only safety rules the captain mentioned were, "Don't run," and, "Don't stand in the bight of a line!"
Look at the pictures of construction jobs. You will see that most of the men wore soft felt hats, a portion of them wore baseball caps and virtually none of them wore hard hats.
OSHA is a pain in the patoot, I'll agree, but today we do not see all those one-legged, one-armed men who used to form a part of the ordianry street scene. Those we see are veterans of battle almost exclusively.

Thank you, Alan. I frequently think of your admonition, "Do not wish for the old days...you wouldn't have liked them." Thanks for pointing up another reason this is so.

Bob, Alan & steamboating colleagues:
Alan is 'on the money' with memories and views of the working world in those days. Bob's question first posted would take hours to answer fully from a political, social aspect Re: the vast TVA and other projects in the country from the 1930s on. Look at the old U.S. Goverment documentary films and photos of the area and you'll see men working in unbelievable situations. Read Stienbeck's 'GRAPES OF WRATH' for a primmer. Untold millions moved or were located to work on these vast projects. Whole towns and cities were constructed from scratch with some on near utopian designs. The modern south and west reflected that and have never been the same since. There have been supporters and detractors on those projects ever since. Read some of the old memoirs describing life in shipyards for an inside view of the Victorian and Edwardian era. Alan is correct on the number of maimed people once so common from industrial accidents. My experience in the Russian Soviet state recalled untold thousands in major cities, towns there maimed not only from the horrors of World War II but from mills, mines, railroads, shipyards, maritime accidents. Human beings there were expendable for the glory of the revolution and the building of the nation. That has been their legacy until recent years.

Cheers,
R. Dale Flick

Bob, there was one other rule I forgot to mention. It came from a fellow deckhand: "If she catches fire, throw one bucket of water, then jump overboard."

Bob...the most rediculous example of safety run amuck was something I witnessed when I worked at the fleet in New Albany. We used to tow slurry barges from a plant that made carbide to the Cane Run Power Plant for Louisville Gas & Electric. Slurry is a lime by-product from the manufacturing of carbide which LG&E uses in its scrubbers to reduce sulfuric acid emissions. This slurry is a thick liquid which is pumped through hoses. Well, one of the hose flanges was leaking and LG&E decided it was a from a broken flange gasket that needed to be replaced.
They didn't know whether or not the old gasket contained asbestos, so to be on the safe side they decided to treat the job as a hazardous site.
Four men show up to replace this 6" gasket. Two men put on yellow hazard suits and hoods, this takes almost an hour. Then they string yellow hazard warning tape around the work site. With their suits and hoods on, the men couldn't see very well and one proceeded to trip over the discharge hose and fall head long onto the steel deck. Luckily he was not hurt.
The suited men then took wrenches and proceed to unbolt the flange...since they couldn't see very well through the small slits in their protective hoods, this took maybe a half hour. Finally they got the flange apart and there was the dangerous gasket...6" in diamtere, perhaps a 1/2 inch thick.
They then took the biggest pair ot tweezers I've ever seen and poked the gasket loose. They took out a plastic yellow bag marked "bio-hazard" and put the old gasket in it it and sealed the bag. They did the same to the tweezers. Then each of the suited men took a vacuum cleaner and cleansed off each other very thouroghly. They took off their protective suits and placed them in another larger bag marked "bio-hazard". They then looked around for a new gasket to replace the old one and found they had forgotten to bring it!
One of our guys said, "hell, we've got a gasket that will fit back in the supply room". The LG&E men said, "it's lunch time, you all go ahead and put the new gasket in " and they left.
It took LG&E 4 men two hours plus transit time to "safely" remove a simple gasket and our two men about 10 minutes to put the new one in. No wonder our electric bills are so high.

Oh, yeah, Jim, I have seen some similar things! I of course am all for safety, and thank goodness things are not like they were in the old days. However, it almost seems like these days we have the "tail wagging the dog" when it comes to some safety stuff. Lead paint is another favorite pet peeve of mine.

We had an AWO Safety Calendar on our boat a few years ago. It had cartoonish drawings pertaining to safety-related stuff, and for the month of July showed a guy on the tow who was supposedly overcome by heat exhaustion. The intended messsage was to be careful working in extreme heat. The drawing depicted him surrounded by his co-workers, and the victim, was kneeling on deck, wearing long-sleeved shirt, long pants tucked into steel-toed boots that went well above the ankle, welding gloves whose cuffs extended half-way up his arms, a hard hat and safety goggles. We the crew on the boat laughed and joked at how the guy was going to die if he didn't take off some of those clothes!

Soon OSHA will require railings on seesaws and sliding boards in the parks, while they ignore the garbage tipplers clinging to hand grips on the backs of their trucks and standing on a half-foot pedal in heavy traffic. It just ain't fair, is it?

I hate to say it, but that's already happened. It's not OSHA, but seesaws and slides of any size have done been regulated out of existance. There are manditory materials & fastener standards, fall zone clearances, fall cushioning impact standards, etc, etc., ad nauseum. Why do you think that you see so many prepackaged playgrounds these days? Heaven help us if the kids should actually manage to have fun on the things.

Seen it....

Sounds like the overly-cautious deckhand who, when tasked to grind some rust off the deck, spent over an hour getting his protective gear together. After assembling his tack he began getting into it:

hard hat
tinted safety glasses
ear plugs
ear muffs
face shield
fire-retardent coverall
leather welders gloves
steel-toes boots
Sun tarp overhead (30 minutes to assemble)
jug of Gatorade
bucket of ice
tall cups

Finally the shrill whine of the grinder started, but after only ten minutes it stopped. When queried why, the fellow answered:

"It's my break time."

Why Safety

Let's not forget that protection for workers has not come from a "warm and fuzzy" feeling companies have for workers. It's all about money. It's cheaper to offer workers protection than pay off libility suits. My wife works for the U.S. Federal Courts, the asbestos file fills up one large room and this was a combinded case.
My father was a Tram Inspector for open pit mines in the early 40's. He had to get into a bucket and ride the Tram line. No safety harness, hard hat. Provided his own gloves.
Having worked in the marine, aviation and professional racing industries, I have seen great strides made in worker safety. One of my co-workers had "Vests don't prevent stupidy" marked on his flight line vest. As it should be, safety still falls to the worker. The biggest safety hazard I have found in any business is the "Be safe, but hurry up" attitude.
I have noticed great improvements over the last 20 years on the ship I have ridden with Capt. Ted Davisson in New Orleans. These include both crew safety and ship quality.
One of the reasons the Goverment projects of the 30's and 40's took less time was based on the volume of man power the jobs had. Project completion was more important than profit.
I am returning to the off shore marine industry, oil field supply boats, after a 20 year absents and will be very interested to see the changes in safety and work conditions.

I don't think that anyone here would dispute the needs that brought about OSHA and the various other regulatory agencies. What seems to irritate people are the excessively complex and occasionally contradictory rules and enforcement that varies from conciencous and knowledgeable to bone headed and unreasonable. A couple of years age at a continuing ed course on building accessability standards, the speaker (from Washington & involved in the process) told us that it was expected to take five to eight years to reconcile the ANSI and ADAG standards. Either, or both of those standards can apply to a given project, and there are places where they conflict. The problem lay not in the regulations themselves, but in turf wars involving the Justice Dept., the various building code authories, state legislatures, Congress, the construction industy, the two regulatory agencies and, seemingly, anyone else who could get a finger in the pie. In the meantime, those who have to work in the real world never know when an inspector is gonna jump out of the woodwork and bite them.

Here is an OSHA tale.
George McBride's landing at Harrods Creek, Kentucky, was an OSHA nightmare when their inspector showed up. He noted the wiring, the railings, the ladders, demanded a stability test of the derrick boat and on and on...and on. After the inspection we had a "Post Inspection Meeting" seated on the steps of an abandoned summer camp, looking out at the river. OSHA was reading the Riot Act to George, who resented the air the guy breathed while on his property. After the guy read each item George would growl. Between times he snarled. OSHA finally got enough of it and said, "Captain McBride, If I want to I can inspect your wash basins and check the hot water temperature!" George said, "You don't need to worry about my warsh basin: I've got the biggest warsh basin in the world." OSHA said, "I can't believe this!"