Today in Labor History April 16, 1947: 581 workers died in Texas City, Texas, on Galveston Bay, in the deadliest industrial disaster in U.S. history. 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate, on board a ship docked in the port of Texas City, detonated and set off a chain reaction of explosions and fires on other ships and nearby oil storage facilities. Thousands were seriously injured. As a result, changes in chemical manufacturing and new regulations for the bagging, handling, and shipping of chemicals were enacted.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #texas #galveston #explosion #disaster #workplacesafety #workplacedeaths

Today in Labor History April 5, 2010: Twenty-nine coal miners were killed in an explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia. In 2015, Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship was convicted of a misdemeanor for conspiring to willfully violate safety standards and was sentenced to one year in prison. He was found not guilty of charges of securities fraud and making false statements. Investigators also found that the U.S. Department of Labor and its Mine Safety and Health Administration was guilty of failing to act decisively, even after Massey was issued 515 citations for safety violations at the Upper Big Branch mine in 2009, prior to the deadly explosion.

So, the U.S. Dept of Labor, back when the U.S. staffed and funded its regulatory agencies, allowed a murderous boss to get away with 515 safety violations, resulting in the deaths of 29 miners, without any consequences for its bosses. And the courts gave the murderous CEO of Massey Energy a year in a Country Club prison for those same 29 worker deaths. Historically, mining (including coal, copper, gold, etc) has been one of the deadliest industries on the planet for workers, with thousands of deaths, and tens of thousands of injuries, in and around the pits, and tens of thousands of deaths from chronic lung ailments. It has also been one of the most oppressive for workers and one of the most violent in terms of the capitalist response to labor organizing, with hundreds of striking miners murdered in the U.S., alone.

To read more about mine worker organizing read here:

https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/12/24/the-calumet-massacre/
https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/20/the-ludlow-massacre/
https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/14/the-battle-of-blair-mountain/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #mining #explosion #workplacedeaths #coal #westvirginia #workplacesafety #profits #workersafety #strike #union

Today in Labor History March 30, 1930: Three thousand workers, mostly African-American, began construction on the Hawks Nest Tunnel in West Virginia. The employer cut costs by failing to provide safety equipment. Additionally, bosses forced the men to work 10-15-hour days, often at gunpoint, without breaks and without masks to protect themselves from the silicon dust. Consequently, hundreds of workers died of silicosis. Possibly over 1,000 people, one-third of the entire workforce, died from silicosis, in one of America’s worst cases of mass workplace mortality.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #workplaceinjury #WorkplaceDeaths #HawksNest #racism #silicosis #forcedlabor #slavery #BlackMastodon #PPE #africanamerican

Today in Labor History: March 28, 1968: Martin Luther King led a march of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Police attacked the workers with mace and sticks. A 16-year old boy was shot. 280 workers were arrested. He was assassinated a few days later after speaking to the striking workers. The sanitation workers were mostly black. They worked for starvation wages under plantation like conditions, generally under racist white bosses. Workers could be fired for being one minute late or for talking back, and they got no breaks. Organizing escalated in the early 1960s and reached its peak in February, 1968, when two workers were crushed to death in the back of a garbage truck.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #memphis #union #strike #racism #MartinLutherKing #assassination #PoliceBrutality #WorkplaceDeaths #police #tennessee #wages

Today in Labor History March 25, 1947: A coal mine exploded in Centralia, Illinois killing 111. American folksinger Woody Guthrie wrote and recorded a song about the Centralia disaster called “The Dying Miner.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4pShnMe6Rk

#workingclass #LaborHistory #centralia #coal #mine #disaster #woodyguthrie #mining #coal #WorkplaceDeaths #folkmusic #miners #illinois

Today in Labor History March 25, 1911: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City killed 146 people, mostly immigrant women and young girls who were working in sweatshop conditions. As tragic as this fire was for poor, working class women, over 100 workers died on the job each day in the U.S. in 1911. What was most significant was that this tragedy became a flash point for worker safety and public awareness of sweatshop conditions.

The Triangle workers had to work from 7:00 am until 8:00 pm, seven days a week. The work was almost non-stop. They got one break per day (30 minutes for lunch). For this they earned only $6.00 per week. In some cases, they had to provide their own needles and thread. Furthermore, the bosses locked the women inside the building to minimize time lost to bathroom breaks.

A year prior to the fire, 20,000 garment workers walked off the job at 500 clothing factories in New York to protest the deplorable working conditions. They demanded a 20% raise, 52-hour work week and overtime pay. Over 70 smaller companies conceded to the union’s demands within the first 48 hours of the strike. However, the bosses at Triangle formed an employers’ association with the owners of the other large factories. Soon after, strike leaders were arrested. Some were fined. Others were sent to labor camps. They also used armed thugs to beat up and intimidate strikers. By the end of the month, almost all of the smaller factories had conceded to the union. By February, 1910, the strike was finally settled.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #TriangleShirtwaistFire #workplacedeaths #strike #union #immigrant #sweatshop #childlabor #workplacesafety #fire #women #prison #newyork

Today in Labor History March 10, 1906: Coal dust exploded at the Courrieres mine in France. 1,099 miners died. It was the second worst mining disaster of the 20th century. (1,549 miners died in the Benxihu accident in China, in 1946). As a result of the Courrieres disaster, 45,000 miners went on strike, protesting the ongoing unsafe working conditions. The authorities sent in the military, which quashed the strike.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #mining #strike #workplacedeaths #UnsafeWorkplace #france

Today in Labor History December 29, 1970: President Nixon signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act into law. Ever since, successive administrations have whittled away at the efficacy of this agency, which was designed to protect workers. Nevertheless, a study in 2012, published in the journal “Science,” found a 9.4% reduction in workplace injuries and a 26% reduction in the cost of workplace injuries since 1970. They also found that these reductions came at no additional cost to business or consumers. A 2020 study by the “American Economic Review” found that President Obama’s press releases that named and shamed companies that were violating OSHA had the same effect on improving compliance by other companies as having 210 inspections. It makes one wonder how many fewer workplace deaths and injuries would occur with an increase in inspections and penalties, on top of naming and shaming.

In 2022, there were 5,486 fatal workplace injuries in the U.S., a 5.7 % increase from 2021, a rate of 3.7 deaths per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers. There was a slight drop in 2023 and a significant drop in 2024. However, the data for 2024 would have been released in 2025, by the Trump administration, which has gutted OSHA and the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the actual number of deaths could be significantly higher.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #osha #WorkplaceSafety #WorkplaceDeaths #nixon #obama #trump