How Workplace Safety Influenced Labor Day - Celebrating the American Worker with Randy Klatt

Back in 1892, President Grover Cleveland signed a law making the
first Monday in September of each year the Labor Day
holiday.  Do you know the history and the struggle of the
American worker that pre-dates this historic day?  On this
podcast, Randy Klatt, Director or Region 2 Loss Control here at
MEMIC helps me explore what it was like to be a worker in the
late eighteen and early nineteen hundreds and workplace injuries,
fatalities, child labor, and deplorable conditions were the
catalysts for fair wages, the 8 hour workday, and workplace
safety.


Wage Trends, 1800-1900 (nber.org)


 


Age of workers


Lewis Hine - Photographer


These Appalling Images Exposed Child Labor in America - HISTORY


The Photographs of Lewis Hine: The Industrial Revolution and
Child Laborers [Photo Gallery] | EHS Today


Teaching With Documents: Photographs of Lewis Hine: Documentation
of Child Labor | National Archives


Search Results: "Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940" - Prints &
Photographs Online Catalog (Library of Congress) (loc.gov)


Search Results: "" - Prints & Photographs Online Catalog
(Library of Congress) (loc.gov)


 


Achievements in Public Health, 1900-1999: Improvements in
Workplace Safety -- United States, 1900-1999 (cdc.gov)


History of Workplace Safety — SafetyLine Lone Worker


Deadliest Workplace Accidents | American Experience | Official
Site | PBS


Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - HISTORY


Child Workers and Workplace Accidents: What was the Price Paid
for Industrializing America? – Our Great American Heritage


(1857) Frederick Douglass, "If There Is No Struggle, There Is No
Progress" • (blackpast.org)


Haymarket Riot - HISTORY


https://www.dol.gov/general/laborday/history


Labor Day 2021: Facts, Meaning & Founding - HISTORY


History of Labor Day | U.S. Department of Labor (dol.gov)


Deadliest Workplace Accidents | American Experience | Official
Site | PBS


History of the Holidays: Labor Day | History


#82 - Comparative wages, prices, and cost of living : (from the
Sixteenth ... - Full View | HathiTrust Digital Library


History of The US Minimum Wage - From The Very First Minimum Wage
(bebusinessed.com)


Profile of work injuries incurred by young workers (bls.gov)


History of Workplace Safety in the United States, 1880-1970
(eh.net)


Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and
welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. I'm your host, Peter
Koch, as we're about to celebrate Labor Day. I expect that you're
getting up and gearing up for family and friends around the pool,
the barbecue, the yard, getting people together, trying to enjoy
that day off. Well, while you're doing that? Have you ever
thought about where we get the Labor Day holiday from, where did
it hey come from? Why do we have it? Why was it even started in
the first place? So for today's episode, how workplace safety
influenced Labor Day and vice versa. Celebrating the American
worker. I'm speaking with Randy Klatt, CSP director of Region
two, lost control here at MEMIC. Randy leads a team of
consultants serving the central and southern Maine area. So,
Randy, welcome back to the podcast. I'm excited to have you on to
talk about Labor Day today.


Randy Klatt: [00:00:55] Thank you, Peter. It's
always great to talk to you. Happy holiday.


Peter Koch: [00:00:59] Yeah, it's coming
[00:01:00] right up here. And, you know, I was thinking about,
well, the podcast and MEMIC and what our mission is to get out
there and to work with companies to help keep workers safe. And I
was thinking about the Labor Day holiday. And I'm like, you know
what? I've enjoyed the Labor Day holiday now. I've enjoyed time
off or on the Labor Day holiday. But what is it? Where to come
from? And that got me to thinking having a conversation with you
actually around. Well, what was it like to be a worker? Well,
before our time being a worker, before our parents, and probably
before our grandparents, maybe around the time of our great
grandparents, because prior to, you know, the early nineteen
hundreds. Labor Day didn't exist. And I think we kind of take it
for granted. So let's talk about that. What was it like to be a
worker in, say, the late eighteen hundreds and what were the
conditions? What was going on? And I know [00:02:00] you've been
doing a little bit of reading. I've been doing some reading, too.
We certainly don't have any firsthand experience, even though
we're both a little grayer than we were last year. We're not that
gray yet. But there are some fascinating history about work in
the late eighteen hundreds. What do you think it was like out
there?


Randy Klatt: [00:02:18] Oh, I think it was
pretty horrible, quite frankly. And there is plenty of gray. In
fact, I am all gray now. So thanks for the plug. But that's the
way it is. Yeah, it we when we think of the industrial
revolution, we sometimes think about progress and automation and
heavy machinery and, you know, the wonderful products and
everything that we developed and could put out there. What we
don't really think about often enough is the workers who actually
made all that happen. And often the horrendous conditions that
they had to work under and for what we would really call minimal
pay and no benefits whatsoever. [00:03:00]


Peter Koch: [00:03:01] So some of the benefits
you got to go home maybe at the end of the day.


Randy Klatt: [00:03:06] Yeah, that was your
benefit. Maybe one day off a week and maybe enough money to put a
little food on the table and keep a roof over your head, if you
were lucky. It was really quite horrendous. If you look at some
of the statistics regarding how much people were paid in your
average manufacturing facility and, you know, the textile mills
or the steel mills. It's an eye opener, even in today's
standards, if you adjust these things for inflation and when
you're when you're making 55 cents an hour in 1860, I'm sorry,
per day. That's easy to confuse, isn't it? Fifty five cents a
day. Not per hour. You know, bring that to today's standards.
It's still poultry. It's just amazing. [00:04:00]


Peter Koch: [00:04:00] Yeah. It's really hard to
think that you could live on that. And I think that's why you had
multiple people in the same family, from dad to mom many times,
all the way down to the kids going out and getting a job instead
of going to school or maybe after school if they had the
opportunity to go to school, because, you know, you add 55 cents
a day up and it doesn't go very far when you've got to purchase
food and pay for rent and mend clothes and all of the things that
come with just the daily burden of life.


Randy Klatt: [00:04:39] Right. And you add to
that the strenuous physical labor that was involved in most
cases, and then the hazardous conditions. We go into
manufacturing facilities today and we see some things that are
well in our world. They're pretty scary. Oh, my gosh. You really
need a guard on that in [00:05:00] running nip point. Well, take
that back a hundred and twenty years ago, and there were things
spinning and turning and pulling every which way all over the
building, and no one gave it a second thought. And you sent
people in there to work in close proximity to all of that every
day and just accept it, because if you don't want this job for
fifty five cents a day, then someone else will. Yeah. So you're
almost a commodity to me is if you're not going to work, then
we'll find someone else who will. Because these are good jobs.
Fifty five cents a day. Oh, my goodness.


Peter Koch: [00:05:38] And really, some of the
only jobs, you know, when we started to see the advent of us
moving from that agrarian society to the advent of the industrial
revolution and people moving into cities and towns to be closer
to where the work is, because they couldn't find jobs or the jobs
were too taxing in the agrarian culture, [00:06:00] in
agriculture and farming, getting those better jobs in
manufacturing and textiles and steel and construction and
carpentry, just kind of looking more at some of those wages. You
know, the difference in that that textile manufacturing, daily
wage of 55 cents in 1860, you could make a whole dollar, 40 a day
as a skilled carpenter. Just a few years later, in in the later
eighteen hundreds. So depending on what job you had, I mean, you
could you could earn some decent wages rather than just being a
farmhand for a while or again, dealing with all the hazards that
we knew about within the agricultural society and working on a
farm, getting kicked by a cow or getting caught up in some of the
horse or ox driven equipment to plow the fields and the hours
that were there moving into the or moving into the cities.
Sometimes, [00:07:00] you know, you're trading maybe one evil for
another, but you're getting paid more for it.


Randy Klatt: [00:07:08] Yeah. And if not more,
you're actually being paid if you work a full day in most cases.
Anyway, you were actually paid for that day. When you're on the
farm, any farmer out there today understands this. Clearly, it's
still the case. Mother Nature rules the day. And you just might
not have the crop this fall or to harvest. And you don't have
enough to feed your family, much less to sell to actually make a
living. So seeing these jobs was an attraction for people.
Nevertheless, it was still not what we would call desirable in
the way of a job today. I was interested how Andrew Carnegie got
his start. Most people know who Andrew Carnegie was. And, you
know, the forerunner to U.S. Steel Corporation, my gosh, in
[00:08:00] the railroads and all kinds of industry. And at one
point was the richest man in America. He actually started his
first job in this country in 1848 at the ripe old age of 12. And
he was a bobbin boy, changing the spools of thread in a cotton
mill. And he had to work 12 hours a day, six days a week. So he
did have one day off. And for that, what, 72 hours of labor for a
12 year old boys starting wage was a dollar twenty per week. So
even adjusted to it by inflation or with inflation over the
years, that equal that's equivalent to about thirty six dollars
in today's numbers. Can you imagine telling a 12 year old today
that I'd like you to work 72 hours this week and I'm going to pay
you thirty six dollars to do it?


Peter Koch: [00:08:59] I think the conversation
[00:09:00] would have stopped at work.


Randy Klatt: [00:09:04] Well, quite possibly.


Peter Koch: [00:09:06] Good. And then you get
into all the rest of the reasons you don't want to work is the
limited wage. And how come I don't have a day off and. Well, you
have one day off but it's not enough days off. And yeah, there's
a lot of challenges out there.


Randy Klatt: [00:09:20] Yeah, you probably have
to pay your babysitter thirty six dollars to watch your kids for
a couple, two or three hours when you go out for an evening.


Peter Koch: [00:09:27] For sure.


Randy Klatt: [00:09:28] Can you imagine that


Peter Koch: [00:09:31] You had mentioned this
just a bit ago, too, about the conditions that you'd work in. And
I doing some research for this looking or you can find so many
different really amazing images of workers from this time frame.
And one of the most prolific photographers that were out there is
Louis Hine. And some of the most famous pictures that he has are
from like the steelworkers having lunch [00:10:00] on the
suspended beam. Therefore, I'm not sure what they were building,
you remember what they were building in that particular picture,
I can't recall.


Randy Klatt: [00:10:08] I don't remember which
building it was. I believe it was New York City.


Peter Koch: [00:10:11] Yeah, I think it was to
regardless. But that's the picture that people think of when they
think of Louis Hines. However, when you start to look at other
photos that he took, it's really representative of the American
worker in the late. Eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds.
And there are thousands of photos which depict kids, really young
kids, women, children, men all working together in some very
dangerous occupations, whether it be textiles or in the fishing
industry or in some of the other manufacturing industries where,
you know, those in running nip points, you're surrounded by in
running nip points. There's one of those photos we were talking
about earlier [00:11:00] where there's a couple of kids standing
on a mechanical loom right next to all the bobbins. And the
caption is, they had to stand on the loom because they weren't
tall enough to reach the bobbins that they had to change out.


Randy Klatt: [00:11:17] Yeah, exactly. So eight
year olds, nine year olds working these 60, 70 hour weeks around
this equipment with absolutely no regard to their safety, simply
get the job done. And we see that mentality some today. You know,
we've got to get the job done. So we bypassed some things, but
certainly not to the scale that we were doing back then, and not
just with adults, but with children full time employed as fish
cutters. And yeah, they cut their hands a lot. But, you know,
that's part of the job. We're going to just overlook that piece
because we're paying them by box. [00:12:00] So, you know,
piecework was also something that was fairly prevalent, too. So
it simply encouraged people to do things quicker, faster, which,
of course, is often less safe. But as long as they got the job
done, then they were happy to go home with their twenty five
cents because they were able to get four boxes of fish cut for
the day and they were paid five cents a box. So woohoo. Yeah. And
you just


Peter Koch: [00:12:26] Bring that extra money
home to help the family get by for the week. And in those photos,
you know, you often see adults with bandages or with a missing
limb or a digit. And kids as well. There's a couple of images
that I saw where, you know, it's captioned. You know, they're
talking about the kid who has a big bandage on his hand, one of
those fish cutters. And there's another photo there of all of the
fish cutters, all the kids that were probably in one particular
factory. And they all had knives [00:13:00] and some of the
knives were as big as a kid's forearm, for crying out loud as
long as the kids for he's holding this enormous knife out there.
And you would be scared and today to hand a kid a knife like
that. But if the kid came to work and he was part of the
workforce, here you go. And the kids were proud of what they did.
I mean, you can't take that away from the kids those days. I
mean, they were working for their family. They were working for
the wage. They were trying to do the best they can in some fairly
deplorable conditions. Really challenging conditions.


Randy Klatt: [00:13:35] Absolutely. And it
wasn't just the manufacturing facilities either. There some great
photos of the newsies. You know, there was one of the most
enjoyable musicals I've seen in the theater was newsies about a
young boy selling newspapers. But the reality is you have seven
and eight year olds out running around the streets before dawn
trying to sell newspapers, and they're getting [00:14:00] paid
pennies to do so. So industry during these this time and we're
talking anywhere from eighteen fifties or sixties up through the
turn of the century into 1920s, it was pretty darn brutal for
most people in most occupations. Not to say that it was everyone,
but a lot of people made some money. Mm hmm. Including Mr. Andrew
Carnegie. There is a reason he became a multimillionaire and the
richest man in America.


Peter Koch: [00:14:39] Certainly. And I think
that's part of what we're celebrating today is we are
celebrating. You know, the labor that the American worker, that
through the courage and determination in some of those really
challenging places allowed our country to be where it is today.
And granted, we [00:15:00] are not in. The best place all the
time, but we can certainly look at, especially around work, the
work that we do and the innovations that have come out of the
American worker and the labor force that's there. There's a lot
that they've done and a lot that they've allowed us to do. And
that we take for granted today. A lot of those things that we
take for granted today, whether it be a day off or equal wage or
a living wage, are things that came out of the labor force and is
part of what Labor Day really is. And we'll talk about more of
that kind of later on as we go, because we certainly didn't end
with a photographer taking pictures of kids with bandages on
their hands. That got us to Labor Day because there were you
know, there were injuries and there are definitely fatalities
that occurred. And individual fatalities happened probably more
frequently than we thought. They're doing a little research.
Again, there's [00:16:00] the death calendar. If you if you want
to look it up and talking about an article about from
achievements in public health. Nineteen hundred through 1999 and
improvements in workplace safety. So there's a death calendar in
industry. So all industries for Allegheny County. And it has the
months of July through June in that order. And they have little
red x's in each of the boxes where somebody has died. And
sometimes there's one, sometimes there's multiple. And this is
just one county where it occurred. And there are very few days
that are blank or that do not have a red X in that calendar. It's
a fairly stunning graphic to think about that back in that back
in that time frame,


Randy Klatt: [00:16:49] I was really impressed
with the impact that that calendar has. Well, first of all, how
many times have we ever seen a death calendar? [00:17:00] I mean,
that's just the topic. The title itself is pretty indicative of
disaster. But nineteen O' six July through nineteen O' seven and
June five hundred and twenty six workers. And you're right, it's
hard to find a date there where there's no red X and many of them
have multiple. That's just inconceivable. And that's, like you
said, one county, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Oh, my
goodness.


Peter Koch: [00:17:31] There's one week, August
19. Oh six where? Twenty one through twenty four. Those three
days in there. Four days in there. There's an average, I think of
probably four X's in each of those days, if I can peer through
some of the blurriness of the reproduced image. So like one week
you're talking close to 20 people, 20 people, different days,
probably different occupations passed. [00:18:00] And never came
back home from work. So there's that part again, where, you know,
you have that that vision of leaving for work, kissing the family
goodbye, saying goodbye to your girlfriend, your wife, kissing
the kids, whatever, with the intent that you're going to be able
to come back home and enjoy something of your labors for that day
and your family to for you to come back home to. And you never
do. Five hundred and twenty six people in that year in that
county didn't come back in 1906, 1907.


Randy Klatt: [00:18:36] Yeah. When we look at
the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as you alluded to earlier,
statistics weren't well, they certainly weren't to the point
where they are today. So much of it was manual and so much of
this was undocumented. So who knows really how many people died.
Those, I guess, are the ones that were identified. It could have
been a whole lot more. But [00:19:00] we're talking twenty three
thousand people a year, in some cases, working out through an
equivalent of somewhere around sixty one deaths per 100000
workers. Today's rate is somewhere just over three. So we have
certainly come a long, long way since those days.


Peter Koch: [00:19:24] Yeah, I think so. And you
bring up a really good point around, you know, injuries,
statistics being important because, you know, individual injuries
and even individual fatalities will have you know, people will
get focused on that and then you'll move off to the next thing.
It was one person who got injured. It was one person who didn't
come home. And it is a tragedy. But we don't tend to look at
those individual incidences as critical. But only when you start
to pull all of those statistics [00:20:00] together and you look
at it as a whole. Did they become really powerful like the image
that we were just talking about? So if you get a chance, go up
and Google, search that death calendar for an industry for
Allegheny County, and it'll pop up and you'll take a look at. And
that's a really powerful image when you see all of those red Xs,
because we live in an age where information is plentiful and it's
easy to pull that trend together. It wasn't always that easy like
you talked about before. And sometimes it really took like a mass
casualty incident for workplace injuries or fatalities to get
noticed beyond the immediate family and friends and the workers
that it truly affected.


Peter Koch: [00:20:38] And our history of work
is really riddled with those issues. And again, we didn't start
keeping good records probably until the eighteen hundreds and
into the nineteen hundreds. But you get back you know, there are
some statistics back there from a website [00:21:00] called The
Deadliest Workplace Accidents in the American Experience. So back
in the late 60s in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the Pemberton mill,
large cotton goods factory collapsed without warning and it
killed one hundred and forty five workers and injuring another
one hundred and sixty six. And again, an injury back in 1860 is
not like an injury. It is today in two thousand twenty one. We're
going to go to the doctor, going to get good treatment. Chances
that you're going to make it out of the hospital whole and return
to the workforce is pretty high. Back then, you had an injury.
There's a good chance you never return to the workforce. And then
instead of being part of the family growing, you became a burden
because they needed to support you and you could no longer go
back to work.


Randy Klatt: [00:21:49] Yeah. At that point, you
became a real liability for everyone else, right? Yeah. We
weren't talking about days of health insurance and disability
insurance [00:22:00] and EMS coverage for your community. So you
have emergency responders and fully manned fire departments. And
we just that wasn't there. You get hurt. What are the odds that
that's going to become infected or you're not going to get the
right care? It could have been treated properly and you might get
back to work, but there was no way to access the care. So you
ended up with a disability for the rest of your life and no way
to be compensated for that. It really is a sad part of this
industrial revolution that we don't often think about. What did
it really take and what are those mass casualty incidents that we
really should know about? And then on Labor Day, look back and
appreciate what people went through to get to where we are today.


Peter Koch: [00:22:53] Yeah, because even after
Labor Day was thought about and initially [00:23:00] celebrated,
Labor Day, initially was celebrated in the late eighteen
hundreds, so 1882 was that first Labor Day celebration in New
York. And there's a couple of myths out there, not myths, but
stories out there about competing people who suggested that you
gather the laborers together to celebrate labor and to hear
people talk about labor and organized labor and what you could do
as a as a community of laborers. Well, yeah, that's the first the
first celebration, 1882. And they talk about Peter J. Maguire
being from the Carpenters Union and then Matthew Maguire from the
Machinists Union were the two guys that are credited with first
bringing Labor Day into the forefront here in the Americas.


Randy Klatt: [00:23:50] Which obviously came
from labor. And this wasn't recognized by anyone else, by the
federal government or state government [00:24:00] or any other
organization. It was the laborers who actually took the day off
in 1882 unpaid to parade, to celebrate their accomplishments or
to at least try to make people aware of the significant
contribution they have.


Peter Koch: [00:24:16] Yeah, so and the power
that you have together that the power that you have as a group to
recognize that there are some challenges out there and to really
fight for the rights of the American worker back then. And there
was a lot to fight for back then. And still even after they
celebrated Labor Day. And again, you alluded to it took the day
off, not were given the day paid to have off and celebrate Labor
Day with your family. The first labor days were people didn't go
to work. It was almost like a protest. They didn't show up that
day. They went to New York and they marched the Labor Day parade
to go to Union Square in New York City and march, [00:25:00]
almost in protest. So, yeah, it's an interesting piece. We
celebrate Labor Day today as a holiday or as an opportunity. And
they celebrated Labor Day really as a chance back then, which is
pretty interesting.


Randy Klatt: [00:25:15] Indeed it is. And we're
talking 1882. But if you look up some of the worst disasters in
history and you started to read some of those, at least one of
those on that list, there are all many years after those first
Labor Day celebrations and even after it was actually a
recognized federal holiday. So there were still a lot of
struggles to be had down the road by workers to reach that
equitable pay and equitable treatment and safer workplaces and
all those things of the livable wage you mentioned earlier.


Peter Koch: [00:25:54] Yeah,


Randy Klatt: [00:25:54] It was still worth
fighting for. And you still [00:26:00] had a pretty good chance
of not coming home after going to work, especially if you were in
heavy industry is still working in mining in particular. Oh, my
gosh. Imagine being underground in a mine with the conditions
they were in around the turn of the century.


Peter Koch: [00:26:18] Oh, my gosh. No, I can't.
And some of those pictures from Lewis Hine were showed groups of
boys, young boys who were working in the mines. And you read some
of those descriptions and what they did and they were they were
the ones that went places in the mines that are grown adult
couldn't go. So not only were they exposed to all of the same
exposures that are hazards that an adult would be in a mine,
which back then was a myriad of things that weren't controlled,
everything from air quality issues to explosives to all sorts of
things that never really came into play until labor [00:27:00]
started to look into it and say, we need to do something about
this. But the boys were then, for like I guess lack of a better
term, allowed to go wiggle their way in the places and place
charges and find different passages where a full grown adult
couldn't go. Being a little claustrophobic myself, I'm not sure
that I could do that.


Randy Klatt: [00:27:22] Yeah, that wouldn't be
on my list of to dos, that's for sure. And the worst mining
disaster in American history occurred in nineteen O' seven. So
just a few years after the turn of the century. And the wording
just kind of gets to me when it describes this, the underground
explosion. This was in West Virginia that kills three hundred and
sixty two out of the three hundred and eighty men and boys
working that day.  Oh, my goodness.


Peter Koch: [00:27:55] That's it's almost a
whole a whole community of people that were wiped out. You
[00:28:00] know, it's three hundred men and boys, three hundred
men and boys that, you know, had families to go back to. You've
just cut out half of the population of probably a mining town,
you know, within that one particular event that occurred.


Randy Klatt: [00:28:16] Exactly.


Peter Koch: [00:28:17] And it didn't stop there.
And it wasn't just in the mines where things were really
challenging. And we found a lot of a lot of people getting
injured or killed. We talk about this often, especially if we're
talking about the history of OSHA and where OSHA came out of and
safety in America. One of the watershed moments, I think, in
workplace safety came out of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
disaster that happened back in or on March 25th in 1911, which
the history of that particular fire. Not even looking at
pictures, just reading a [00:29:00] description of it can almost
cause nightmares. It's pretty can be pretty scary.


Randy Klatt: [00:29:04] It sure can. And a well
known incident that we've learned a lot about being in the
worker's comp industry and knowing that this was one of the key
moments that brought forth the need for some sort of compensation
for injured and fatally injured workers. But I agree. You read
the read the description of what happened when this factory
started to burn and where the people attempted to evacuate when
there are 600 workers in this building. And of course, the fire
hoses weren't working because they were rotted and the bowels
were rusted shut. And so their panic ensued as they tried to get
out and only a few people could fit into the elevator at a time.
So, of course, eventually that broke down with many people still
trapped in the building. So many fell to [00:30:00] their deaths
in the elevator shafts, trying to somehow escape the floor that
was on fire. And so many died in the building. But then just to
learn that there were 58 people who died jumping to the sidewalks
from the building, it's just that is horrifying to think about
the loss, a total of a hundred and forty six people.


Peter Koch: [00:30:22] Yeah, and in those the
conditions in in how this all came about is the tragedy. I mean,
I think I know when I've described part of this in a class
before, people immediately think about 9/11 and those iconic
images of people plummeting from the Twin Towers. And, you know,
that's that is a horrible image to have fixed in your mind. And
it is a horrible reason for those things to happen, to have a
plane, a terrorist attack happen on our home soil [00:31:00] for
that to occur. But in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, we did
this to ourselves. Right. So the doors the exit doors were
chained closed because management didn't want people taking
breaks when they shouldn't be taking breaks. You know, I guess
having someone work 12 hours a day, six days a week just isn't
enough. Right. So. Got to make sure that they're not taking a
break when they shouldn't. You know, the fire started in a rag
bin. Right. So we look at this often. We go different places and
we see a bin full of used oily rags in a maintenance facility.
And we talk to people about, hey, this is going to combust at
some point in time, like, yeah, we'll take care of it. We'll take
care of it at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, something that we
take for granted, the exit routes. Right. So your fire escapes
were too narrow. There wasn't enough room on the fire escape to
handle the occupancy [00:32:00] of the floor of the building. So
when people went out to the fire escape, the fire escape
collapsed. So consider that like oh fire. Right. So I'm going to
go out and I'm going to go out. What I know is the fire escape,
and I'm going to walk onto that. And I'm assuming that fire
escape is going to hold me and it doesn't. And it collapses and
prevents everyone else from escaping. And then considering the
response and you said this early on, like we didn't we had some
organized EMS, we had some especially in the cities, there was
fire response. A lot of it was volunteer, some of it was
professional. But the fire occurred on the eighth floor. The
hoses only reached to the seventh floor like. So that math just
doesn't add up. Right. So there's lots of things that we take for
granted today that came out of these. Disasters. [00:33:00] One
of those is workplace safety. In a in a focus on workplace
safety, another one is building code and making sure that the
building is able to support the number of people and what they're
doing in there and how do they get out in the in the event of an
emergency. And we tend to forget that these rules aren't there
just so that our jobs can be more annoying. But they're there
because there has been substantial issues. And they talk about
this in the history of Triangle Shirtwaist, too, with like 18
minutes from the time of the fire to the time that was all done
and all. One hundred and forty six people died. Eighteen minutes.
That's crazy to think that that many people would die almost in
an instant.


Peter Koch: [00:33:47] Let's take a quick break.
Maybe you didn't know, but MEMIC is committed to making workers'
comp work better for everyone. It's been our hallmark since day
one. And through compassion, partnerships and a relentless
commitment to workplace [00:34:00] safety, we make an impact,
whether it's our claim specialist, connecting injured workers
with the best medical care and helping them understand the
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consultant for more information about resources that can help.
And if not, and you're interested in how MEMIC can partner with
you for workplace safety. Contact your independent insurance
agent. Now, let's get back to today's episode.


Randy Klatt: [00:34:45] It is crazy. And as you
said, self-induced. And we see that to some degree in business
today when we do mention something about the regs or the exit was
partially blocked or you can't get to the fire [00:35:00]
extinguisher. And, you know, those sorts of things that we always
point out. And it's the overriding philosophy of, yeah, we'll get
to it, but really, we have to do business first and it's not
going to happen. What are the odds? Right. What are the odds that
this building is going to catch on fire, that we're going to have
a problem and that's not the right way to look at workplace
safety. And we should have learned from these incidents. Every
manager, every supervisor, every business owner should have a
real good appreciation of history. So we don't repeat it.


Peter Koch: [00:35:39] It's that's a very good
point. There's a phrase out there for those who don't know their
history are destined to step in it again. Right. Or fall into it
again, or however you want to finish that particular phrase. And
there's an author out. There was this quote came out of another
website that we're looking through, the [00:36:00] article called
Child Workers and Workplace Accidents. What's the price paid for
Industrializing America? They talk about how between the years of
1830 to 1880, there's this overworks generation of Americans that
reached adulthood with hunchbacked weakness, both legs, damaged
pelvises, missing limbs from working in those conditions for so
long. And you have a generation that has human damage that
doesn't allow them to interact in the same way with everyone else
that we take for granted today. And I thought it was an
interesting connection, because if we just take the example of
how industrial technology back in the eighteen hundreds changed a
generation and moved that same phrase to today and how technology
take the industrial out of it, technology has changed a
generation. What kind of injuries [00:37:00] are we seeing in a
lot of young people today? And it might not always be work
related. It might be just someone going to the doctor because
they've got aches and pains, but it's neck injuries, it's wrist
injuries, it's overexertion injuries. And most of it's coming
from the phone posture. The technology posture of the hunched
back, the rounded shoulders, the hands together, typing with
their thumbs, staring at a small screen for hours a day. And
you're seeing injuries or challenges to people that are really we
saw similar things from introduction of technology back in the
eighteen hundreds to. So, again, that whole concept of we need to
understand our history to be able to see our current day and
possibly even the effect of the current day on the future
accurately, too. So there's a lot in this history that we can
really take forward. [00:38:00]


Randy Klatt: [00:38:00] Right. That's those are
great points. It's all about those musculoskeletal disorders that
take place over time and know. One hundred and fifty years ago,
it was manual labor in horrible conditions and long hours and no
days off. That resulted in these injuries and these long term
problems that people had today. We still have a lot of people
working in industry and construction and such. But you're right,
there are a lot more people using the computer or using a phone
or a tablet. And we actually have young people who are starting
to grow spines out of their cervical spine. So like bone spurs
that are developing, which is not that uncommon with elderly
people because you do have to hold your head up. Right. The human
head weighs 12 pounds, 15 pounds, give or take. And [00:39:00]
that takes some effort to hold up. We don't really think about it
until we put our head down looking at the phone. Then after a few
hours, our neck really starts to hurt and we ignore it. And over
time, we forget the pain and we just deal with it. And we're
actually starting to grow these things out of our spine that are
being found in teenagers when normally they wouldn't be found
until you're in your 70s. So there are workplace challenges today
that we really need to face that are, you know, from different
causal factors. But again, looking at history, we should be able
to learn from them and find a better way. And let's listen to
your safety consultant when they make recommendations. Gosh darn
it,


Peter Koch: [00:39:50] Every once in a while.
Don't delete the email. Read it through. Think about it before
you delete it, possibly, right?


Randy Klatt: [00:39:55] That's right. We know
what we're talking about. So interesting [00:40:00] that that
even in 1911, we see this disaster and it did spur a lot of work
in building codes and, you know, the sort of standards for the
workplace. But it was still another 60 years before OSHA was
founded. The Occupational Safety and Health Act was founded. So
it took a long time even to get to that point where we actually
had federal regulations about workplace safety.


Peter Koch: [00:40:35] Yeah. And even beyond or
even before that. So OSHA, from a workplace safety standpoint,
which is near and dear to our hearts, but just from a fair labor
part, like what's fair, what's fair work, what constitutes fair
work that even get passed until 1938, the Fair Labor Standards
Act, where they addressed child labor and they addressed
[00:41:00] the workday and they addressed fair wages and living
wages, all which kind of come together to help the American
worker be a more valuable component of the success of America.


Randy Klatt: [00:41:13] It did take a long time,
way too long.


Peter Koch: [00:41:17] Way too long. And, you
know, like we said it before, our current workplaces aren't free
from problems. They're not free from hazards or free from people
getting injured. We have come, like you said, we've come a long
way. But the way there was really hard won. And whenever you've
got struggle, there's going to be some progress. And to flip that
around, Frederick Douglas, it's a quote that comes out of the,
uh, around 1857. If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
So you look at all the challenges that occurred back there and
that started the labor union. It started to pull organized the
different factions, not [00:42:00] factions, but the different
groups from the different industries to come together and start
to advocate for better conditions in the workplace. And those
unions came forward and they fought for better hours, equal pay
and safer working conditions. And actually, you know, Randy, when
you think about it, that's somewhat on how MEMIC was actually
formed and not on that, you know, not out of that particular
quote. But really, there was a struggle in Maine in the early
1980s through the early nineteen nineties and through those
struggles MEMIC was actually formed. It was it didn't come out of
it wasn't somebody's brainchild because they thought it would be
an awesome idea. It was a response to a crisis like a lot of
this. Right. So the [00:43:00] the Labor Standards Act and the
building codes and OSHA you hear many times that OSHA standards
were written in blood because they were there's every standard in
that OSHA standards book is because there's somebody or some body
part that's attached to that, that didn't make it home or didn't
make it home with the person after the incident occurred.


Randy Klatt: [00:43:27] Yeah. And then early
1990s, Maine had one of the worst, if not the worst, workplace
injury records. Our injury rate was really high and worker's
compensation insurance was extremely expensive. And insurers
were, in fact, withdrawing from the state. And we got to a real
crisis point with the businesses in Maine and something had to be
done. So thank goodness MEMIC was founded. An initial [00:44:00]
mission statement really did talk about not only providing great
insurance and great safety services, but we wanted to promote
fair and equitable treatment for all workers. And that's still
true today. We've updated the mission statement and our vision
and values and all that along the way. But that's still at the
core of what we do is taking care of people. And ideally, we take
care of people before there's an injury. That's our role as a
safety consultant, is to get out there and find those issues,
find those emergency exits that are blocked and make sure that
they're taken care of. So in the event of a disaster, we actually
get people out of the building instead of trapping them inside.
But when injuries do occur, MEMIC is also there to provide the
insurance benefits and medical care so that people can get back
to work healthy and happy as soon as possible. So it is an
important mission. I never conceived of myself [00:45:00] working
for an insurance company. I know I don't like to pay insurance
premiums any more than anybody else does. But this is an
important piece of every worker's life, and it is important.


Peter Koch: [00:45:14] Yeah. And we're not
saying that, you know, MEMIC was formed so that you could
celebrate Labor Day, but I think it fits within the whole the
whole thought of, you know, Labor Day came out of a struggle. And
there's good things that come out of a struggle. And we have a
long history of struggling for things and to things in America.
You know, after those first two celebrations in New York in 1882,
it still wasn't a national holiday like you didn't once. They all
met together and had the parade in New York and they figured out
which McGuire was the one to recognize as the person who
suggested Labor Day still wasn't a national thing. I mean, that
was [00:46:00] just New York City. And it took five more years
for the first state in the Union to actually recognize Labor Day
as an official holiday. And I don't have a lot of information
about that. But Oregon was the first state back in 1887 to make
Labor Day an official holiday. So I'd be curious if we can go
back in time and kind of look at that first Labor Day. And was it
just the day off or was it like our current Labor Day and certain
companies you get that benefit of having a paid day off. So I'm
not sure all of the labor in Oregon were paid for that first
Labor Day holiday, but that was the first state to declare Labor
Day a holiday. Oregon in 1887.


Randy Klatt: [00:46:50] Oh, go Oregon.


Peter Koch: [00:46:51] There you go.


Randy Klatt: [00:46:52] Go Ducks!


Peter Koch: [00:46:52] And even after that, it
still didn't catch on. It's still a number of years, another five
or six years [00:47:00] for more states to sign things into law.
There again, seven more years. Grover Cleveland, are the
president at the time finally signed the Labor Day holiday into
law. So then it was a national holiday. And prior to that, in
between 1887 and 94, 23 other states had adopted the holiday. And
then Grover Cleveland signed it into law because it was becoming
a trend, I guess, across the nation.


Randy Klatt: [00:47:32] Ya he saw the
inevitable, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Looked at it, decided to do the
right the right thing for a change.


Peter Koch: [00:47:38] And that's even that's an
interesting history, because there, you know, prior to that, in
that same year was the Pullman strike where the railroad workers
were on went on strike for two, almost three months. And it was
pretty nasty. There was a lot of violence and [00:48:00] some
deaths, both on the strikers side and on the government side that
tried to break it up. But ultimately, the labor won it out, but
it was still, you know, still a violent part of our history. So,
you know, again, 1894, a watershed time in our history to signing
Labor Day as a holiday into law. But there is still a lot of
struggle around that just to make it happen.


Randy Klatt: [00:48:30] Yeah. Can you imagine
having to riot and to get into gunfights on the streets and
calling in the Pinkerton agents to protect your facility and all
those kinds of things just because you're not willing to pay a
fair wage or workers are complaining of unsafe working
conditions?


Peter Koch: [00:48:54] Sure, I don't think I
can. I don't think I can. And I think it [00:49:00] highlights,
you know, as we think about Labor Day and we think about the
roots of Labor Day, it highlights, again, the need for both
parties to come to the table rationally to talk about what's
right and not what's just good for the one, but what's good for
more than just the one. How are we going to be successful as a
company as well as be successful as the individual? Because, you
know, there are many cases where when you just focus on the
company being successful and not the workers being successful,
you're not going to end up being successful as a company. And
we've talked about a lot of challenges, there's hundreds, if not
thousands of companies out there that have not been able to be
successful for one reason or the other, and sometimes it is
because they didn't have the right priorities in mind when they
started looking at labor.


Randy Klatt: [00:49:59] After [00:50:00] all,
who is the company? We want to make the company successful. And I
don't know of any company that will be successful if their
workforce isn't successful. They're the ones that make it happen.
So protecting those workers is not only the right thing to do
from an ethical standpoint, but certainly the right thing to do
from an economic standpoint. We all know just the small part of
that whole pie being the worker's compensation insurance premium
and how much that costs of business. And just like any insurance,
the more you use it, the more it costs. So you can drive those
direct costs of an injury through the roof pretty darn quickly.
And it would be far less expensive to get ahead of the game and
take care of those workers in the first place so that that
doesn't happen. Safety is always a pay me now or pay me later
proposal and [00:51:00] now is going to be a lot less expensive
than later. It's just that's the way it always works.


Peter Koch: [00:51:06] It always does. And we
can be really short sighted. And think about the not putting out
a little bit now, but it's like you said, it's going to come
around later. Back to you. Well, so we've been talking about
Labor Day here for almost an hour. And I think it's good for us
to recognize. Right. So back before 1994 or excuse me, back
before 1894, even farther than 1994, right back before 1894,
Labor Day didn't exist. We didn't recognize the success of and
the input of the American worker, that construction worker, the
textile worker, the manufacturing person, the firefighter, the
police officer, the nurse, the doctor, the whoever it is, the
[00:52:00] American labor, the person that's out there doing
things and making things for to make America successful and then
to try to be successful on their own. That symbiotic relationship
between the work that needs to be done and the worker that's
going to do it. And the history of Labor Day is just filled with
struggle, courage, defiance, injuries. And as we've talked about,
even death out there today, we celebrate Labor Day on the first
Monday of September. And most of us will enjoy a day off from
work sharing time and maybe a meal with friends and family.


Peter Koch: [00:52:34] And it's become the last
hurrah before summer ends and the school year starts in earnest.
So people are celebrating a lot of things. And when we do it,
it's easy to forget the history of our modern workplace and how
we got the eight hour workday overtime pay holidays or even
machine guards, air quality monitoring respirators, lock out tag
out, fall protection, all of the tools and standards [00:53:00]
that give us the opportunity to come home after work and see
those friends and family. So when you're celebrating, don't
forget the thousands of workers out there in retail, hospitality,
food service, emergency services and health care that are going
to celebrate Labor Day by working for us or in some cases with
one of our loved ones. So this Labor Day, remember that it's not
just a holiday from work, but it's a holiday about work. And
without the lives and the limbs of the workers that came before
us and the unions and officials that spoke out, we would not have
the day to celebrate. There's a good chance more of us would be
spending this first Monday of September in the hospital or worse
yet, in the morgue.


Peter Koch: [00:53:49] Thanks again to everyone
for joining us. And today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast.
We've been speaking about the history of Labor Day and how it has
influenced safety with Randy Klatt, director of Region two here
at MEMIC. If you have any suggestions for a safety related
podcast [00:54:00] topic or we'd like to hear more about a topic
we've touched on. Email me at podcast@MEMIC.com Also, check out
our show notes for today's podcast at MEMIC.com/podcast where you
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